Alternatives to FRAPS?

[Guest]

What do you mean by defer? As in, you are going to ask him?

Mirh's been pretty active in this thread, so I expect he'll answer your question himself.

[Mirh 103]

What do you mean by defer? As in, you are going to ask him?

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/defer#Etymology_2

 

Speaking of your hdd on the other hand.. it's as always a compromise between performance/speed, quality and size I believe (hoping I didn't forgot something)

Performance and speed is uncompressed of cou

 

You know what? It would be really cool to have a graph like this

Anybody with good graphics skills? :p

 

Uncompressed, magicYUV, lagarith, x264 AMD's VCE, intel quick sync, Nvidia's NVENC.. (dxtory?) seem all good candidates for this.

[Guest]

I don't really know what the graph would be about, and how you'd gather the data for it.

[Mirh 103]

A triangle with aforementioned speed, size and quality.

Maximum quality and speed should be uncompressed ones of course, while size could be a function with actual dimension as denominator

[Guest]

You know what? It would be really cool to have a graph like this

Anybody with good graphics skills? :p

 

Uncompressed, magicYUV, lagarith, x264 AMD's VCE, intel quick sync, Nvidia's NVENC.. (dxtory?) seem all good candidates for this.

You don't need any graphics skills to create a graph like the one you linked to. Both OpenOffice and Microsoft Excel have built-in support for such a chart, which is called a radar or net chart.

[primusauloon 7]

Uncompressed, magicYUV, lagarith, x264 AMD's VCE, intel quick sync, Nvidia's NVENC.. (dxtory?) seem all good candidates for this.

It's a little bit more complicated than that though. Some of those are lossy, others are (mathematically)lossless, not exactly a 'fair' comparison for a graph like that, Lossless ones aren't going to have a "different colour" for example unless you are using specific settings that remove the 'lossless' aspect of it - like storing footage only in YV12.

 

Then there's the matter of hardware vs software encoders, you get the idea. Hardware Encoders are obviously going to win in speed but lose in quality and size, vice versa for Software.

[Mirh 103]

It's a little bit more complicated than that though. Some of those are lossy, others are (mathematically)lossless, not exactly a 'fair' comparison for a graph like that, Lossless ones aren't going to have a "different colour" for example unless you are using specific settings that remove the 'lossless' aspect of it - like storing footage only in YV12.

Any lossless codec is of course going to be the same in the quality "score".

Though I believe only uncompressed could at the same time get a "perfect" score on "performance impact".

 

Judging quality is a bit less simple indeed.

Though I believe (hope?) it shouldn't be too subjective to rate on a 1-10 scale.

 

Then there's the matter of hardware vs software encoders, you get the idea. Hardware Encoders are obviously going to win in speed but lose in quality and size, vice versa for Software.

Hardware encoders still have some subtle performance impact afaik.. and in the end all of this is exactly what this chart would be for: showing the differences.

So I won't have Ratchet nudging me for a whole day again because this compromise uses too much space, while this other is too much CPU heavy. ;)

[Guest]

So I won't have Ratchet nudging me for a whole day again because this compromise uses too much space, while this other is too much CPU heavy. ;)

Eh.. I only spent like 10 minutes on it, why are you making me look bad

 

I was mostly sharing my results anyway, but I always end up figuring out most things myself.

 

I'm going to say the same thing if you ever need my help then

[Guest]

Is this okay to use as an MP4 container?

http://ffmpeg.org/

[Mirh 103]

Is this okay to use as an MP4 container?

http://ffmpeg.org/

It's not glorious MKV, but I guess it's not a big deal. What count is the codec.

Also, TIL ffmpeg also includes x264... So I can't understand why handbrake has a mpeg-4 option (different from H264)

[primusauloon 7]

Well, I'm not extremely knowledgable on the subject but I do know SOME things, but I'm not a chart person, I'll help however I can tho.

 

Also, TIL ffmpeg also includes x264... So I can't understand why handbrake has a mpeg-4 option (different from H264)

That's MPEG-4 Part 2, also called MPEG4 Visual or H.263, I think that should explain it to you - it's the previous iteration of the standard, it's useful for older devices that support H263 but not H264, Like older TVs from ~2009 or old DVD players etc. It's there for the same reason as any other codec - requirement and compatibility. A lot of people still use Xvid for example even though it has horrible quality compared to H264 :P

[Mars icecream 57]

​I haven't found a better tool for game screenshots than MSI Afterburner (with Rivatuner). Fraps is definitely outdated, and doesn't work with the original Max Payne games for example. Afterburner's UI is terrible, but you don't really have to look at the user interface after you've configured it once. MSI works more often than Fraps, but takes sometimes "empty" screenshots of my VPN app. I would instantly remove the program if I'd find a better alternative, once I wasn't able to boot because Afterburner enabled overclocking scheme.

​If  you use "ordinary" screenshot tools like Greenshot for games you probably end up with a picture of your desktop.

​
Why is ShareX recommended? I'd rather avoid the program because I may accidentally upload private information to cloud, many games show your IP address and email for example.

​I never capture video, only screenshots. I've heard that Open Broadcaster Software works fine, but I never figured out how to save local copies. I'm not interested in paid alternatives.

[Marioysikax 89]

Why is ShareX recommended? I'd rather avoid the program because I may accidentally upload private information to cloud, many games show your IP address and email for example.

​I never capture video, only screenshots. I've heard that Open Broadcaster Software works fine, but I never figured out how to save local copies. I'm not interested in paid alternatives.

ShareX is really customizeable, I have set up so everything goes to my dropbox and nobody can see the stuff unless I give the public link, but it's also possible to simply make it save screenshots locally only. It has also designed to be really easy to share parts of the screen fast and even small animations if you need to show how something works for example. It's basically like puush, but far far better. 

However when it comes to games, it does fail pretty badly as it doesn't have any DirectX, OpenGL, DirectDraw, etc. injectors at all so unless game is in windowed or borderless windowed, it's impossible to screenshot with it. HOWEVER if game has external launchers or can be run windowed only, ShareX is the best tool for screenshotting those as it's much faster than default Windows stuff. 

 

OBS is one of the best completely free-foss screen recorder and streaming program, but because emphasis is for streaming, all the recording functions are bit hidden. It's possible to use it as screen recorder as long as adventuring the menu options won't let you down. 

 

Just a tiny tip if someone didn't know, for screenshotting, Steam actually does let user to take lossless PNG screenshots by setting folder and ticking box in options. However it seems to fail if user has custom AA, sweetFX or similar injector in place and takes screenshots without them, but for 99% it should serve more than well and also makes it much easier to snap screenshots from sofa. 

[Mirh 103]

Afterburner's UI is terrible, but you don't really have to look at the user interface after you've configured it once.

Pretty sure there skins out there (and also some built-in). Otherwise I have heard of EVGA precision, that should use the same backend.

 

MSI works more often than Fraps, but takes sometimes "empty" screenshots of my VPN app.

I'm also sure you can blacklist single executables.

 

​I would instantly remove the program if I'd find a better alternative, once I wasn't able to boot because Afterburner enabled overclocking scheme.

There's an option to disable overclocking and hardware monitoring stuff.

[primusauloon 7]

MSI works more often than Fraps, but takes sometimes "empty" screenshots of my VPN app.

Set Detection to None for your application then. I guess it depends on how you want to use it. Some people leave it on globally so it hooks onto any game they run and some keep global off and then manually add each exe to the list that theyw ant RTSS to hook into.