Alternatives to FRAPS?

[Guest]

As those members of PCGamingWiki who keep abreast of the latest trends in video capture, they'll tell you FRAPS is one of, if not the, worst piece of video capture software you can own - not to mention the fact it hasn't had a new version since February 26, 2013.

 

However, I am not one of those members - I'm one of those idiots who keep on using FRAPS just because they don't know where to look for newer, better capture software. As such, I'm looking for recommendations as to good alternatives to FRAPS. For the purposes of this inquiry, money isn't a consideration - I'm looking for what's best, not what's cheapest or strikes the best balance between price, functionality, and quality.

Edited September 24, 2015 by Expack3

[ThatOneReaper 51]

The Editing guide has a small list of recommended screen capture utilities. I personally use Bandicam due to its simplicity.

 

ShareX is also not a bad choice.

[Blackbird 54]

Ever since I got GTX 980 I just use Shadowplay since it barely if ever takes any resources and can capture literally anything.

[Guest]

I like FRAPS, but Open Broadcaster works as a free alternative, it just sucks if you have a slow HDD though.

https://obsproject.com/

 

I really like FRAPS because I can still get really nice high quality videos even on slower machines.

[Guest]

The Editing guide has a small list of recommended screen capture utilities. I personally use Bandicam due to its simplicity.

 

ShareX is also not a bad choice.

Guess I missed that part. Bandicam looks interesting with its ability to do hardware-accelerated encoding; in my personal case, I'm more looking for something with lossless or raw recording for when I'm not streaming and need the absolute best possible quality. Does Bandicam do that?

 

I like FRAPS, but Open Broadcaster works as a free alternative, it just sucks if you have a slow HDD though.

https://obsproject.com/

 

I really like FRAPS because I can still get really nice high quality videos even on slower machines.

I like OBS as well because it supports streaming and regular video capture with hardware-accelerated support out of the box! (Albeit AMD GPU users like me have to settle for a great, but unofficial fork.)

 

Also, I've been eyeing Dxtory, which looks like a spiritual successor to FRAPS. It also, among other things, is still officially supported, can use more modern CPU instruction sets like AVX and AVX2, handles OpenGL and DirectX 7 through DirectX 12, can use other codecs aside from its own, is able to hook its raw footage capture into any DirectShow-compatible application, and even has hard drive load-balancing (e.g. it balances its external write buffers over multiple drives to reduce speed penalties).

[Marioysikax 89]

...a new version since February 26, 2015.

TYPO ALERT!

 

Problem with Fraps is that it records lossless footage, it's super easy to use even for dumbest people and it's super popular (those who bought it of course don't want to change software, those who aquired it via other means don't bother checking anything else), so it won't die out for a while. Technically speaking there's not much wrong with it, but there's indeed are better solutions and it'll die out when it's not getting updated. 

 

Bought Dxtory lisence some time ago and it has been the best program so far as it basically has tons and tons of useful features. What I personally use really often is 120 FPS capturing using three storage devices, capping frame rate when I simply need to test capping, taking full quality PNG screenshots, seeing what directx versions game uses, etc. 

It actually just got updated to support Windows Apps, so that's also already huge plus as I haven't seen other programs being able to do that and basically only way to record them in the past was to record whole desktop. Measuring frame rate of Windows Apps was also bit painful and needed some developer side tools e.g. Intel GPA. 

 

As for free alternatives, Shadowplay really does work and does record 60 FPS material amazingly easily, BUT only compressed format and up to 60 FPS recording is supported. For regular user that may be the best option though. 

 

I would still like dedicated article for screen recording/capturing/streaming tools, because PC doesn't have handy "share" button nor saying "record that" to microphone does anything. Speaking of the devil, Xbox app does work with majority of the games and overlay does have some sort of recorder, just haven't tested that out. 

 

ShareX is also not a bad choice.

For screenshotting I ditched puush completely, but for recording footage, it seemed like it's designed to record desktop footage, not so much for gameplay. Though I haven't tweaked recording side of that software. 

[primusauloon 7]

It depends on how much effort you're ready to put into configuring things to have it your way. Which is why, Dxtory is irreplaceable for me. Most of the time I do lossless captures and then encode them H264/VP8 myself as required. It's FULL of options and that's what I like about it. You don't have to deal with the shortcomings of the 'defaults' if you don't want to. Choose your own storage, your own codecs and codec settings, resolution, framerate etc etc down to the very minute level.

[Mirh 102]

I already wrote my opinion in an older thread

 

Tl;dr MSI Afterburner can do everything other programs do, from lossless recording to supporting NVENC or VCE, to good old software encoding (why not even with external codecs)

After having a look to other tools, only Dxtory still seems to have an edge in the event of really uber-complex recordings (thanks to distributed writing).

And perhaps OBS, which is targeted to streaming (and imo should be mentioned in a different page).

 

Everything else seems just sub-par. But I urge you to provide a rebuttal should you think I miss something.

[Guest]

I already wrote my opinion in an older thread

 

Tl;dr MSI Afterburner can do everything other programs do, from lossless recording to supporting NVENC or VCE, to good old software encoding (why not even with external codecs)

After having a look to other tools, only Dxtory still seems to have an edge in the event of really uber-complex recordings (thanks to distributed writing).

And perhaps OBS, which is targeted to streaming (and imo should be mentioned in a different page).

 

Everything else seems just sub-par. But I urge you to provide a rebuttal should you think I miss something.

