Game Videos With Fraps

[Rookie]

Hello Everyone!

I've been trying to Encode / Compress some game videos I've made with Fraps
and I'm pretty sure that I'm not doing it right, because the image quality takes
some serious damage and does not look good at all.

I've also been searching around on this Forum as well as some others for some
information and guidence in order to pull of a nice Encoding of this file and one
thing that many seem to agree on is that XviD is the better choice.
So I tried digging deeper into that and see if I could find some information how
to make good XviD Encodes and I found some information about "Presets" and
"Scripts" which kinda made this all feel even more complicated since I have no
idea how to program or script things.

I also found some information about a program called "Enc" which apparently
is supposed to help you find a good "Preset" for you just by running some test
as I understood it.
Now I seemed to be on the right track and figured I'd go ahead and try it out
and see if I could learn a thing or two hehe

Sadly as soon as I started the program and was about to follow this little guide
on the site, it turned out I needed some kind of .avs which I'm guessing is some
kind of video file and the video I have is .avi so the journey ended before it even
began

Now that was a lot of chit-chat, sorry about that but I'm really on the edge of
being completely frustrated about not getting anywhere with this and I'm hoping
that maybe some of you guys here who are experienced with this might be able
to lend me a hand to better understand the process with encodings.

So right now I have this video I made with Fraps, it's 577mb in size and has the
resolution 400x300 with 60 FPS and image quality is superb right now and it has
a really nice flow and I couldn't be happier with the way it looks right now and
all I want to do is to preserve this quality the best I can and shrink the size of
the file by A LOT.

Ah yeah, I also found some information about this thing called "2-passes" which
seemed to perserve quality better then 1-pass, sadly I don't know how 2-pass
works exactly, when I tried using it I got a black screen and audio. The only good
thing there was that the filesize became very small, 185kb to be precisely

Anyway, I would be truly grateful if someone could help me out with this.

Many thanks in advance!

//Regards Rookie

[thedamager]

Hi!

I suggest using Xvid. You can download codec at

http://www.koepi.org/XviD-1.1.2-01112006.exe

You will also need VirtualDubMod. Can be found at

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/video_tools/virtualdubmod.cfm

Unpack VirtualDubMod, run .exe and open your video file (file/open video file)
Set Video/Fast recompress then go to Video/Compression and in the list find Xvid mpeg-4 Codec. Select it and click Configure. Now go to
http://www.divx-digest.com/articles/...tup_page1.html to learn how to confgure your encoder for running twopass compression.
You also need to tell me if your video has audio and the video duration, and then we can continue from there.
BTW, .avs is the extension for AviSinth file. It is used for frameserving videos in, for example, VirtualDubMod. It is usefull for, for example, cropping and resizing videos which you dent need. Example

AviSource("c:\1.avi") - opens video file
Crop(10,20,720,540) - crops 10 pixels from left, 20 from top, and uses next 720 pixels to the right and 540 down
BicubicResize(640,480,0.333,0.333) - resizes video to 640x480 using certain algorithm
These are saved in an .avs file and then the file is opend in VirtualDubMod (simply put).
Hope this helps

[admin]

Also try AutoGK, which does pretty good XviD encodings (2-pass) which is why it's a bit on the slow side:

http://www.divx-digest.com/articles/autogk.html

Also, your framerate is too high (60 FPS) which basically doubles your file size (doubles the number of frames per second that normal video files use) - you can lower it to 30 FPS in AutoGK:

1. After you load in your original AVI, press CTRL-F9 to launch the AutoGK hidden options

2. in the ".fps" section, select the "Reduce FPS" option and select "29.970 FPS". Press "OK" to close the hidden options.

----

You can avoid having to do framerate conversion in the future by selecting "30 fps" in Fraps (assuming your game's refresh is set to 60 Hz, you should still get a smooth picture - if the refresh is at 75/100, use 25 fps).

[Rookie]

Hi guys!

