FRAPS 2.0 & Video Recording [Archive]

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MikeC

22-Jul-2003, 01:33

I've been experimenting with FRAPS 2.0, which has an improved video capture engine compared to previous versions. With a more capable hard disk system, smooth playback at 30fps at 1024x768 can be achieved. Having the capability to present this kind of information in graphics card reviews is a step in the right direction.

Each video was compressed in DivX format and is about 2.5 MB in size. I recorded at 800x600 and 1024x768. For smoother playback, I set the "turn" and "lookup" speeds to 2 in UT2003.

800x600 - No AA - No AN - http://www.nvnews.net/images/news/200307/noaa_noan_800.avi

800x600 - 4X AA - 8X AN - http://www.nvnews.net/images/news/200307/aa_an_800.avi

1024x768 - No AA - No AN - http://www.nvnews.net/images/news/200307/noaa_noan_1024.avi

1024x768 - 4X AA - 8X AN - http://www.nvnews.net/images/news/200307/aa_an_1024.avi

In Windows Media Player, change the speed to slow to throttle fps down to 15. Also, be sure your desktop resolution is equal to or greater than the video resolution. For example, don't view the 1024x768 video when your desktop is set to 800x600.

The graphics card I used for this test was a

RussSchultz

22-Jul-2003, 01:47

Windows media player did not like.

MikeC

22-Jul-2003, 01:53

Windows media player did not like.

Have you installed the DivX codec? A free version can be downloaded from http://www.divx.com/divx/

digitalwanderer

22-Jul-2003, 01:53

I just looked at the last video, but I'm betting it's an nVidia... ;)

Tim Murray

22-Jul-2003, 02:07

I just looked at the last video, but I'm betting it's an nVidia... ;)
9800 Pro

digitalwanderer

22-Jul-2003, 02:12

I just looked at the last video, but I'm betting it's an nVidia... ;)
9800 Pro
No way! What are the detail levels of UT2k3? (I just re-installed it yesterday on Bubbles so I could benchmark it and the details looked a lot better...and I still game at 1024x768 and it just didn't look as good as mine. :( )

Tim Murray

22-Jul-2003, 02:16

gkar1

22-Jul-2003, 02:16

Maybe its the DivX compression that reduces the quality

MikeC

22-Jul-2003, 02:24

Maybe its the DivX compression that reduces the quality

Yes, you will lose some quality with DivX compression. However, the uncompressed videos were well over 100MB. But I'm mainly concentrating on showing the behaviour of AA and I'll be conducting further studies when I examine texture filtering.

Also, keep in mind that the videos were recorded at 800x600 and 1024x768. It's important that your desktop be sized large enough so that the videos are being played at those resolutions.

For example, using Windows Media player, I have to use a desktop resolution of 1600x1200 to view the 1024x768 video at which point I see a large black border around the video during normal (not full screen) playback.

digitalwanderer

22-Jul-2003, 02:29

Sorry, I should have just looked at the AA. With the whole [T] thing today I've been so focused on AF that I just looked at the detail level and compared it to what I had seen last night and figured since it had inferior AF it was an nVidia. :roll:

My bad, please continue and ignore me and I'll sit here and try and be ignorant quietly..... :oops:

;)

MikeC

22-Jul-2003, 02:32

digitalwanderer

22-Jul-2003, 02:43

No way! What are the detail levels of UT2k3? (I just re-installed it yesterday on Bubbles so I could benchmark it and the details looked a lot better...and I still game at 1024x768 and it just didn't look as good as mine. :( )

Forget about the texture quality, while I break out the big guns :)

http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/sapphire_radeon_9800_pro/video/nv35_quake3_4xaa_noan_divx.avi

http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/sapphire_radeon_9800_pro/video/r9800_quake3_4xaa_noan_divx.avi

But you already knew since you've seen both methods of AA in action.
No, nVidia still hasn't sent me an FX yet....I wonder what the hold up is?

Man, the shimmering in the nv35 viddy there was pretty awful looking compared to the 9800...was it more of a difference before DivX compression or less. (I know it's a judgement call/opinion thing, and I'm asking it as such. :) )

MikeC

22-Jul-2003, 03:01

Man, the shimmering in the nv35 viddy there was pretty awful looking compared to the 9800...was it more of a difference before DivX compression or less. (I know it's a judgement call/opinion thing, and I'm asking it as such. :) )

Good point. But is it really look "that bad" during gameplay? Would you normally play with the fask sky option enabled? What about the cl_yawspeed variable, which controls the rate at which the players pans from side-to-side. The deafult value is 140 and I set it to 5 when I recorded the video.

