How to make a high quality recording with a small file size

[flawlesssoul 30]

This is a re-post of a clear and concise guide from the MMO-Champion forums. MMO-Champion is primarily a World of Warcraft fan site, but since recording video and uploading it is generally game-agnostic I thought I'd re-post this here with the original author's permission.

Original forum thread on MMO-Champion

As an addition, as others have pointed out, you can use MSI's Afterburner tool to record and encode video. You can still follow this guide from the first step, as the Afterburner recorded video can still be re-encoded for a smaller file size (more often than not, at least).

Download MSI Afterburner

Lately' date=' I’ve seen many people asking for help creating videos from in game footage. The complaints usually boil down to either a) the file is too big or B) the quality isn’t high enough.

In this guide, I will give you a solution to both problem A and B. I will show you how to properly configure FRAPS, and how to turn the uncompressed data into a compressed mp4 file that has superb quality, but drastically decreases filesize. I won’t go into video editing, or adding sound.

Here is a 3-minute video of some Tribes Ascend gameplay I made using this guide:

[media']

And a short video of some DayZ shenanigans, recorded at 1920x1200:

Note: Youtube can do some strange things to videos. I suggest you try out the guide yourself ;)

What will you need?

A great computer

I will not lie to you: recording a game with FRAPS has a large effect on your computer’s performance. Remember that for FRAPS to record a video at 30fps, your GPU and CPU have to copy 30 frames per second to your hard drive. These pictures are at 100% of your monitor’s resolution.

A separate hard drive

You should always record your footage to a separate drive. This means a drive that is idle when you’re not using it for recording. A separate partition is not the same. When you are writing in sequence (which happens when you write a load of big files while recording) your drive will lag when it has to perform other operations. This is of major importance for image quality. Make sure you change the folder to save your movies to a folder on a separate drive.

The right tools

FRAPS: the tool we will be using to record the footage

x264vfw: the codec that will compress your avi to mp4 - download here

MeGUI: the graphical interface with which we can adjust settings - download here

AviSynth: the script system that we will use together with MeGUI - download here

Imgur images album: https://imgur.com/a/zTRbi

FRAPS

Let’s take a look at FRAPS’ settings.

Important stuff:

FPS: 30 is a good number. 60 would make for a better picture quality, but it would also double filesize and rendering times. Some people advise 29.97, but personally I’ve never seen an increase or decrease in quality. I prefer a round number.

Full-size should be enabled unless you play at very high resolutions (2560 or more) in which case half-size is still 720p, which you might find enough. Note though that this would probably cause a minor quality loss.

Lock framerate should generally not be checked.

Force lossless RGB for better image quality.

You’ve got your FRAPS configured, and you are ready to start recording! What now?

First: make sure you play your game at the right settings. You should always be at 60+ fps prior to recording. If you are not getting that, try lowering the graphical settings of whatever you are recording.

Next: press F9 and record for about a minute.

Now you’ve got a .avi file that is roughly 2.5 gigabytes @ 1080p. This is pure raw lossless video quality! It looks awesome! Why not use this? In theory, you could. The problem however is that many websites will not allow you to put files of this size online. In order to reduce the filesize we need to compress the image.

AviSynth

In this guide we will be using MeGUI as our graphical interface. To use it, please install the x264vfw codec and AviSynth first (links above).

Rename your .avi file to video.avi.

Next, create a new .txt file in the same folder and call it video.avs. Please notice that the extension should be .avs, not .txt. If you don’t know what I am talking about, save it like this:

Make sure to save it as the all files type.

Note: we are using two different kinds of files here. The big video files have the extension .avI, and the scripts that MeGUI uses have the .avS extension.

Open your video.avs with notepad and put in the following:

part1 = Avisource ("YOUR\FILE\PATH\video.avi")

part1

bilinearresize(1920,1080)

FadeIO(25)

ConvertToYV12()

What does this do?

The bilinearresize value is the resolution of the outgoing image. In this case, it is in 1080p. If you want to change it to 720p, replace (1920,1080) with (1280,720).

FadeIO(25) will give your video a short fade in and fade out effect. This is not necessary but I add it in every video anyway. This works for audio too. You can change the number for longer or shorter effects.

Multiple files

If you have more than one file, add lines like this:

part1 = Avisource ("YOUR\FILE\PATH\video.avi")

part2 = Avisource ("YOUR\FILE\PATH\video2.avi")

part1+part2

As of Fraps version 3.5.x the .avi files created by Fraps are no longer split at 4 gigabytes, rendering the above part of the guide obsolete.

Next up, MeGUI!

MeGUI

Fire up MeGUI. If it asks for updates, let it update. It will probably give you the error that it can’t download the Nero AAC codec. Follow the instructions and download/install this.

