Jesse,
Here's a copy of my personal notes about FRAPS
9/24/03 - game screen capture app - saves still images or AVI files.
All PC's can perform screen capture. The only requirement is for the game to
be running in 16-bit or 32-bit color mode. Some older games run in 8-bit
(256 color) mode and are not supported by this software.
Fraps saves the screenshots in uncompressed bitmap (BMP) format. This is
done so that people can get an exact representation of what's on screen with
no loss of detail. If you are intending to place the images on the internet
or transfer them to friends, then you should convert them to the lossy JPEG
(JPG) format which is much smaller. Conversion is generally done by opening
the BMP file in a paint program and saving it as a new image of JPG type.
There are also programs that can do batch conversions for a large number of
images.
Why is the AVI movie generated by Fraps so big? How can I reduce the size?
The filesize is big because there isn't enough time to encode the movie
while the game is running. The movie frames are slightly compressed, but
still require a large amount of disk space due to the high resolutions. Once
you have finished capturing you should convert the saved AVI into one of the
popular compressed movie formats such as mpeg or divx. Recommended programs
for doing this are tmpgenc (Tsunami Mpeg Encoder), and VirtualDub.
Using VirtualDub is quite easy. To create a compressed version of the AVI
follow these steps:
Start VirtualDub
Select File->Open and choose the AVI in the Fraps directory you wish to
compress.
Select Video->Compression and choose the codec you wish to compress with
(usually divx)
Select File->Save As AVI and specify a filename for the new AVI.
If you have Windows XP you can also use Windows Movie Maker to compress the
video files. If you use Windows Movie Maker it's recommended that you keep
your Fraps video files at 640x480 or under.
--
PapaJohn
Movie Maker 2 -
www.papajohn.org
Photo Story 2 -
www.photostory.papajohn.org
..