[Iyouboushi]

A friend and I plan on going on a BCNM duoing spree and I'd like to record most of them. I have the registered version of FRAPS and an Intel Core Duo @ 2.66 Ghz and ATI Radeon HD 2600XT, 3GB of RAM. I've noticed that FRAPS produces incredibly noticeable lag and skipping. And the quality is definitely not what I see on the screen.

I can show you the difference via screenshots. I recorded a small clip in FRAPs and then used Media Player Classic to save a snapshot from that video. Then I took a screenshot in-game. The difference is highly noticeable.

What I see in-game when I play
What the raw video looks like from FRAPS (Yes, the text really is that blurry)

I don't know why.


As for FRAPS settings.. I've got the FPS disabled. On the movies tab I have: 30 fps selected to record in, full-size, detects best sound input, no cursor, record sound. It doesn't seem to matter what I select though (sound-wise, fps, or full/half). All of it produces noticeable lag. All the drivers are up to date as well. Hmm.

For the FFXI settings... 1024x768 resolution with 1536x1152 background oversampling. I've tried playing with both of these, setting them down but FRAPs doesn't seem to care. Doesn't matter what resolution I've got it set to, it all looks horribly fuzzy and laggy.

Anyone experience this before and know how to fix it?

[Apollz]

I'm afraid to tell you that you're always going to have lag problems when using fraps.
It's just the way it runs. You'll typically drop down to under 30 frames a second, however I personally find that the videos never actually play back in such a low frame rate.

The only thing I can suggest, are your graphic drivers all up to date? And if so, try reinstalling them.
I can't find any known issues with that card and fraps from a quick google search, so try reinstalling the latest graphics drivers and get back to us~

[Exorcist666]

Fraps doesn't produce screenshot quality video, that's impossible. Fraps recordings are actually pretty poor quality but filtering the video can help with the fuzziness a little.

I've also heard media players have trouble with the fraps codec and converting it to mp4 or avi or something might help.

[Iyouboushi]

Yeah, my drivers are all up to date.

Fraps recordings are actually pretty poor quality

I thought this too, but then my friend (who also has FRAPS and was the one who convinced me to use it) did the exact same thing I did (record a bit of FFXI, export a screenshot of the raw video using Media Player Classic) and his quality is amazing. His raw video looks just like my in-game screenshot (what I see while playing). It's 100% better than what mine captures.

The sad part is, my machine is better in every way compared to his. I've got more RAM, a better video card, faster processor, etc etc etc. So I don't understand why his video is coming out crystal clarity and mine is coming out looking like I need to check my vision.

We both use the windower (boo? hiss? in before windower bad!). Both use the same registry settings in terms of resolution and oversampling.

I've noticed if I try to resize the windower window manually to shrink/enlarge for whatever reason, sometimes the game starts to look exactly like how my FRAPS records it to be: fuzzy and horrible. The only way to fix it is to close it all down and restart so that it's back at the right size.

I know that this would make no sense, but I wonder if FRAPS is not recording it at the right size. If it's not, it would explain why it's looking a bit fuzzy.

Overall though, I don't get it. My friend and I have compared every setting and they all match. His quality is godlike and mine is a half-blind man's fuzzy vision. I just wish I knew how to fix it.