The bottom line is that the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra and Radeon 9800 Pro cost a lot of money. There are other features where I might choose one over the other, but with AA that's playable (key point) and loods good, I think you know the choice :)

MikeC

22-Jul-2003, 03:02

Man, the shimmering in the nv35 viddy there was pretty awful looking compared to the 9800...was it more of a difference before DivX compression or less. (I know it's a judgement call/opinion thing, and I'm asking it as such. :) )

Good point. But does it really look "that bad" during gameplay? Would you normally play with the fask sky option enabled? What about the cl_yawspeed variable, which controls the rate at which the players pans from side-to-side. The default value is 140 and I set it to 5 when I recorded the video.

The bottom line is that the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra and Radeon 9800 Pro cost a lot of money. There are other features where I might choose one over the other, but with AA that's playable (key point) and loods good, I think you know the choice :)

And another thing, hold on, I'll be right back :)

digitalwanderer

22-Jul-2003, 03:23

And another thing, hold on, I'll be right back :)
I'm still waiting for me 3 year old daughter to quit goofing around and to go to sleep and the wife just fired up her soap opera on Blue behind me, I ain't going anywhere for a bit. :)

MikeC

22-Jul-2003, 03:31

And another thing, hold on, I'll be right back :)

Had to run a quick test. It sure is nice having two systems side-by-side now :)

http://www.nvnews.net/images/news/200307/setup.jpg

Anyway, one of the first things I do when I get a new graphics card is fire up Quake 3 and set up a 6 player bot match in DM1 with FRAPS running in the background.

High quality settings with maximum texture detail and geometry. High quality sound. Easy to setup, I use the default frag limit of 20, and I always win :)

Resoultion set to 2048x1536 on an Athlon XP 2700+

GeForce FX 5900 Ultra - Avg: 152 - Min: 93 (Detonator 44.03)

Radeon 9800 Pro - Avg: 93 - Min: 33 (Catalyst 3.5)

Strange. May require some investigation...

MikeC

22-Jul-2003, 03:38

digitalwanderer

22-Jul-2003, 04:01

But you already knew since you've seen both methods of AA in action.
No, nVidia still hasn't sent me an FX yet....I wonder what the hold up is?

But, but, but, it's pretty much the same method of AA that was used on the GeForce4. You had one of those, right?
Yup, "had" being the operative word. When Terry gave me the 9700 pro the GF4 was being a tad under used, and the 9000 Pro he sent I figured is plenty 'nuf for Blue since she's mainly multi-media...so I traded it for an MSI K7N2-L. (Off of your 'for sale/trade' board if I remember correctly. :lol: )

The FX has the same AA as the GF4?

Eeew. :(

EDITED BITS: Just thought I'd best add that I do NOT have two systems next to each other like that...but Blue & Bubbles are in opposite corners of what used to be an average sized dining room and I do a LOT of spin-n-rolls for image quality tests and DID compare my GF4 & 9700 Pro for AA on some games (GTA:VC & Mafia, I love those games! :D ) and my reaction at the time to the difference was "Eeeew".

I thought the GF4's AA was pretty darn sweet, 'til I saw the 9700s.

No contest. 8)

Tim Murray

22-Jul-2003, 04:05

The FX has the same AA as the GF4?

Eeew. :(
Yeah, now you know why just about everyone says the R350 has better IQ.

digitalwanderer

22-Jul-2003, 04:07

The FX has the same AA as the GF4?

Eeew. :(
Yeah, now you know why just about everyone says the R350 has better IQ.
With the mind-boggling exception STILL of [h] who keeps saying there is no difference! (Sorry, I'm getting ranty...I'll go sit quietly in the corner for a bit. :roll: )

Pete

22-Jul-2003, 04:27

The difference is dramatic! Great work, Mike--this is probably the best way of showing the difference in AA quality.

BTW, I'd recommend ffdshow for Divx. :)

Tim Murray

22-Jul-2003, 04:32

nevermind--it no longer exists in any downloadable form

Ollo

22-Jul-2003, 10:35

No way! What are the detail levels of UT2k3? (I just re-installed it yesterday on Bubbles so I could benchmark it and the details looked a lot better...and I still game at 1024x768 and it just didn't look as good as mine. :( )

Forget about the texture quality, while I break out the big guns :)

http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/sapphire_radeon_9800_pro/video/nv35_quake3_4xaa_noan_divx.avi

http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/sapphire_radeon_9800_pro/video/r9800_quake3_4xaa_noan_divx.avi

But you already knew since you've seen both methods of AA in action.

Hm, the Radeon clip appears to have no AA? Lots of jaggies on the top of the left wall. Am I missing something here?

