Thoughts on the new Fraps Lossless RGB capture option

[frapsforum.com]

I've stayed up way too late toying with this but here is what I've seen so far:


The filesize increase when moving to lossless RGB is pretty substantial
Performance for me @ 1920x1080 dropped about 10 frames lower than using the standard fraps recording method
After encoding the video, the lossless footage has a more "vivid" and "clean" look to it compared with the old style footage, but I'm not sure if it is enough to justify the performance hit on my current system. Obviously if you have a quad core with a PCI-e SSD Drive you're going to want to do this. If encoded properly the improvement in picture quality will definitely be there.

Some game titles obviously might make better use of this than others. I'd like to try out Team Fortress 2 later on, record a demo and compare the differences. For now I've attached some short 1920x1080 clips of World of Warcraft.

[orson]

were these encoded using staxmedia ?

the quality is superb, i tried encoding a video recently also of wow, but even at 1920x1200 high bitrate the quality is nowhere near as good as these are.

I used megui VBR 2 pass for the encodes. x264 video codec and mp3 audio

[frapsforum.com]

yes, staxrip is generally all I use for a final encode for video. I use the "Quality Mode" option, which is a 1 pass method, with a CRF-21 or 22 setting.

[orson]

yes, staxrip is generally all I use for a final encode for video. I use the "Quality Mode" option, which is a 1 pass method, with a CRF-21 or 22 setting.

hmm i think they might of updated the profiles.

i have a variety of options, the CBR options are

x264 film
x264 film hq
x264 animation
x264 animation hq.

would it be possible to send me the old HQ profile at all please ?

[frapsforum.com]

It appears they did. I browsed through quickly and you'd probably be fine using the "x264 Film HQ" setting.

Then just click on the Codec Configuration link underneath that, and change the quality to what you want. The quality selector is the CRF setting.

[orson]

It appears they did. I browsed through quickly and you'd probably be fine using the "x264 Film HQ" setting.

Then just click on the Codec Configuration link underneath that, and change the quality to what you want. The quality selector is the CRF setting.

yup, gonna give it a try, do you add and noise filters etc ? my final project seems to come out a little noisy, like a film grain across it, i'll upload a couple of clips in a bit, going to try lossless RGB setting

i suppose i could be losing considerable quality since i am resizing from 2560x1600 to 1920x1200, i will also try an encode @ 2560x1600

[orson]

here is a 1 minute clip of the final encode, i tried a single pass crf 18 but i think this two pass came out better qual.

http://www.outlaw-star.net/tsm/videos/tsm_Putricide_sample.avi

i don't know if you can see what i mean, but for example the text does not look as clear as your encodes.

this is from a 10 minute fight the total file size was 650mb @ 1920x1200 resolution.

it was capped with the fraps codec as opposed to using RGB, which is what i will try in the future.

the only filter that was used was a lanzos resize from 2560x1600 to 1920x1200.

the original cap looks like i am playing in game and that is the effect i am attempting to re-produce. but the final copy looks a lot darker and grainy.

[frapsforum.com]

It looks fine to me, you might want to check multiple media players to be sure that it just isn't a particular application messing with the gamma of the video being played.

Another thing to note is that you really shouldn't be using an avi container for h264 video, I'm not sure of the details but I have seen comments that it can give strange results. Try .mkv or .mp4 as the container and see what that gets you.

[FreebornToad]

I find that lossless RGB helps most with dark sources.

In brighter content, the difference isn't worth the cost in frame rate or disk space, but in games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. it can easily mean the difference between having a video of nothing but inky darkness (interrupted by the occasional muzzle flash), and actually being able to see what's going on.