In the main window of MeGUI at the line that says “Encoder settings”, choose the x264 “scratchpad”, then click config. If the codec doesn’t show up, you might want to restart your PC.

Use the following settings:

Note: You can change the bitrate to increase file size and quality. Going lower than 4500 is not recommended.

Next, in MeGUI, click the button that is on the far right at the “AviSynth Script” line. Find the script you recently created and load it. If you get any errors, double check your script. A new window should now pop up, showing your video footage. Switch back to MeGUI and in the “Video Output” line, choose a path to save the video. Make sure “File format” is set to MP4, and then click the “Queue” button.

Now, go to the Queue tab and at the bottom press Start. Watch the progress bar fill up! Depending on the speed of your PC, the time needed can vary.

When MeGUI is done, your video should be roughly 45 megabytes at 6000 bitrate.

Congratulations, you have successfully compressed your video!

Edited September 20, 2012 by Nimrod

[Diederik 68]

Fantastic Guide, go for a sticky bro - go for it.

Btw, you should make completely sure that the author of the guide is fully aware of you reposting this.

Edited July 28, 2012 by Diederik

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

Yup, nice guide.

[flawlesssoul 30]

Fantastic Guide, go for a sticky bro - go for it.

Btw, you should make completely sure that the author of the guide is fully aware of you reposting this.

Yep, that's my primary concern. I've contacted the original author, but they've not been active for a few days on the original forums. If he's not okay with a re-post, I'll get this removed, but it's such a good guide I didn't want to be sitting around twiddling my thumbs waiting for the go-ahead only for him never to log on and read his private messages :)

I've now had a response from the author and he's entirely happy with the re-post.

If he's okay with it, then I'll replace the video he used (Tribes: Ascend, it's a great game) as an example with some DayZ footage re-encoded using the guide.

Edited July 28, 2012 by Nimrod

[luminatx 1]

The fact that this guide uses Fraps, makes this invalid haha.

fraps is horrible.

[zenatsu (DayZ) 96]

The fact that this guide uses Fraps, makes this invalid haha.

fraps is horrible.

I second this. I still don't understand why people are in love with fraps.

[con7act 29]

yeah, i was looking for that exact thread, but not with fraps, who fills up my 100 Tera in one hour.

Give me a programm that actually compress the recorded data while recording it, and you have my beans.

/It has to be free, so xsplit doesnt count!

Edited July 28, 2012 by con7act

[KennyNZ 121]

I second this. I still don't understand why people are in love with fraps.

What would be a better option?

[flawlesssoul 30]

The fact that this guide uses Fraps, makes this invalid haha.

fraps is horrible.

I second this. I still don't understand why people are in love with fraps.

yeah, i was looking for that exact thread, but not with fraps, who fills up my 100 Tera in one hour.

Give me a programm that actually compress the recorded data while recording it, and you have my beans.

/It has to be free, so xsplit doesnt count!

There's a program I linked in the OP - MSI Afterburner - which does is exactly what you want, and is free. It can still be encoded using this guide from step one to further reduce the file size. LTFR!

I've used FRAPS for any video where I want the quality to be the best, and I've yet to run out of space recording since I've not come across a situation where I want to record for more than 30 minutes of footage at a time. I'm certainly not in love with FRAPS in any way, but since I use a SSD as a system drive and two 10k RPM Western Digital VelociRaptors in RAID0 for footage there's no downside for me aside from the time to re-encode. System load caused by FRAPS is primarily down to the storage it's writing to - with a program that is encoding as it stores, that load is lessened but it's only replaced by the load on the CPU as it does the encoding.

Edited July 28, 2012 by Nimrod

[Captain_Doodie 0]

Thanks for your guide.

I followed it precisely, but I recieved a video without sound :(

Is there a possibility to include sound from very beginning?

[flawlesssoul 30]

Thanks for your guide.

I followed it precisely, but I recieved a video without sound :(

Is there a possibility to include sound from very beginning?

Depending on the program you used to record, you will need to set the source option in that program to whichever can capture the audio from the game/voiceover. It's entirely dependent on your computer and operating system which setting you'll need to select, your best option is to try each and record a short segment.

[skin.bintin@gmail.com 1]

Excellent guide! Thanks for posting it. Going to use it to try and capture some video for YouTube. Just need to work out how to do some decent editing now.

[Flying On Fumes 33]

DXTORY FTW

[Wann 0]

Is anyone able to tell me how to get the audio back in while maintaining the quality and the small file size?

I love the way how this guide compresses the video but I would love to know how you edit the audio back in :)

Thanks in advance

[sarahwilliams25 0]

Is anyone able to tell me how to get the audio back in while maintaining the quality and the small file size?

I love the way how this guide compresses the video but I would love to know how you edit the audio back in

Thanks in advance

 

Did you find a solutio to this?