Good FRAPS alternatives?

[mzso]

Hello!

Is anyone familiar with a good FRAPS alternative. Lossless video capture, well supported capture format (maybe free too).

[TheSkiller]

Dxtory. Much more options compared to Fraps. You can select any VfW Codec installed on your system for video compression and unlike Fraps it does have some useful audio options as well. Dxtory is not free though.

[mzso]

Thanks. I'll have a look.

[mzso]

Dxtory. Much more options compared to Fraps. You can select any VfW Codec installed on your system for video compression and unlike Fraps it does have some useful audio options as well. Dxtory is not free though.

BTW what codec is recomended for similar performance to fraps/fps1?

[Atak_Snajpera]

maybe UT VIDEO

[mzso]

maybe UT VIDEO

And other software like ffmpeg support UT video for conversion?

[osgZach]

Dxtory gets my vote. It's not free like has been noted, but it is well worth the money once you get it setup properly.

Just for the simple fact, if you are bandwidth constrained on the storage side, it allows you to record to multiple disks and then assemble the complete video afterwards.

Dxtory is the only software solution I've tried that let me record 1920x1080x32@60fps in real-time. (i5 @ 4.5Ghz, 16GB RAM, HD7950, several 7200RPM HDD's)


As for what codec to use, Lagarith works for me.

[Atak_Snajpera]

lagarith is very slow for real time capturing. ut video if i'm not wrong is included in ffmpeg.

[osgZach]

I didn't care for figuring out how to pipe video into ffmpeg, although I did play around with it. However my experience with Lagarith has been fine. It's not a CPU hog like other lossless codecs might be, that's for sure. Like I said, the issues I had were storage bandwidth, which will probably come up before you hit any real CPU problems on a decent gaming PC.

I did a lot of googling back then, and it seems I wasn't the only one who preferred Lagarith.

[Atak_Snajpera]

Take a look here http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=165745

Current version of UT VIDEO is probably even faster. Also x264 is really excellent in terms of encoding speed and compression efficiency.

[osgZach]

I honestly don't remember the last time I tried UT video. But I had some problem or another that I didn't like.
If people want to try it, more power to them.

As for x264, I experimented with that before as well and was not satisfied. I would rather save my CPU cycles for maintaining Game and Recording performance and delivering a consistent experience in that regard.

People can use whatever they want, in the end. I simply prefer Lagarith, it works for me.

[mzso]

Withdrawn. :)

[Yups]

Bandicam is another alternative.

[mzso]

I used DXtory a bit, with UT video. But why on earth ffmpeg -i "concat:input1.avi|input2.avi" doesn't work??? Only the first file is encoded. (no errors...)

[jackuars]

Active Presenter Free is the best free screecasting/video capture (http://atomisystems.com/activepresenter/free-edition/) software that's available out there. The best part is that unlike other freewares, there is no time limit and no watermarks

[mzso]

Active Presenter Free is the best free screecasting/video capture (http://atomisystems.com/activepresenter/free-edition/) software that's available out there. The best part is that unlike other freewares, there is no time limit and no watermarks

Also I can't see directx/opengl support

[Octo-puss]

I use MSI Afterburner and it works perfectly. The most important benefit over FRAPS is it does not lower FPS at all.

[jackuars]

Also I can't see directx/opengl support

ActivePresenter cannot capture games that use DirectX or OpenGL for rendering.

For such games, you can use other recorders like: Bandicam Free nd then use ActivePresenter to edit (import recorded video to a blank project to trim, cut, sync, add annotations, comments,....)

The problem with other freeware alternatives is time limit for individual files and watermarks, such is the case for Bandicam.

[mzso]

I use MSI Afterburner and it works perfectly. The most important benefit over FRAPS is it does not lower FPS at all.

I assume that's not necessarily true to anyone, since encoding and saving video has cost no matter what. What sort of codec does it use?

It looks very good so far though. I can record in UT video too, the audio is no problem, and it's free. I couldn't get it to show framerate though. It only shows a throbber when recording and nothing otherwise.

[Octo-puss]

Well, I typically capture video in raw format, so there's no FPS drop. I also started using the lagarith (I think) lossless codec lately, and still don't get any drop at all :P It also has the benefit of significantly lower files.
You can configure several output formats though.

There is a new version in the works, btw. Not sure about showing the FPS, I believe you might need to configure the OSD part of the program, and it might not work with everything. I never felt the urge to try it, so I cannot comment on it any further.

[andratek]

Hello!

Is anyone familiar with a good FRAPS alternative. Lossless video capture, well supported capture format (maybe free too).

Been testing something that might fit what you're after — I'm actually the dev, so full disclosure up front.

