capturing program

the question about the capturing programs was closed, but i wanted to add a question. delete this if it was answered be4/will be answered in a sticky:

is there a free way to capture full length videos of GW?

thx

well, you could always go a google on it OR you could find a crack for fraps, though not 100% legal, it will get the job done

What you do is use FRAPS. the free version.

The free version only takes 30 second clips so you need to keep on re-activating it.. so you'll end up with a whole slew of 30 second clips..

you then use a program like Windows Moviemaker (or is it Microsoft Moviemaker? can't remember.. it's the free program that comes with WinXP..) to combine all those movie clips into 1 movie as well as compress the file down..

and you do need to compress FRAPS' clips as they are recorded un-compressed.. thus take up loads of space..

but yeah, you'll find there are video's around that run for 3-4 minutes and the makers used the free version of FRAPS to capture the clips and then combined them with video editing software... So I'd suggest you give that a try.. it's 100% free & 100% legal to do!

Unfortunately, IIRC, there's a lapse of time between captures on the trial version of FRAPS that would make editing it look really discontinuous and ugly, not to mention the giant DEMOs going down the sides... The full version is pretty good, though.

For compression, virtualDub is a pretty spliffy program as well.

DEMOs going down the side?? I thought the free version of FRAPS only added a FRAPS url watermark to movies it creates - I've never tried using FRAPS to make a movie..

So there's a lapse? So even if you timed it right and hit the "record" button the moment the current one finished.. you'd get a "jump" as it went from the 1 clip to the next? hmm.. that would cause problems..

Sorry I can't help then ;/ I just know that there are some darned good movies around made using the free version of FRAPS combined with a movie editing program like MovieMaker to combine the clips into 1 movie.. but they don't show continuious streams of movies.. they do jump around from clip to clip.. *shrugs*

It's pretty ugly. Perhaps it's been changed since the version I used... but here's a sample

Hmm.. I see what you mean, having those DEMO watermarks down the side is ugly... I wonder if they removed them or if they are still in there..

I'll load FRAPS up next time I go to play GW and make a short movie and see if it has that or not..

http://taksi.sourceforge.net/

thx for the help guys!

Lasareth - I just checked with both version 2.5.5 & 2.6.4 (current version) and niether leave the "DEMO" watermark on video's made. Both are the free versions & thus only record for 30 seconds and both left the "www.fraps.com" watermark at the top of the video..

And holy toledo! You'd absolutely have to use a video compressor on those .avi files it creates! And make sure you have lots and lots of HD space if you plan on making a whole slew of movie clip's before compressing them..

Taking a 30 second movie clip at stock-standard settings in FRAPS in the same city and same district.. the HD space was "ouch"..

2.5.5 = 408 MB
2.6.4 = 384 MB

Both taken set to "Full Screen" & "30 FPS". (I don't know if there are better settings, but thats the standard setting.. used simply to test for the watermarks.. and observing file size after taking the clip..)

Hey guys, when I start fraps GW are slowing down and losing frames When I play a recorded movie it is losing frames too What am I doing wrong??

Make sure you have anti-aliasing turned off, I used to have 4x anti-aliasing turned on, but when I recorded my fps dropped to 5 fps...

I set all details on low and aliasing to none and still the same-when I start to rec GW is slowing down a lot(((

The only other 2 things I can think of is maybe you're at an odd resolution and it's having to scale, or maybe you just have a slow hard drive. I usually run 1280x960 but save it as 640x480, and I don't think it drops below 30 fps.

Fraps will put fps on your screen if you tell it to, you can get a real reading of how much it's dropping, that might help as well.