Tutorial: Creating HD-Game-Videos with Fraps & Co

Tutorial: Creating HD-Game-Videos with Fraps & Co

Tutorial structur: 1.0 HD-capturing of computer screens 1.1. Creating HD-Game-Videos with Fraps & Co   1.1.0 Introduction 1.1.1 Requirements 1.1.2 Capturing   1.1.2.1 Configuring of Fraps 1.1.2.2 Capturing a game-video 1.1.4.3 Capturing a desktop-screen 1.1.3 Editing 1.1.3.1 Rough-cutting with VirtualDub 1.1.3.2 Cutting a video with VirtualDub and encoding it with x264 1.1.3.3 PAL/NTCS & Co 1.1.4 Supplement

0. Introduction

This tutorial deals with the topic of creating game-videos in HD-quality. Redistribution is only allowed for www.hdtvtotal.com and www.shooter-szene.de. To follow this tutorial, several additional programs are needed. Those should be downloaded and installed first. I will describe the functionality and usage of these tools within this tutorial. There is a packet available for download, which includes a video example and the following tools:

Download HD Tutorial Packet (HTTP, registration is needed on Shooter-Szene.de)

Download HD Tutorial Packet (BitTorrent)

• ffdshow_rev701_20061218_xxl.exe
  FFDShow Filter, for displaying all mpeg4 codecs in Windows Media Player and other players.
• x264-573-install.exe
  The used x264 Codec in this tutorial, currently offering the best result at lower compression-rates.
• HD-TestVideo.avi
  Video-example of this Tutorial, was created accordingly to the tutorial.

1. Requirements

• Fraps (Shareware) - Tool for capturing 3D-game-content.
• VirtualDub (OpenSource) - auxiliary programme for cutting and editing AVI-videos.
• x264 Codec - Video-codec for later usage, really dedicated for HD-content.
• DualCore CPU - for best performance and results, a DualCore CPU should be at least used!
• Fast hard-disk drive(s) - A fast hard-disk drive should be used, because Fraps losslessly compresses its data and saves a lot of data according to the resolution. Even for small resolutions, 10-20 MBytes per second are absolutely normal. We recommend RAID-0, which is a system of 2 hard-disk drives, which simultaniously write data and nearly double the theoretical data-rate.

2. Capturing

2.1 Configuring of Fraps

I assume, that Fraps had already been installed, so lets start with configuration. After Fraps has been started the following window appears. However only informations are being shown, like the version number and licensing terms.

In the scecond tab FPS, several smaller settings concerning Framecounter and others can be done, e.g in which corner should the FPS Counter be displayed. Feel free to adjust these settings to your needs.

The third tab is intersting for us, because some important settings have to be done here, they are related to the Frame-rate , and resolution-behaviour. On the one hand it is important to activate Full-Size, because otherwise Fraps will devide the resolution by half. As an example, the game runs at a resolution of 1280x1024, then Fraps in Half-Size mode would capture a video at a resolution of 640x480. As we aim for HD-quality, the setting has to be Full-Size. Furthermore, FPS (Frames per Second) can be adjusted here, if you don't have ultra-violence hardware, you should leave this setting at 30 fps.

If sound should be recorded, generally recommended, the Record Sound Option should be activated by checking the related checkbox. Lossly based on practical experiences, sound can still be edited and cutted out, and it doesn't notably fatten the roast ;). An additional comment concerning the issue of surround, so 5.1 or even 7.1 sound. Fraps uses a trick by rerouting the audio-output to the standard recording-device, so thus a recording in stereo is only possible.

So let's summerize the settings, that should be used for this tutorial:

• Full-Size
• 30 FPS
• [x] Record Sound

At very last it is very important in which folder the videos are saved. A folder should be chosen that either lies on a fast hard-disk drive, or on a Raid 0 containing of 2 hard-disk drives. Commercial fast SATA-drives are currently reaching a data-rate of just 40-60MB/s, and a good RAID 0 containing of 2 hard-disk drives normally reaches between 70-100 MB/s. These are average rates, not possible maximal values as often specied by the manufacturer.

If you want to record a video with a 800x600 resolution, this already results in rawdata of:
800 (width) * 600 (height) * 3 (bit colour-depth) * 30 (fps) = 43,2MB/s!

HDTV-compatible resolution even results in even higher data-rates:
1280 (width) * 720 (height) * 3 (bith colour-depth) * 30 (fps) = 79,1MB/s
This data-rates clearly exceed the data-rates of current commercial SATA-drives.

