FRAPS for in-browser video?

[benwaggoner]

I'm trying to find a good way to record in-browser video for performance measurement.

FRAPS seems like it would be perfect, but I haven't been able to get it to record inside Internet Explorer (Vista, with Aero Glass on). The Hotkey just doesn't seem to do anything, and there's never any file in my capture directory.

Any suggestions?

[poisondeathray]

Would something like camtasia studio meet your goals? or do you need a little fps counter ? not sure what you are getting at by "performance measurement"

[benwaggoner]

Would something like camtasia studio meet your goals? or do you need a little fps counter ? not sure what you are getting at by "performance measurement"
I want to be able to capture full-motion in-browser video. So, potentially up to 1080p60. Camtasia won't do that :).

More specifically, I've got burned-in timecode in a video file, and I want to be able to capture it at the full frame rate of a brower-embedded player so I can then do an OCR on the timecode to see if any frames are being dropped.

This is on an 8-core machine with a 4-drive RAID, so the CPU and drive overhead of FRAPS shouldn't be that bad.

FRAPS is said to be able to capture Vista in Aero Glass via the DWM (functionally, Aero Glass is pretty much a Direct3D game), but I can't get it to actually work for some reason. Perhaps my hotkey isn't getting passed through? The FPS meter is working correctly, but the hotkey to capture the logs isn't working either.

[poisondeathray]

You might have to disable video acceleration in the browser's video playback application; you have to do that for capturing in some media players, for example. I has to do with the video overlay

You don't have to use Camtasia's capture codec. You can configure camtasia to record using different codecs through the vfw interface e.g. xvid, divx, ffdshow, huffyuv, even Cineform. I'm not sure which would be the fastest

[Dark Shikari]

The only way I can see that working is using an external capture device. Anything else will change the results merely by being run.

[benwaggoner]

The only way I can see that working is using an external capture device. Anything else will change the results merely by being run.
I don't mind if there's a little overhead. If nothing else, I want to be able to validate that the software's reported fps matches the displayed fps.

DVI to Blackmagic Intensity would be the optimum way to do it, no doubt, but that's pretty heavyweight.

[benwaggoner]

You might have to disable video acceleration in the browser's video playback application; you have to do that for capturing in some media players, for example. I has to do with the video overlay
This would be for software-only renderers like Flash and Silverlight that don't use an overlay. However, when the Vista DWM is being used, I think "overlays" would work fine since GPU acceleration isn't using the classic YUV overlay approach.

You don't have to use Camtasia's capture codec. You can configure camtasia to record using different codecs through the vfw interface e.g. xvid, divx, ffdshow, huffyuv, even Cineform. I'm not sure which would be the fastest
Just pulling that much RGB data through the software pipeline is going to be a huge bottleneck.

The nice thing about FRAPS is that it pulls in the rendered Direct3D surface, which is much faster.

[tetsuox]

The FPS meter is working correctly, but the hotkey to capture the logs isn't working either.

For DWM benchmarking, press the your Benchmarking hotkey with Fraps focused, and your logs should be in your fraps installation directory. I used F12.

Same for DWM video capture, the hotkey only seems to work when Fraps is focused. I use Scroll Lock for video capture.

Using Vista x64 & Fraps 2.9.8.

Edit: I did not disable any acceleration features.

[setarip_old]

@benwaggoner

Hi!

You might want to check out this thread:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1128094#post1128094

[benwaggoner]

For DWM benchmarking, press the your Benchmarking hotkey with Fraps focused, and your logs should be in your fraps installation directory. I used F12.

Same for DWM video capture, the hotkey only seems to work when Fraps is focused. I use Scroll Lock for video capture.

Using Vista x64 & Fraps 2.9.8.

Edit: I did not disable any acceleration features.
Cool. It was focus that was the issue; working great now.

It looks like it always grabs from your primary monitor, even if FRAPS is on a secondary monitor, which makes things a little bit easier yet.