The only thing I can think of in general terms is if MSI Afterburner has inferior CPU-usage compared to other tools. To use an exaggerated, hypothetical example, I don't want a free tool which tears up 10% CPU time just to record uncompressed video when there's a paid tool which uses 5% CPU time doing the same thing.

 

EDIT: On a more minor note, it only supports DirectX 8 and up, meaning I can't record games like StarTopia, Independence War 2, or Wizardry 8 without using dgVoodoo2 - and dgVoodoo2 still doesn't run every pre-DX8 game (assuming the game's issues with modern machines lie exclusively with graphics). A great example is Jagged Alliance 2 with the 1.13 mod, which AFAIK still uses the vanilla, pre-DX8 renderer the game defaults to. Can't even get the intro to play without a runtime error occurring when using the mod in conjunction with dgVoodoo2!

 

(Plus, if I had to nitpick: why the heck do I need overclocking tools with my video recorder?! Why can't I limit the frame rate below 60FPS despite Afterburner integrating with RTSS, which supports FPS capping to an arbitrary value? Don't they know some older games start breaking at 60FPS?....)

Edited September 24, 2015 by Expack3

[Mirh 102]

The only thing I can think of in general terms is if MSI Afterburner has inferior CPU-usage compared to other tools. To use an exaggerated, hypothetical example, I don't want a free tool which tears up 10% CPU time just to record uncompressed video when there's a paid tool which uses 5% CPU time doing the same thing.

I see your worry there. Indeed it only comes with RivaTunerVideo and MotionJPEG codecs.

But imo that doubt goes away once you realize what supporting external ones means.

 

I don't know other utilities codecs (even though I guess they all claim to be the fastest and the most efficient existing on the planet)..

but I find hard to believe they would be able to beat huffyuv, lagarith (and all their forks) and the almighty x264.

 

EDIT: On a more minor note, it only supports DirectX 8 and up, meaning I can't record games like StarTopia, Independence War 2, or Wizardry 8 without using dgVoodoo2 - and dgVoodoo2 still doesn't run every pre-DX8 game (assuming the game's issues with modern machines lie exclusively with graphics). A great example is Jagged Alliance 2 with the 1.13 mod, which AFAIK still uses the vanilla, pre-DX8 renderer the game defaults to. Can't even get the intro to play without a runtime error occurring when using the mod in conjunction with dgVoodoo2!

From one hand, I wouldn't even know if the other tools support things so old.

On the other.. if RivaTuner overlay works with Omikron (once you adjust it a little), I dunno why video recording shouldn't too.

In the same game, dgVoodoo2 also fixed z-buffer issues. And that's DX6 btw.

 

(Plus, if I had to nitpick: why the heck do I need overclocking tools with my video recorder?! Why can't I limit the frame rate below 60FPS despite Afterburner integrating with RTSS, which supports FPS capping to an arbitrary value? Don't they know some older games start breaking at 60FPS?....)

Oh, no need for smaller fonts. I love nitpicking!

You can't limit framerate below 60 FPS.. probably because that's your target framerate .-.

Once you lower it, it's not like multiples of your value won't appear (also, it's not like you couldn't set as you said unlimited framerate there, and limit the game in RTSS)

[Guest]

[snip]

 

From one hand, I wouldn't even know if the other tools support things so old.

On the other.. if RivaTuner overlay works with Omikron (once you adjust it a little), I dunno why video recording shouldn't too.

In the same game, dgVoodoo2 also fixed z-buffer issues. And that's DX6 btw.

 

[/snip]

Dxtory and Bandicam, for example, support DirectX 7 (they also support "DirectDraw", but I have no idea what's meant by that).

 

Also, just tested Afterburner's recording capabilities with Age of Wonders, which is a DX6 game like Omnikron. No video was output. Croc 2 using dgVoodoo2, however, work just fine. I imagine Age of Wonders with dgVoodoo2 would also work.

Edited September 24, 2015 by Expack3

[primusauloon 7]

I don't know other utilities codecs (even though I guess they all claim to be the fastest and the most efficient existing on the planet)..

but I find hard to believe they would be able to beat huffyuv, lagarith (and all their forks) and the almighty x264.

Try MagicYUV. Lagarith used to be fast once, that was overtaken by Ut quite some time ago and while I don't have Benchmarks at hand I personally found MagivYUV to be quite good/fast, especially when the software supports the x64 variant of the codec.

[Mirh 102]

Dxtory and Bandicam, for example, support DirectX 7 (they also support "DirectDraw", but I have no idea what's meant by that).

 

Also, just tested Afterburner's recording capabilities with Age of Wonders, which is a DX6 game like Omnikron. No video was output. Croc 2 using dgVoodoo2, however, work just fine. I imagine Age of Wonders with dgVoodoo2 would also work.

That may definitively be a point for them.

Though, did you create a custom profile in RTSS for the game?

With high detection level and/or different OSD modes/coordinates

 

Try MagicYUV. Lagarith used to be fast once, that was overtaken by Ut quite some time ago and while I don't have Benchmarks at hand I personally found MagivYUV to be quite good/fast, especially when the software supports the x64 variant of the codec.

It's not me you have to convince of :p

[Guest]

That may definitively be a point for them.

Though, did you create a custom profile in RTSS for the game?

With high detection level and/or different OSD modes/coordinates

Yes, and still nothing.

 

However, to play devil's advocate: with the exception of the original StarCraft, how many people these days are actually interested in capturing footage of pre-DX8 games?

[Mirh 102]

:p

Well, that's nevertheless an argument.

 

How are the other tools doing on the other hand?