Hard Light Productions Forums

Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: SadisticSid on August 27, 2004, 06:13:28 am

Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: SadisticSid on August 27, 2004, 06:13:28 am: I recently reformatted and now FRAPS is playing up. Whenever I try to record from within a DirectX game the FPS counter goes down to about 7, and the sound stutters terribly, rendering it useless. The only thing I can think of which may have caused this (I've got the same sound, video and supporting hardware drivers as I had before I reformatted) is SP2.

I've tried every version of FRAPS I can find and all of them exhibit exactly the same behaviour no matter what settings I use. Can anyone hazard a guess at a solution?

EDIT: The FPS counter goes up to about 20 in OpenGL mode for FS2. But, using DirectX renderers in any game, it has the same problem.
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: Fear on August 27, 2004, 07:29:04 am: you can try record a demo first(most of the game have this option...) then capture it.
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: Hippo on August 27, 2004, 07:54:16 am: I've found few games that record drmo's... MAinly combat flight sims, and D3...

I've been using fraps sincebefore i got the SP2 cd in the mail a few days ago, and havent found any problems that have arisem since... I've always had problems with sound recording with my registered copy, but the demo got it ok, and still does... Though, I've only been capturing in Halo PC, I havent tried FS2 at all yet...
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: SadisticSid on August 27, 2004, 09:31:38 am: It can't be anything to do with the games themselves, and I always thought SP2 would be a longshot. This just sucks as I was planning to do a lengthy battle scene for an intermission between some Inferno missions; I'd even recorded a monologue to go with it. D'oh. :mad:
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: Ford Prefect on August 27, 2004, 11:24:47 am: God damnit, I thought this thread was going to be about frappes!
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: TopAce on August 27, 2004, 11:47:32 am: Is it normal that FRAPs seriously drops down the FPS? I recorded some battle scenes with some of the Journey to Epsilon Pegasi missions and I experienced that the game was almost unplayable because of the FPS. How seriously should FRAPs affect the frames per second value in NORMAL cases?
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: karajorma on August 27, 2004, 12:17:16 pm: A LOT. Remember that FRAPS is recording directly to the hard drive. You're bound to get a performance hit from that alone.
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: SadisticSid on August 27, 2004, 12:51:19 pm: Things are still very playable on a high-end system. In the Inferno trailer #3 for example, I was still getting ~40fps.
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: karajorma on August 27, 2004, 02:03:25 pm: True but what do you usually get in that mission? :D
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: SadisticSid on August 27, 2004, 05:56:51 pm: Not more than double that I'd say... I've never checked really.

So, anyone got any ideas?
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: Flipside on August 27, 2004, 06:15:16 pm: A Defrag may help, Windows installs itself all over your hard drive, and it slows things down when the head has to jump around to write stuff to disc :)
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: TopAce on August 28, 2004, 04:20:05 am: DeFragging is a great idea. :yes:
It will take a while for Win98 to defrag my 40 GB hard drive(also known as winchester :D), but I think I have nowhere to rush.
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: SadisticSid on August 28, 2004, 06:42:40 am: The performance is equally disappointing on two disks I've tried, one of which was about 10x as fragmented before I reformatted so it can't be that. It has to be a software problem =/
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: TopAce on August 28, 2004, 07:01:57 am: Or a Hardware problem that you do not have enough RAM. I have 384 Megs, for instance and I think that is few for recording in-game action.
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: Hippo on August 28, 2004, 09:07:20 am: When I record with Halo, i have it set on full size and 30fps... it runs the game at about 20 fps... Halo runs at default at 30fps because i limited it... *hugs registered version of FRAPs* ...

I think it needs a REALLY large amount of ram to run correctly, since i have 1 gig (2-512mb modules) and then i allotted 7 more gigs of virtual, so things run fine, but i don't think they would without the VRam...
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: SadisticSid on August 28, 2004, 12:11:18 pm: Quote
Originally posted by TopAce
Or a Hardware problem that you do not have enough RAM. I have 384 Megs, for instance and I think that is few for recording in-game action.

No dude, I'm using the exact same hardware.
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: TopAce on August 28, 2004, 12:13:18 pm: Well, more RAM would certainly boost the framerates anyway. :)
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: Hippo on August 28, 2004, 03:49:51 pm: it also depends on the speed of your hard drive, and wether you are writing to the same drive you are running the program on...
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: Kosh on August 29, 2004, 01:58:46 am: I have heard of other problems being caused by SP2 for some people. One of my classmates said he could no longer use Daemon Tools after SP2 was installed, but I have SP2 installed and Daemon Tools works just fine for me.

You could get someone else to do it. I'm sure you can also uninstall SP2 and see if everything works.
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: Xelion on August 29, 2004, 07:04:17 am: SP2, I believe may include Direct X 9.0c whilst originally you would have 9.0b. That could be the problem...
Title: FRAPS and SP2?
Post by: SadisticSid on October 01, 2004, 09:15:26 am: Just following this thread up for those of you who're interested, the problem was indeed with one of the changes made in SP2. The new version on the FRAPS website works around it, apparently.