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Alternatives to FRAPS?


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On the subject of recording with MSI Afterburner, it seems I can't make it work well.

By that, I mean that I get a performance hit of 25 to 50% regardless of the game I record, if I record in 60FPS and 1080p.

The first thing I thought, of course, was that I need a stronger PC, but the odd thing is that according to Afterburner's ressources monitor, only 40% of my CPU and 50% of my GPU was being used during the recording.

All of my CPU's cores were also fluctuating around 40% of usage.

What could cause this?

Lowering the bitrate didn't help either, so I'm guessing this isn't a HDD speed issue.

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Did you try using Shadowplay instead? I moved to that. I bumped up the contrast and brightness so that the video wouldn't look washed out when on YouTube. You have less control than with MSI but honestly the average viewer will never notice the difference and even to me it looks pretty much the same. I have very little space for videos so the tiny high quality videos Shadowplay makes are a god send for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fmW1Rgqnj8

 

GeForce Experience is really annoying, but ShadowPlay works pretty decently. Bear in mind you can only get 60 FPS if your game is running at 1080p, if you record at 60 FPS at any other resolution the video will look bad, seeing as it'll lock it at 30.

 

I've honestly stopped caring about the quality on YouTube, no matter what I do, YouTube will mess it up.

 

The really good thing about Shadowplay is how easily I can do 1080p at 60 FPS, I think if you can have 60 FPS you should do it. You can get it here. http://www.nvidia.it/object/geforce-experience-it.html

 

If you don't know how to use Shadowplay I'll setup a guide, like this http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/MSI_Afterburner I need to complete that though.

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Did you try using Shadowplay instead? I moved to that. I bumped up the contrast and brightness so that the video wouldn't look washed out when on YouTube. You have less control than with MSI but honestly the average viewer will never notice the difference and even to me it looks pretty much the same. I have very little space for videos so the tiny high quality videos Shadowplay makes are a god send for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fmW1Rgqnj8

 

GeForce Experience is really annoying, but ShadowPlay works pretty decently. Bear in mind you can only get 60 FPS if your game is running at 1080p, if you record at 60 FPS at any other resolution the video will look bad, seeing as it'll lock it at 30.

 

I've honestly stopped caring about the quality on YouTube, no matter what I do, YouTube will mess it up.

 

The really good thing about Shadowplay is how easily I can do 1080p at 60 FPS, I think if you can have 60 FPS you should do it. You can get it here. http://www.nvidia.it/object/geforce-experience-it.html

 

If you don't know how to use Shadowplay I'll setup a guide, like this http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/MSI_Afterburner I need to complete that though.

Thank you for the suggestion. Unfortunately I do not own a nVidia GPU.

 

After further testing and by setting the frame size to 720p and the framerate to 30 I was able to reduce the performance hit to less than 5 FPS. I guess this really is a hardware issue, ultimately.

But I'm still not sure why the hardware refuses to go all the way up to 99% of usage if necessary.

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Did you try using Shadowplay instead?

If you mean the program itself, it sucks.

If you meant NVENC on the other hand (put aside marketing namings) then it's not like MSI afterburner can't use that.

 

Thank you for the suggestion. Unfortunately I do not own a nVidia GPU.

 

After further testing and by setting the frame size to 720p and the framerate to 30 I was able to reduce the performance hit to less than 5 FPS. I guess this really is a hardware issue, ultimately.

But I'm still not sure why the hardware refuses to go all the way up to 99% of usage if necessary.

You can use AMD VCE or intel quicksync if available.

 

Anyway, there are plenties of codec choices out there.

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You can use AMD VCE or intel quicksync if available.

 

Anyway, there are plenties of codec choices out there.

Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that I do use those. They do give a boost to performance, but not as much as I wish they would.

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If you mean the program itself, it sucks.

Yes I know it's a piece of shit, but its the only thing I can use to get high quality 60 FPS 1080p videos.

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Yes I know it's a piece of shit, but its the only thing I can use to get high quality 60 FPS 1080p videos.

That does pretty much summ it up. If you want high quality video 60 FPS footage then Shadowplay does its thing pretty efficiently and after turning it on there's no need to touch the nvidia experience much. 

 

However there's difference between "high quality" and "lossless". 

 

Reason why I can't use shadowplay for some stuff is that it's not lossless and it captures maximum of 60 FPS, I do some frame rate testing with 120 FPS recording and those require to be lossless and with zero frame drops to be accurate. However still use it for simple gameplay footage recording and desktop capturing from time to time. 

