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FRAPS 4GB limit


LadyCrimson

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I'm not sure if this is 'game' or 'tech' subject but I'll put it in here...

 

I've always used Fraps for game videos and it's been fine and dandy for a long long time. But since I got the new rig & sometimes want to record in the full 1920x1080, I noticed it cuts recordings into approx. 4GB chunks, creating a new file after that size has been reached. 4GB equals about 90-100 seconds. It doesn't cause lag in-game when it starts the new file, but is annoying if you're trying to record dialogue strings and it breaks it apart in bad places or something. Even if you splice the pieces together, in terms of dialogue you may still notice odd jumps. I think if I record at half-size it'd still only mean about 4-5 minutes of record time before it splits off.

 

I see people posting 15 min. high quality game videos on YouTube...they must be using something else. Anyone know of a similar program without the limit? That's not too expensive? If not, I can just live with splicing together I guess...

Or is such a limit standard for many because of some kind of average editor/format tech reason...

Edited by LadyCrimson
“Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.” – Alan Watts
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I've never used FRAPS but I suspect it's for legacy reasons. FAT32 file systems have a 4GB file size limit for instance, and many video editing programs might still be designed around that.

 

 

Better video editing programs may allow you to join them a bit more cleanly but no idea about any alternatives/workarounds/updates to FRAPS itself. Then again, videos on YouTube tend not to be measured in the gigabytes, nor are they in 1080p format. Bear in mind that 1080p has well over double the number of pixel over 720p for example so the size blows out very fast.

Edited by Humanoid

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I think you're right about the fat32. There are probably better programs but likely more than I'd want to spend. Cheaper video editing programs you find on a shelf generally all suck, in my experience. I still use virtualdub for fraps-made avi's. heh Regardless of what file size the original video is when people upload it to YT, if they're uploading 15 min game vids. at least some of them are likely to be recording in resolutions that end up going past the 4GB limit, so either they're splicing segments together before uploading or have other programs.

 

I know YT doesn't use 'real' 1080 ala DVD/BluRay quality or whatnot...it's just that if you give them a high enough resolution and an ok quality to start with, they offer different levels of whatever they use for compression, or something to that effect. If you go full screen between their 480 and 1080 options you can see the difference...assuming the video was decent quality to begin with. It's kind of confusing what they do, actually. I don't really understand it. If you use a video camera and edit w/those type of editors, YT seems to detect/do things differently than when you upload a plain fraps avi compressed via virtualdub...I had to upload in 1920x1080 resolution (I compressed it, of course) before it would come out not looking like crap on YT. If I tried 640x480 resolution that looked great on my monitor, YT compresses it into hell. :lol:

Edited by LadyCrimson
“Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.” – Alan Watts
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I give up. There's no good/not expensive program I can find that's different in this regard. I guess I'll go back to using Fraps 'half-size' option at least for things like dialogue trees. Don't need 1920.1080 for those anyway.

“Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.” – Alan Watts
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I've had this problem as well while trying to make walkthroughs. It's insane how much the FRAPS videos take and I've been looking for another good program to record games.

 

Say the program could be expensive, does anyone have recommendations?

"Alright, I've been thinking. When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade - make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager. Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons. Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons. I'm going to to get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!"

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Well, there's always Gamecam. It's not more expensive, but it sure is more intrusive. Never tried it myself though. Might be worth a shot.

 

http://www.gamecamportal.com/

 

 

I'm guessing the best part about Gamecam is that it has a function called CVR (cache video recorder or something), that allows you to always have up to 120 seconds of video in memory. Not until you tell it to save does it actually save the movie to the harddrive. You know how those cool things that happen to you always happens when you're not recording? Using CVR you'd be able to save it anyway.

Swedes, go to: Spel2, for the latest game reviews in swedish!

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  • 4 weeks later...

I don't think I'd like "more intrusive." That doesn't sound in any way appealing. :p

I got the latest FRAPS version again, and it has one of those cache features now too. But only 30 seconds I think. I haven't used the feature much since it does tend to lag the fps if you have it running constantly.

 

It's insane how much the FRAPS videos take and I've been looking for another good program to record games.

I think FRAPS does compress a tiny bit, but not a lot...probably for speed reasons (compressing on the fly is slower?). I'd be happy if they'd add another record-size option, too, in this day of big widescreens. Like, half size, full size, and 1280x720 (or 3/4 size I guess?)

Edited by LadyCrimson
“Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.” – Alan Watts
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  • 3 years later...

I believe Fraps has since been updated and uses a newer version of the AVI container, and therefore supports larger files. However, Fraps still creates very large files since it uses a lossless codec.

 

I'd like to recommend Bandicam as a good alternative. It has no limits on filesize! It also gives the user the choice of codec, so you can select whatever compression / quality ratio you need.

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Ok, so I gave that Bandicam a try. Very easy to install and understand. Chose GPU-assisted HW compression in H.264.

 

Started Dead Island, running everything maxxed out at 2560x1440, recording at 1280x720, 60 fps. This is the result:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjbk_r5OLWA

 

The file ended up being 880 MB, despite using H.264 and only being 3:20. Not sure what I did wrong, but I analyzed the file and it streams 36000+kbps. Not sure why it chose such a gigantic bitrate.. not sure how to control it either.

 

When I play the game normally at these settings, it hovers around 240 fps. While recording it averaged 130 fps. Did I mention I ****ing love my Radeon R9 290X? :)

 

The program lacks the cache recording ability (last XX seconds of gameplay always available), unless I missed something.

Swedes, go to: Spel2, for the latest game reviews in swedish!

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