Quote:
Originally Posted by SEE
Would it be possible for someone to give me some advice regards making Vids.
I have the free version of FRAPS (30 second limit) and currently use my recorded tracks as the source, copy the bits I need with FRAPS and then import/edit them in Windows Movie maker.
What are the best settings for FRAPS, full size, half size, 30fps?
Windows Movie maker seems OK and is supposed to support HD files (and create them) but am I right that to do this you have to record in HD quality first?
Any tips would be useful, thanks.
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Yeah, to output a decent-looking HD video out of Windows Movie Maker, you first have to give it a decent-looking HD video to work with. We're lucky when recording game-video's that the game's are generally played on our monitors at HD resolutions already (unlike, until recently, video-camera and broadcast-televison resolutions for example).
About FRAPS. Using it's full-size option will capture your video at whatever resolution your game's running at. If you're running the game at 1280x720 or higher, then you'll be capturing what can be called a HD video. Using Fraps' half-size option will make FRAPS capture your video at literally half whatever resolution you're running the game at, so you'll be capturing a less-than-HD video (unless you're running the game at 2460x1440 or higher of course).
So, you'd probably want to be recording using the full-size option. What you can do though, is turn the resolution of your game down to 1280x720 (if that's the resolution your final video will be played at), before capturing it with FRAPS. That can help you maintain higher frame-rates when recording, with probably no hit to your final image-quality. If your final video has a resolution of 1920x1080 though, which is the highest resolution you can upload to Youtube for example, then you'd want to have your game running at that same resolution in order to avoid having to blow up a lower resolution FRAPS capture to fit the 1920x1080 size when finalizing your video.
I don't have Windows Movie Maker installed, but I've read that the latest version has less tweaking options than the older versions made for WindowsXP and Vista. What that means is, you probably won't be able to tweak the video export settings that could help you maintain something more like your original FRAPS capture's image quality. Don't let that bother you though, just work with what you've got.
Which Fraps fps setting to choose depends on the kind of video you're making, but generally you'd set it to 25-30 fps. Going higher will increase the size of your resultant video file (and might give you more of performance hit when recording), while going lower will decrease it, which can be useful sometimes. There are some other aspects to the fps setting question, but you should be alright leaving it on 30.
Hope that helps a bit.