Many thanks for replying

@ thedamager
I forgot to mention some things in my first post, probably because I was pretty tired when I wrote it. But I'm using VirtualDub as well I as I have the latest version of XviD and the videos length is 1 minute 24 seconds as well as the video does have the in-game audio and I used these settings to compress the audio: http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/8...ding001xc7.jpg

The audio did take some damage from this, but it's fully acceptable quality. But if you guys know a better way to Encode the audio I'm all ears

After I did one Encode of the video I got the size from about 600mb down to 16mb but the image quality had to suffer. I did try around a little with different settings, but the only time the quality was preserved fairly good the filesize turned out to be like 50mb which I think is pretty much for a video clip that's 400x300 resolution as well has a length of 1 minute 24 seconds.

Another thing, when I decided to try and make my own videos I updated to the latest XviD and now VirtualDub shows 2x "XviD MPEG-4 Codec" in the list and I'm not sure which one is the latest:

FOURCC code 'xvid'

http://img118.imageshack.us/img118/9049/encoding002af5.jpg

FOURCC code 'yv12'

http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/6250/encoding003pl5.jpg

I can't believe I didn't find that tutorial for 2-pass encoding, I thought I'd looked through the whole site, anyway many thanks for linking it and I'll be sure to take a really good look at that, also thanks for explaining the .avs extension, now I get a better understanding about that.

I am pretty new at this so I'll throw in one last question. If I would take a guess, cropping is like making those black boarders around the movies to kinda make space for subtitles and such, correct?

@ admin
I actually did install Auto GK and try some Encodings with it, but for some reason I went back to VirtualDub. I think it was because it seemed to lack options or that I just didn't find them hehe

I will check out the tutorial for Auto GK you linked and give it another go and see how things turn out. I kinda figured the FPS was one of the reasons the filesize turned out so big, the reason I had it on 60 FPS was because I wanted the videos to keep a nice flow. But I'll give it a try and change the FPS like you suggested and see how it looks, maybe 60 FPS is overrated and not really needed

Ah yeah, one last thing. The videos are aimed for Youtube so I'm limited to 100mb or 10 min length and want to the videos to get out as much quality as possible for the viewers experience.

Many thanks for all the help guys, I can't wait to try another encoding

//Regards Rookie

[anonymez]

But if you guys know a better way to Encode the audio I'm all ears

If you wish to do it through Virtualdub, install the LAME ACM codec and use 96kbps

Another thing, when I decided to try and make my own videos I updated to the latest XviD and now VirtualDub shows 2x "XviD MPEG-4 Codec" in the list and I'm not sure which one is the latest:

FOURCC code 'xvid'

http://img118.imageshack.us/img118/9...ding002af5.jpg

FOURCC code 'yv12'
http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/6...ding003pl5.jpg

One is the Xvid VFW codec, one is Xvid's YV12 codec. Use the first one.

If I would take a guess, cropping is like making those black boarders around the movies to kinda make space for subtitles and such, correct?

Quite the opposite, it is usually to remove the black borders so as to preserve the bits for parts of the frames that actually need them. Although not much is saved with more advanced codecs like Xvid and x264.

Stick with AutoGK, much easier to use than Virtualdub.

[thedamager]

Concerning audio - LAME is the way to go (96 or 112 should be good).
About video: if you still would like to stick with VirtualDub (really my favourite tool, set up encoder per guide, and when it comes to the second pass, go for around 600kbps. You can experiment with different bitrates, to see what fits you best visually (you don't have to run first pass again when running the second pass with different bitrate).
Human eye (normal human eye ) can't se more then 24-25fps so you should convert it to 25 or 30fps for the sake of filesize.
I never uploaded a video to YouTube but I guess some quality is lost when converting to FlashVideo, although I'm not sure about that .
Final video shouldn't be larger than ~7-8 megs.
Post the link to the video once you have uploaded it .

[Rookie]

Hey Everyone!

Been away a little, but back again!

@ anonymez

I'm gonna check on that codec and see how the result sounds. Right now the sound is pretty nice and you can hear the music and sounds, but it's kinda dim and wouldn't mind a slight improvement there.

