Fraps (pay-for version) is king!?

[Ranguvar]

Just did a recording from Gears of War PC... 1280x768, RGB24. Fraps compressed it to 147Mb/s on the fly, while playing. The MSU codec and Lagarith both beat it, but ended up around 142Mb/s -- while taking a LOT longer to encode (three to four times longer than the video runtime).

I am using a quad-core, so perhaps bad multithreading is why Lagarith and MSU can't keep up. But also, Fraps easily played at 30fps. Lagarith and MSU struggled to get 10.

Perhaps MSU and Lagarith just suck at RGB24?

The sad part is that there isn't a VfW or DirectShow encoder for Fraps :(

[Dark Shikari]

Is FRAPS lossless? I always thought it was under the category of "extremely minimally lossy" (to the point where the lossiness is meaningless).

Also, have you tried FFVHUFF with adaptive Huffman tables?

[Ranguvar]

HuffYUV can't do RGB.

Well, I looked around, and I can't find anywhere that says for sure one way or another, although I do agree that its properties seems lossy when you consider how insanely fast it is. But on the other hand, if I zoom into the frames it encoded, I can't really see any typical artifacts.

Anyways, I realized the point is moot - there's no way I can record high-resolution video at that level of quality without using Fraps (or I suppose DV) - other lossless codecs eat up way too much speed, or can't write data to the HDD fast enough. :p

[Dark Shikari]

HuffYUV can't do RGB.Yes it can.

[mikeytown2]

If you want to see if its lossless, compare (http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Compare) the 2 clips. HuffYUV can do RGB.

[Ranguvar]

Using a recent (2xxx) build of ffdshow-tryouts:

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2gtytcy&s=4

Unless it's not in ffdshow, only mencoder/ffmpeg/etc.?

[mikeytown2]

This one can
http://neuron2.net/www.math.berkeley.edu/benrg/huffyuv.html

Kinda odd that they removed it from ffdshow-tryouts

[Ranguvar]

Hmm, I'll try it. Also annoying, since ffdshow apparently has an improved version of it. Thanks!

[lilhobo]

how are u using lagarith and MSU to encode a game screen? what addition encoder are u using?? if i remember correctly Vegas could detect a fraps codec

btw, whats MSU and alpy?

[ftdwffs]

Is FRAPS lossless? I always thought it was under the category of "extremely minimally lossy" (to the point where the lossiness is meaningless).


look here: http://www.fraps.com/news.php
10th December 2004 - Fraps 2.5.0 Released: "...There's something for everyone with 60 fps recording, HDTV 1280x720 supprt, and extra lossless compression that reduces the burden on hard drives without sacrificing quality. If screenshots are more your thing it's also now possible to automatically capture screens at fixed rate intervals..."

the latest verseion of fraps is still 2.5.7 or something...
there's no reason for fraps to change to lossy; none of the changelogs for the newer versions mention lossy compression

[Japhsoncross]

I notice that if i capture 640x480@60fps with fraps, the captured avi is lossy with chroma channels.
small size capture (e.g. 384x224) is lossless.

[Irakli]

look here: http://www.fraps.com/news.php
10th December 2004 - Fraps 2.5.0 Released: "...There's something for everyone with 60 fps recording, HDTV 1280x720 supprt, and extra lossless compression that reduces the burden on hard drives without sacrificing quality. If screenshots are more your thing it's also now possible to automatically capture screens at fixed rate intervals..."

the latest verseion of fraps is still 2.5.7 or something...
there's no reason for fraps to change to lossy; none of the changelogs for the newer versions mention lossy compression

I think the quoted statement can be interpreted in different ways. I could also mean that lossless part of compression was improved, and so the filesize is smaller for given quality (much like x264 CAVLC->CABAC in general use).

Regards,
Irakli