Fortunate, the internal video-codec of Fraps compresses about 60-40%, however still he high data-stream per second.

2.2 Capturing a game-video

So start Fraps, check all settings again, and let the capturing begin. I will use the game Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars for capturing a test-video for this tutorial.

Once the game is running, the frame-counter appears in the upper left corner (unless the displaying corner is reconfigured). This frame-counter is important to verify if the game is fluently running ar the wanted frame-rate is achieved. Beware, there is a further game-dependable setting, mostly called "Vertical Sync". When this feature enabled, the frame-rate will be synchronized with the screen-frame-rate. This has the following effect. Standard frequence is 60 Hertz, so 60 images per second. If the graphics-card isn't able to operate with 60 images, so the frame-rate will be automatically down-scaled to 30 images per second. The setting of "Vertical Sync" should be deactivated during capturing. To prevent that the fps rate decreases too much, e.g on 15 fps. By the way you don't need to worry about too high frame-rates, when Fraps starts a capturing-session the frame-rate is limited on the preconfigured level, i.e. it doesn't exceed it.

The HDTV-standard contains several frame-rates, so it maintenances compatiblility with older television- and cinema-standards. In the European area PAL with 25 progressive scaned frames as well as 50 progressive scaned and interlaced frames are used, in the US and Asian area NTSC with 30 and 29.976 progressive scaned frames per second as well as 60 and 59,952 progressive scaned frames and interlaced frames per second are used. Cinema displays 24 images per second. So HDTV supports all of these frame-rates (60, 59.952, 50, 30, 29.976, 25 and 24 fps), therewith films of older medias can be easier transfered to newer medias. For HDTV the suffix p for progressive and i for interlaced are added to the resolution-identification, e.g. 720p60 stands for 1280*720*60Hz and 1080i50 stands for 1920*1080*50/2Hz.

The better the computer, the better frame-rate will be. To stay conform to HDTV Fraps has to limit the frame-rate, as mentioned, to HDTV-level. So the captured videos can be viewed on computer or, burned on disc, on the HD-television set without creating flickering or stuttering.

Additionaly games are always displayed in progressive scan mode, so capturing in progressive mode should be set up, because the interlaced mode is connected to further quality-losses, that are caught additionally and are not existing in the source.

It is wise to hold the frame-rate as high as possible. On HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc, the successors of DVD, the movies are stored as 1080p24 and this lower fps of 24 images let appear primarily camera pannings and action scenes very blury and stuttering. Because the computer is the video source you can prevent this effect with higher fps and can better display the video- and therwith, game-flux, qualitatively speaking. Recomended is 60FPS, because the highest fps offers the best quality and European displays with HD-ready label has to be able to process and display these. If the computer can not deliver this frame-rate 50 fps are more than acceptable, which is Europes traditional frame-rate anyway. The half of the mentioned 60 or 50 fps, speaking about 30 and 25, are both just provisorily usable, but are also supprted by the hdtv-standard, but should be used in case of need, because these are to near to the theatrical frame-rate of 24 fps and its disadvantages.

For a valid HD-resolution the game should be set to at least 1280x720 (if 16:9 is supported) or to 1280x1024 to crop the higher vertical resolution to 1024 auf 720 afterwards to make it compatible. Newer games directly support widescreen formats like 16:9, so that it can be played on TV-displays, or like the hybrid aspect-ratio 16:9, that is build in many laptops and is settled between 4:3 and 16:9. 16:9 is prefered, because the re-editing can be ommited, but 16:10 is an acceptable interim solution with almost no cut-offs. But older games can be trimmed to widescreenformats with some deductions by use of official manufacturer patches and fan-cracks.

To start capturing just press F9 (standard layout), the capturing will be affirmed by the colour of the frame-counter, that will change to red.

I captured several small videos of a simple C&C 3 skirmishes. After ending the capturing (always starting or stapping each with F9) we change into the Windows Explorer and have a look into our raw-videos. Here you can see that they have heavy file-sizes, although the recorded data is only for a few minutes. Games are always processing with progressive frames, so it is wise to choose progressive HD-formats.

Currently the best hardware would have problems in capturing a smooth video in a 1080p (progressive) resolution and 60FPS. Displaying a game in that resolution is possible actually, with a good SLI-system and a 1080p capable monitor. Hard-disk drive speed at that data-volume could be the problem, perhaps a RAID 5 containing 8 fast SCSI-drives at 15000 revolutions, and a $2000 SCSI-controler. But it is unlikly to have this at an ordinary home ;).

