FRAPs and Windows Movie Maker and YouTube

[yandonman]

posted on January 26th, 2010, 5:55 am

Last edited by yandonman on November 21st, 2010, 10:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Posting what I know on how to capture, edit and post to YouTube.

I use FRAPs. It's not free; it cost $37 to capture more than a 30 second clip. It was very simple to setup and I use all of the defaults save for remapping the hotkey for starting and stopping recording (and placing the capture files in a custom folder. FRAPs gives me a little icon near the clock on the Windows task bar that turns from yellow to red when I'm recording, which is nice. Website: FRAPS show fps, record video game movies, screen capture software

When capturing, I run FO at 1280x720. More on this later, but I found this works best for YouTube.

FRAPs captures up to 4 GBs per file (and then rolls over onto the next file) which is about 7m 30s to 8m of video per file. A 32 min game will require about 16 GB of free space just to capture. Most 1v1s last 30-45 mins, 2v2s from 45mins to an hour. 3v3s: an hour to an hour and a half. I try to make sure I have more than 50 GB of free space when capturing otherwise an 'out of disk space error' can ruin a perfectly good replay.

After I capture, I run the captured movie files (.avi) through Windows Movie Maker (because it's free) to chop the movies into ~ 15 min segments because YouTube doesn't let you do more than 15 mins clips. I "publish" the segments using the "Windows Media HD 720p (5.9 Mbps)" setting. That setting gives me the 1280x720 display size which matches the 1280x720 display size that I run the game in, which seems to work best with YouTube (as I have no extra grey bars above or below my videos). This also cuts down the size of the videos to about 240 MBs (well under the 2 GB limit per video of YouTube).

A nice and technical explanation from YouTube about what works best for their site:
Optimizing your video uploads : Learn More - YouTube Help


I try to use a decent labeling scheme. For 1v1s, it's name, race vs name, race - date - x/y (where x= current video number and y = total number of videos in the replay). I use a date in there just in case I ever record a rematch (plus it also records the date).

After all of the videos are uploaded, I make the next video a 'video response' of the previous one so that viewers can easily follow the sequence (and don't have to go looking for it).

Bellow are some various pictures of settings and file sizes and what-not.


(edit per new YouTube policy which allows for 15 min clips)

Attachments

posted on January 26th, 2010, 6:20 am

This is great information, Yandonman!

I'm working with Camstudio right now, the free version.  I'm still working on the settings, but it might be a viable free alternative.  Once I figure things out I'll post on it.

Some questions about putting the video on you tube.  With Camstudio I have to use window mode.  I still like having the game on 1440X900, which is my monitor size.  Can I still do that and have the video look good on youtube?  Or should I do 1280X720 and use the capture frame function? (Which I could size so you only see the game and not my desktop as well. )

I didn't know if I could capture it in 1440x900 and then resize it in movie maker and then publish it to you tube.

Also, thanks for sharing what your file sizes are.  I've been compressing a lot and I might expand the size to get the quality up.

posted on January 26th, 2010, 7:06 am

I don't honestly know the answers to those questions. I certainly had to fiddle around and test about 5-6 throw away recordings (Instant Action is your friend here) before I found the settings I liked.

Woot! I can not wait to see more replays! 

posted on January 26th, 2010, 7:11 am

Yeah, I'm really excited about getting Camstudio working, because all of us who are really poor/cheapskates can make videos.   I'm doing my own fiddling right now to see how a video comes out in 720p on movie maker.

posted on January 27th, 2010, 3:16 pm

............ someday I'll get my hands on a game recorder...... but for now.........

posted on January 29th, 2010, 3:12 am

I see what you mean about movie maker making the file size smaller.  The recorded avi is like 603 MB, and after I chop it in pieces and publish with movie maker, all the clips add up to 492.3 MB.  I might up the bit rate for higher quality if that's the case, since the file size will go down when I publish.  I'm getting grey bars, but I think that's because I'm recording in 1440x900 and going down to 1280x720 or whatever.  Now that I'm more comfortable with the settings I'll post about camstudio.  It's free, but takes some playing around to make it useful.  I've got settings I like that I'll share soon.

posted on June 5th, 2010, 10:23 pm

Wow... didn't know it was that difficult to set it up. It costs 37 dollar - I'm a poor student. It consumes a lot of space - I need to buy a new hard drive. Makes around 50 dollars to step into the replay business. Well... for now better don't count on me.

posted on June 5th, 2010, 10:34 pm

read mal's thread on using the free camstudio, apparently its not as resource hungry as fraps. dunno about HD space, but thats expected.

posted on June 5th, 2010, 11:01 pm

Yep.  Camstudio is pretty nice if you want to go the free route.  You have to do it in windowed mode, but the quality is just as good.  Also, you can set a compressor so that you don't have to have a huge file size.  One of these days I'll post my updated settings for camstudio and virtualdub.

[Myles]

posted on June 5th, 2010, 11:02 pm

Last edited by Myles on June 5th, 2010, 11:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

u downloaded warez  :lol:

run before the authorities assimilate you

EDIT: post i was responding to was deleted.

EDIT: ninjad by mal

posted on June 5th, 2010, 11:38 pm

Hmm without knowing then... Or perhaps the older versions were free?

run before the authorities assimilate you

lol i couldnt care but i guess ill delete the post, i dont want to get the forum's host into trouble.

[Bigmachk]

posted on June 6th, 2010, 3:42 pm

Last edited by Bigmachk on June 7th, 2010, 1:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Screw the rules I have money.

posted on June 6th, 2010, 3:57 pm

No Warez (links) & Cracks.

    * Help, requests or posts that discuss circumvention. This includes linking to illegally obtained software, movies & music files - posting about it, and suggesting to get it.

this if from the forum rules located here:
Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations - Forum Rules

your post comes under posting about it.

posted on June 7th, 2010, 2:28 am

in answer to a question near the top

*I didn't know if I could capture it in 1440x900 and then resize it in movie maker and then publish it to you tube.*

this will not work ur movie will just be streched/squewd/fucked

rule of thumb i use for you tube or anythign with res restrictions is use directly the res or double or half and ur ok  otherwise the text will be blured like mad and unreadable (chat ingame) and objects will look very wierd

may not be totaly true for 1440x900 to 1280x720  but i would just do it in the utube res on recording to save hassle and time in rendering (rendering to the same res is over 30% faster than doin to half size etc)

(fyi ive made a few vids of ingame stuff in eve online with paid for fraps and premier pro 2.0 but i wont be taking up the challenge of recording/commenting on games im not familier with FO enough to do all that)

ive not tried cam studio but i have used WMM u have to download a codec to use in WMM as the codecs that come with it are jsut to small (like 800x600 shit)

i paid for my fraps coz its damn nice and free updates for life and no im not uploading my paid installer for anyone or giving them my membership info so dont both asking even in game

also the *torrents* u said are over 90% scams and viruses so dont bother unless u know where to look for a real copy and even then u wont get any updates and again no im not saying eather lol

posted on June 9th, 2010, 9:10 pm

Id stick with youtube native resoultions which is 360, 480, 720, and 1080. If you have a moniter that will go that high, then we could have some uber sweet replays. Also movies are typically shot at 20-30 FPS while a typical game is capped at 60 FPS (the refresh rate on most peoples montiere is around 60 fps) So if you shoot anything more than 60 fps you are just wasting your memory