Ideally you don't want to use any kind of MPEG 4 compression (no matter how good it is) until you've edited your movie and want to export the end result in a more manageable file size. Having to convert the FRAPS files to MPEG 4's in order to get them into your editor means they'll end up getting compressed twice by the time you've exported your final movie, resulting in an extra level of image degradation. Whether that's really an issue though is up to you to decide. The end result will look worse, but it could still be acceptable under the circumstances.

Anyway. Did a quick readup on iMovie to see what file formats and codecs it's compatible with. It's designed to work with the following video formats -

DV
DV Widescreen
HDV 1080i (25 and 30 fps)
HDV 720p (25 and 30 fps)
MPEG 4 Simple Profile
iSight

I just tested Handbrake too and it will convert FRAPS AVI files to MPEG 4 files. You might have to adjust the Quality settings though to avoid having the image compressed too much. And whether the converted files would be accepted by iMovie or not I don't know, iMovie might only like a particular kind of MPEG 4 file. Handbrake uses either H.264(x264) or MPEG-4 (FFmpeg) codecs and iMovie might not like either.

There's another free video conversion tool I've used before (but not lately) called Super © that you can get here - http://www.erightsoft.com/Superdc.html (Scroll right down to the bottom of the page for the link, it's not the other video converter that's advertized elsewhere on the same page). This can convert the FRAPS AVI files to the DV files that iMovie (probably) works with, maybe without any compression and degradation of image quality at all, though resulting in larger file sizes too if it does. I don't have it installed at the moment and I can't remember what settings it has, but it gave good results from what I can remember.

Hope that helps.

Here's a bit of online 'action' from my first Cliffs Of Dover multiplayer session.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY9VDL07ZqQ

I must say, I was pleasantly surprised by how well the multiplayer part of the game was working overall. Even with all it's bugs and missing features, I found it good enough for simple 'take-off, try to cross the channel, look for some action, then come back again' type 'missions'. It's pretty much the same thing I and a lot of other people used to do when playing the original series online years ago. Even in its current state, I could easily spend too much time playing the game online.

Anyway, that was my impression. Each to their own I guess.

What editing software would work directly with the fraps captures? I'd rather skip this conversion process if I could. I'm using iMovie because I had it, not because I chose it over anything else.

Also, doesn't have to be Mac. I could always just do the editing on my gaming rig I suppose. Would probably be faster too since that's a beefy desktop and my Mac is a MacBook Pro.

Not sure if this is what you want. I can open AVI's from FRAPS or MSI and I do not have to pre-render to any intermediary file using Vegas Pro 10 at all I go straight to MP4 using a very complex method of command line scripting and deinterlacing that produces the best video for upload to viemo and youtube. This method was developed by Nick at bubblevision.com. His toutorial is an education in itself and is recommended reading for power users and commercial production houses.

I've posed these before but here we go again. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWMX5...layer_embedded
and Nick's site.
http://www.bubblevision.com/underwat...Tube-Vimeo.htm

Thanks timej31, that's super helpful. Now I just need to find the cash to get Vegas :/


EDIT

One last question. If I were to decide I wanted to go all out on this (damn the cost) would I kick myself for getting Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11 Production Suite instead of going crazy and getting Vegas Pro 10?

You can do a lot of this though VirtualDUB have you looked into this? It is a very powerful tool that by using many freely available tools can be used to produce very high quality videos. I have use it before but ended up with Vegas 10. But I still use it now and then for a particular couple of functions.

I'll check this out too, thanks!

If you're just into just game footage and want good results movie studio is fine. Even free tools will work very well. I do other video work that I record myself and use more elaborate and costly tools that really are not necessary for game video production unless you really just want to.

Perfect. Thanks again :)

Short and badly edited video, just to show how great the sim runs now here, with 8GB DDR3 RAM! All graphics options maxed!!!

[youtube]20TD-TfORaQ[/youtube]

I'm really happy now!

Were is the fool that told me that only one 580 with more than 3GB VARM will run this thing with maximum settings and with great FPS? :)