 

Lowering the bitrate didn't help either, so I'm guessing this isn't a HDD speed issue.

 

Bitrate? None of the codecs I have used (Dxtory, Lagarith, UtVideo, MagicYUV) can't even have bitrate, only colorspace, CPU cores, nullframes, etc. So you are recording with lossy format? At that point without hardware encoding of course it'll eat up resources. Fraps records with their own lossless format as well, thus filesizes are huge, but impact on frame rates is really low. 

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Well, I use this thing:

tumblr inline mtue8pM7Ru1roro16

And normally, I'd not recommend it, unless you need to record like an entire game playthrough in a decent quality and fit it all on hard-drive. It somewhat expensive and it has some issues (mostly either you go 720p@60fps or 1080p@30fps - it can't handle 1080p at higher framerate, the other issue would be - it's a grabber, so unless you're using V-sync, it will capture the v-sync tearing).

 

I've once did a mini benchmark of it (mostly for friends). But you can see the low impact on performance it has.

tumblr inline mtuesf7zRJ1roro16

From left: No recording, recording with FRAPS, recording with Avermedia Live Gamer HD (average FPS)

tumblr inline mtuf96CArE1roro16

Same as above.

tumblr inline mtufibtwia1roro16

Similar expect it's min, average, max.

 

So yeah, if someone is planning on recording a lot of stuff - definitely recommend Avermedia LiveGamer HD. Obviously as long as the resolution isn't higher than 1080p.

 

From other alternatives. OBS (which is for streaming) does a pretty good job at recording and it has a lot of options (since it was designed for streaming). But it's CPU impact will definitly be higher than FRAPS.

 

Both solutions are based around the same lossy codec, except obviously Avermedia LiveGamer HD does encoding on its own card. It's not a great quality - definitely not fit if you intend to stuff like color keying on recorded footage, but it works exceptionally well for a long gameplays that you can cut and put on YouTube (since the YouTube encoding is definitely more lossy than LiveGamer HD (or even OBS recording if configured to high bitrate)).

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Capture card is most definitely good choise if needing to record really demanding games and/or console stuff as well. I do know some friends who stream stuff have dedicated recording/streaming machine to avoid any frame rate loss with PC games. 

 

Both solutions are based around the same lossy codec, except obviously Avermedia LiveGamer HD does encoding on its own card. It's not a great quality - definitely not fit if you intend to stuff like color keying on recorded footage, but it works exceptionally well for a long gameplays that you can cut and put on YouTube (since the YouTube encoding is definitely more lossy than LiveGamer HD (or even OBS recording if configured to high bitrate)).

That's interesting. My USB3 variant, AverMedia GC550/Live Gamer Extreme, does come with it's bloatware which uses it's own lossy codec for recording, but I can just use VirtualDub instead of that and record with lossless codecs. Also supports up to 1080p/60, which is weird as this seems to be cheaper than that HD variant :o 

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  • 2 months later...

​

​Once again this issue popped up - MSI Afterburner is taking blank images of my VPN app, for some incomprehensible reason this has happened with both "F-Secure Freedome" and "NordVPN":

​

​Ao61Gvb.png

​

​I have now "excluded" the VPN application, let's hope this actually works (EDIT: does not):

​

​eGDhmBS.png

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​

Latest rivatuner is 6.4.1. So you might want to try to update (and msia accordingly I guess)

 

​I did not found 6.4.1 version of Rivatuner, 6.4.0 seems to be the latest: http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/rtss-rivatuner-statistics-server-download.html

​MSI Afterburner has now been updated to the latest version.

​

​I've had this issue well over a year. I've tried alternative programs for game screenshots, but they never works as well. Fraps doesn't work with the original Max Payne games among others, "general" screen capture programs don't play well with DirectX, Steam can only take screenshots when the overlay is enabled and didn't function universally with all applications...

​I'm out of options at this point. I haven't found a perfect solution for Linux either.

​

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​​I did not found 6.4.1 version of Rivatuner, 6.4.0 seems to be the latest: http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/rtss-rivatuner-statistics-server-download.html

​MSI Afterburner has now been updated to the latest version.

Which is pretty odd, considering latest MSI aferburner version (I installed today) came with 6.4.1

 

Or.. try to reset settings, or OBS for as much as I feel like it's too specific for another kind of "userbase"

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Which is pretty odd, considering latest MSI aferburner version (I installed today) came with 6.4.1

 

Or.. try to reset settings, or OBS for as much as I feel like it's too specific for another kind of "userbase"

 

​Can you tell me how to take screenshots with OBS? I have the latest "multiplatform" release.

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