Bambers

22-Jul-2003, 21:26

And another thing, hold on, I'll be right back :)

Had to run a quick test. It sure is nice having two systems side-by-side now :)

Anyway, one of the first things I do when I get a new graphics card is fire up Quake 3 and set up a 6 player bot match in DM1 with FRAPS running in the background.

High quality settings with maximum texture detail and geometry. High quality sound. Easy to setup, I use the default frag limit of 20, and I always win :)

edit:

jsut tried with bilinear and min fps was one at 52 (first time i died, q3 always seems to pause slightly when that happens, rest was all 70+)
Resoultion set to 2048x1536 on an Athlon XP 2700+

GeForce FX 5900 Ultra - Avg: 152 - Min: 93 (Detonator 44.03)

Radeon 9800 Pro - Avg: 93 - Min: 33 (Catalyst 3.5)

Strange. May require some investigation...

ah but was that on nightmare? (1.14 nightmare that should be, not the wussy 1.24 stuff) :P

Tried that on my 9800pro 128mb and after getting worrying 20fps on starting before realising I'd left 4xAA and 16xQ af on :) i did dm1 with 6 bots (not 6 player but nm) for about 5 mins with fraps counting, avg 100fps. min 38. one of the 3 drops below 60 which i can atribute to me and a rocket luancher v all 6 bots in a corridor and the ensuing fog of red I couldn't actually see through. :lol:

The FXs results do seem quite high. Was that the same demo for each or a seperate run?

MikeC

23-Jul-2003, 00:44

Hm, the Radeon clip appears to have no AA? Lots of jaggies on the top of the left wall. Am I missing something here?

Hi Ollo. The Radeon 9800 Pro video was captured with 4X AA enabled at a resolution of 1024x768. Try to get the resolution as close to 1024x768 as possible in the program you're using to play back the video.

Watching the video in full screen or changing the desktop resolution are a couple of solutions. Otherwise, the video may automatically be resized to fit the resolution of your viewer, which will result in distorted playback.

MikeC

23-Jul-2003, 01:12

ah but was that on nightmare? (1.14 nightmare that should be, not the wussy 1.24 stuff) :P

Tried that on my 9800pro 128mb and after getting worrying 20fps on starting before realising I'd left 4xAA and 16xQ af on :) i did dm1 with 6 bots (not 6 player but nm) for about 5 mins with fraps counting, avg 100fps. min 38. one of the 3 drops below 60 which i can atribute to me and a rocket luancher v all 6 bots in a corridor and the ensuing fog of red I couldn't actually see through. :lol:

The FXs results do seem quite high. Was that the same demo for each or a seperate run?

Hehe. I setup a standard deathmatch. The days of multi-player GLQuake are long gone and I've grown old and weary now. Playing in nightmare mode could result in a call to 911 :)

The FX results were from the gameplay section in our preview: http://www.nvnews.net/previews/geforce_fx_5900_ultra/page_2.shtml

Each result was based on playing a 6 player botmatch with a fraglimit of 20. I played multiple matches with the same graphics settings and the variation in the minimum and average frame rates between each match was low.

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/geforce_fx_5900_ultra/images/quake3_gameplay_bm.png

I've invested a lot of time practicing gameplay scenarios that were specifically designed by me for benchmarking purposes. There are times when an anomaly occurs in which case I will discard the result and run the test again. However, if I end up with significant variations in performance after repeated tests, I may redesign the gameplay scenario or scrap testing with that particular game altogether. However, this is an exception and doesn't happen very often.

MikeC

23-Jul-2003, 01:18

The difference is dramatic! Great work, Mike--this is probably the best way of showing the difference in AA quality.

Thanks for the compliment Pete! Now I know that it's been a worthwhile project.

Enbar

24-Jul-2003, 01:49

A while back I wrote some fragmentProgram tests and noticed my 9700 at the time had some strange results at resolutions greater than 1600x1200. That led me to write some fill tests and sure enough fill rate dropped off at >16x12. Then I turned on 4x multisample and that fall off turned into a cliff.

After that I just avoid resolutions >16x12 which is a little anoying but bearable.

fallguy

24-Jul-2003, 04:39

Hello,

When I record a short 15sec clip, and then try to play it, its all garbled. Only game I have tried it on is BF1942+DC. Im on a 9800 Pro, and Cat 3.6's. Tried it on 3.5's as well, same thing.

Is there some setting I am doing wrong?

Pete

24-Jul-2003, 04:53

The difference is dramatic! Great work, Mike--this is probably the best way of showing the difference in AA quality.

Thanks for the compliment Pete! Now I know that it's been a worthwhile project. :)