Alright I'll stick with the first XviD Codec in the list. Thanks for clearing that up for me, anonymez

Quite the opposite, it is usually to remove the black borders so as to preserve the bits for parts of the frames that actually need them. Although not much is saved with more advanced codecs like Xvid and x264

Oh well, close but no cigar

Well I really like AutoGK's simplicity, but it feels like VirtualDub has a lot more options as well as filters and such. Also another thing, when I tried to change the FPS in AutoGK from 60 to 30 it just wouldn't change it and I'm pretty sure I used the correct options. Here's a screenshot:

http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/9973/60fpsto30fpsko2.jpg

Also I did change the FPS in VirtualDub, however I'm not sure I did it the way your supposed to do. Since it seems like you have to encode the video in order to save any changes, so I took "Direct Stream Copy" which seems to be the closest thing to a none encoding save, when I just wanted to change the FPS from 60 to 30 without doing any other changes or encodings to the video.
The file did went from like 600mb down to 300mb which is kinda what would be expected, this seemed to work nicely on my first two videos, but when I changed the FPS on my third video it resulted in having some pretty nasty choppiness and why I don't know, since I did everything the same way I did for the earlier two videos.

@ thedamager

I did follow that guide and try out some 2-pass encodes and it did seem pretty sweet really. I'll try and do some tests with different bitrates as you suggested and try and find a good setting for my videos

Well as much as I would love to have my videos around 25 - 30 FPS now, since my first two videos did look pretty nice and still kept a nice flow, I'm not sure I can pull off that conversion since one of my videos suffered from some bad choppiness which just wasn't acceptable.
I also don't understand why AutoGK didn't wanna convert the video to a lower FPS, I kinda felt like maybe it would do a better job there then VirtualDub. Maybe it has to do with Fraps own way of encoding video files and AutoGK just can't convert the videos FPS due to that?

Is there any other program or way to convert the FPS from a video file? I did try and record with 30 FPS in Fraps, however that made my whole game run in 30 FPS which kinda made it harder to record the videos

About Youtube and the quality, you're completely right. The video quality does take a hit from Youtube's own encoding-thingie and I did try and upload a test video and see how it would look and the quality sure wasn't as good as the original file on my harddrive.

Post the link to the video once you have uploaded it

Hehe, well I'm not sure I feel ready to show the world my horrible encodings, but yeah maybe later I can provide an example

Many thanks for all the help guys, I'm actually starting to get better at this

//Regards Rookie

[thedamager]

Ok, time to start using AviSynth.
Google it.
Download it.
Install it.
Open your favorite text editor and punch in the following lines:
AviSource("mykickassgameclip1.avi",audio=false) - opens video file, you can mux audio later using VirtualDub
ChangeFPS(30) - will hopefully correctly change FPS to 30
Save the file as filename.avs, open it via VirtualDub and encode it.
You can also add the following line between these two lines:
Trim(100,500) - it will only use frames from 100 to 500 (just an example). It's usefull when experimenting, so you don't have to encode the whole video.

[Rookie]

Hey!

Alright, I did what you told me to do, I had a raw avi file straight from Fraps that's 287mb, 37 seconds, 60FPS and a resolution of 400x300 and I had already tried a 1-pass encoding on that file earlier with 2500 Bitrate to try and preserve the quality, the result was:

13mb
Good quality in both window and fullscreen
60 FPS

Then I did a test with the AviSynth script things that you told me about and while I was encoding the same video file, I noticed the filesize counting up around 1mb at the start and I thought "Oh man, this ain't gonna look any good" and this is the result:

3mb
exact same quality as my earlier encoding (maybe slightly worse but I couldn't notice it)
30 FPS (had the exact same flow as my earlier encoding with 60fps)

The only thing that was a big difference was that I had stripped off 3/4 of the filesize and still kept the exact same quality of the video. Seriously, I was literally shocked by the result of this encoding and had the biggest smile on my face that wouldn't come down when I started thinking about all the possibilities.

Since Youtube also has a limit of 100mb or 10 min per file and this videos length was 37 seconds and under 5mb, it leaves me slightly more then 2mb's extra to use just to add higher quality to the video, which feels even better!

This is indeed my biggest breakthrough when it comes to encoding videos and I can't explain how grateful I am for all the help. I would never have been able to get these results on my own. The enjoyment to encode videos has reached a new height

Seriously, thanks for all the help guys. It couldn't have been done without your help!
Cheers!

//Regards Rookie

[thedamager]

Glad I could help. Anything else, just ask.