3. Editing

3.1 Rough-cutting with VirtualDub

After VirtualDub has been started the first video can be dragged via drag & drop onto the VirtualDub window. Subsequently the first frame of that video is displayed.

The start and ending can be marked with the time-bar at the bottom of the tool. This funtion is used for rough-cutting the video. Often there are parts at the start and ending that are just unusable and can be cutted-out.

Before the marked area of the video can be saved the video mode has to be set to Direct Stream Copy. This is important, because otherwise VirtualDub will encode the video again and the standard codec, which has a bad quality btw. Furthermore uncompressed source-material should always be used for video-editing, or rather lossless compressed materials. Saving the AVI fraqments should be done quite fast, the only limiting factor is the hard-disk drive-speed.

3.2 Cutting a video with VirtualDub and encoding it with x264

This chapter is just meant for testing the output in HD-format. Our first step is to change the filter-view, and we will crop the image-area, as far as the content isn't already in 1280x720 format. In my case I have to edit 1280x1024 raw-data.

This step is only necessary if the game can't display a 16:9 resolution. By editing this video some image-material will disappear, above as well as below! If there is the possibility to use a 16:9 resolution, this should be done!

Now it is getting tricky, unless you have a monitor with 1600x1200 resolution or even higher.

First, the Brightness Filter is added, this is actually a means to an end. Because the cropping function can be controlled by this filter. But first the Resize Filter has to be added. This is moved to first place and set the width to 640 and the height to 480 pixels. This trick is need for the next step, in which we will press the Cropping button in the brightness filter. We can crop the video in here, because we have to remove 304 pixels to gain a height of 720 pixels, we fill in 152 in both Y1 and Y2. So 152 pixels are removed above as well es below. If we hadn't the resize-filter, then Y2 would have been outside the visible area of the monitor. Once the values have been filled in Y1 and Y2, the resize-filter can be removed and we get our wanted movie size.

Now we set up the right video codec and sound codec. I assume that the x264 codec is installed. In the menu-item Video Full Processing Mode has to be enabled, then we move to menu Compression. In the x264 settings you should get used to the properties. For us, it is important to set the bitrate to 3500, or better 4000. Otherwise a lot of quality gets lost during compression.

Additionally the audiotrack should be encoded as well, therefor you switch to the option Full Processing Mode and choose a audio codec listed under Compression. In my example I chose MP3 128Kbit, so a 08/15, ordinary standard.

When everything is done the video can be saved. The storing process will be slower then the raw-cutting before. That is simply due to the encoder, because x264 needs really a lot of processor-power but also gets the very best results in quality and compression!
These settings are not optimzed yet, but just for the fast overview for this tutorial. If you want to increase the quality you can still change the settings according your needs. So you can increase the datarate, that is self-evident, but even changing the bitrate from constant datarate to variable datarate is suggestive. In variable datarate mode, each scene gets exactly that amount of data that it needs. Datarate gets reduced in quite scenes with less image-changing and redundant datarate will transfered to szenes with more image-changing. This rearranging of bandwidth can prevent macroblocking in action-scenes and scenes with reduced bandwidth aren't recognizable. Also the avarage datarate stays the same, but the run of the curve for the bandwidth-distribution doesn't stay the same on the whole run, but maximum-peaks and minimas accur. This rearranging can be further increased by using the two-pass encoding-method, that doesn't directly encode on the first run, but analysing all scenes regarding their complexity. This analysis decides on which scenes can dispense bandwidth to other scenes. Only after this the encoding can be done baded upon thi result of this analysis. An even further refinement on a smaller scale is the n-pass method, that uses even more than two analysis-runs. This processes are intensive of computation-time of course and you have to trade off, if it is worth it. In many cases it can be very helpful to know about all offered settings. Further instructions would go beyonde the scope of this tutorial.

As everyont can see now, the result is absolutely worth watching. An aprox. 30 second long video made out of raw-data the size of 630MB was compressed into a small 23MB video. So one can calculate, that aprox. 40 MB per minute is used for a HD-video of that resolution.
You can use another codec if you want to, e.g. your favourised codec as well. We use x264, because it is a free and OpenSource codec and it can offer a really good result.

To see for yourself you can watch the video-example from the Tutorial Download Packet. I used some test-captures in there, but I cutted and creted that video with Ulead MediaStudio Pro. Please forgive me, that I won't explain these Software, if I would the tutorial would get finished in a few years from now.

4. Supplement

4.1 Needed Software:

Software:
1. Fraps (Shareware).
2. VirtualDub (OpenSource).
3. x264 Codec.