It's called AthenaRecorder (Windows only). Lossless screen/HDMI capture, MP4 container. A few things that might be relevant to your ask:

Uses Windows Graphics Capture (WGC) for game mode, so it plays nice with anti-cheat systems that block older DXGI/GDI hooking approaches — no more getting flagged just for having a capture tool running.
Replay buffer (rolling capture, save the last N minutes on demand) alongside normal record.
Live waveform display while recording, useful for sanity-checking audio levels without alt-tabbing to another app.
A/V sync — this is the thing I've spent the most time on. I've been running long validation sessions (2h+, multiple machines, all 4 hardware encoder paths: NVENC/QSV/AMF/MFT) and consistently getting zero drift on the final mux, no external mixing board or manual audio alignment needed. Happy to share the methodology if anyone's curious — did an open A/V sync benchmark thread here a while back comparing this against other capture tools.

Not claiming it's the answer for everyone, but if lossless + reliable sync is the priority over lightweight/general-purpose (like FRAPS was), might be worth a look.

[huhn]

that post is from 2013. these days you select obs and a lossless codec.

[andratek]

that post is from 2013. these days you select obs and a lossless codec.

Summary: Laptop + USB Headset — A/V Sync Drift in Long Recordings

The technical scenario

On a laptop with a USB headset (no audio interface or mixing console), there are two physically independent hardware oscillators running at the same time:

The system clock (QPC/QueryPerformanceCounter) — the reference used to time video.
The clock/crystal inside the USB headset's own DAC/ADC — which generates the actual audio sample rate (nominally 48000Hz, but never exactly that in practice).

Since these are different crystals, there's a frequency offset between them measured in ppm (parts per million) — typically 20 to 200 ppm depending on headset quality (wired vs. wireless). This offset is tiny per second, but accumulates linearly over the length of the recording.

19222

Frame drops from CPU/GPU overload (common in long FPS sessions) add abrupt steps on top of this gradual drift, potentially making the real-world result worse.

OBS (fixed clock, no continuous correction)

OBS assumes audio is arriving at a nominal 48000Hz and times video via QPC, without continuously measuring the actual offset between the two. The tools available are:

Sync Offset: a fixed delay in milliseconds — fixes a constant mismatch, but does nothing against progressive drift, since the problem is one of rate (different frequency), not phase (fixed delay).
Use Device Timestamps: optional, depends on the device driver exposing reliable timestamps — in practice, this often makes things worse rather than better.
No native mechanism for continuous drift correction. There's only a third-party plugin (not built-in) that acts reactively, adding/removing samples only once the buffer is about to overflow or underflow.

Result: over 3-4h with an average/poor USB headset, OBS can accumulate anywhere from roughly 1 second to nearly 3 seconds of drift, with nothing internally correcting for it during the recording.

AthenaRecorder (Smart Sync)

AthenaRecorder continuously monitors the real audio delivery rate throughout the recording and adjusts the container's timeline accordingly, instead of assuming a fixed nominal rate like most recorders do. This is what allows it to hold sync over 2h+ recordings without the progressive drift you'd normally see.

Practical conclusion

For this specific scenario — laptop + USB headset, 3-4h gameplay recording — AthenaRecorder (Smart Sync) tends to be more reliable on the A/V sync dimension, because it measures and corrects the real audio clock deviation instead of assuming it's exactly 48000Hz, which is what OBS does with no continuous correction built in.

[mzso]

Been testing something that might fit what you're after — I'm actually the dev, so full disclosure up front.

It's called AthenaRecorder (Windows only). Lossless screen/HDMI capture, MP4 container. A few things that might be relevant to your ask:

Uses Windows Graphics Capture (WGC) for game mode, so it plays nice with anti-cheat systems that block older DXGI/GDI hooking approaches — no more getting flagged just for having a capture tool running.
Replay buffer (rolling capture, save the last N minutes on demand) alongside normal record.
Live waveform display while recording, useful for sanity-checking audio levels without alt-tabbing to another app.
A/V sync — this is the thing I've spent the most time on. I've been running long validation sessions (2h+, multiple machines, all 4 hardware encoder paths: NVENC/QSV/AMF/MFT) and consistently getting zero drift on the final mux, no external mixing board or manual audio alignment needed. Happy to share the methodology if anyone's curious — did an open A/V sync benchmark thread here a while back comparing this against other capture tools.

Not claiming it's the answer for everyone, but if lossless + reliable sync is the priority over lightweight/general-purpose (like FRAPS was), might be worth a look.

Cool. Good to know about it.

[huhn]

every OBS live hour long stream is obviously off by secs what else there is no way they have something in the code to fix that. i mean it is been used for that daily why would anyone fix that...