Frequently Asked Questions
GeneralFPS (Frames Per Second)
Screen Capture
Video Capture
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General Questions
What do the options do?
Selecting "Start Fraps minimized" will hide the Fraps
dialog screen when you launch the program. Fraps can still be accessed through
the icon in the system tray.
Selecting "Fraps window always on top" will ensure the
program window remains visible even when switching to another application. This
option has no effect if Fraps has been minimized to the system tray.
If you'd like Fraps to be loaded when you turn on your machine
enable the "Run Fraps when Windows starts" option.
Fraps also supports separate LCD screens on keyboards such as the
Logitech® G15™. If you have a supported keyboard you will see the option to
"Display status on keyboard LCD". Enabling this option will allow you
to see FPS graphs and other identifiers on the keyboard while playing your
games. If you have a G15 but do not see this option then you may need to
install the latest G15 drivers available from Logitech's website.
Does Fraps have a performance impact on the game?
There is a small overhead associated with drawing the framerate on
screen. This may vary depending on your system configuration, but should remain
relatively minimal. The best way to measure it on your own system is to find a
game that allows you to benchmark it and compare the results obtained with and
without Fraps loaded.
When you are benchmarking the overlay is automatically disabled to
provide the most accurate results.
If you are recording a movie with Fraps there can be a noticable
impact on the game. This is due to all the extra work involved in saving the
screen data to disk.
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FPS (Frames Per Second)
What do the options do?
The Overlay Display Hotkey lets you assign a button that will
toggle the frame rate counter between the four corners and off. To change the
Hotkey, click in the box and type a new key to be assigned this function.
Clicking Disable will stop the Hotkey from having any effect.
The Benchmarking Hotkey lets you assign a button that can be used
to determine the average frame rate between any two points in a game. To change
the Hotkey, click in the box and type a new key to be assigned this function.
Clicking Disable will stop the Hotkey from having any effect.
The overlay corner indicates the region of the screen that the
framerate counter will be displayed in. Choose a corner that doesn't obstruct
important information in the game's display. If you select Disabled the frame
rate counter will not be displayed on screen.
Selecting "Only update overlay once a second" will only
change the frame rate counter once a second.
Selecting "Save frame rate to file each second" will
output the frame rate once a second to the file FRAPSSEC.TXT in your Fraps
directory. This option is deprecated and has been removed in Fraps 2.7.0. Use
the detailed FPS statistics option to get individual CSV files for each
benchmark run.
The "Stop benchmark automatically" option allows you to
specify a fixed duration for the benchmark. Once the number of seconds has
elapsed the benchmark will automatically stop and the results will be written
to disk.
Finally, detailed benchmark statistics can also be saved to disk.
These are written in standard CSV files that can be imported directly into a
spreadsheet. All files are automatically named/timestamped and saved in the
benchmarks subdirectory. Currently there are 3 files written for each benchmark
when this option is enabled:
• FPS - Contains the
frame rate value for each second of the benchmark
• frametimes - Contains
the time (in milliseconds) of every frame that was rendered in the benchmark
• minmaxavg - Contains
the total frame count, benchmark duration, minimum, maximum, and average frame
rate values.
How can I average the framerate between two points?
While in the game press the key you assigned to the Benchmarking
Hotkey. This will mark the start of where averaging is to take place. A green
box is displayed to let you know that logging has begun, and then the counter
is removed for maximum accuracy. When you want to end the benchmark, press the
Hotkey again. The average framerate will now be displayed in a red box. Full
details are also saved in the file FRAPSLOG.TXT in your Fraps folder, and into
the benchmark directory if you have detailed statistics enabled.
What is the maximum framerate Fraps will show?
Fraps will show a maximum framerate of 9999 fps on screen. If you
need to know precise framerates above this you must use benchmarking and find
out the value from FRAPSLOG.TXT, or from the detailed statistics (if you have
this option enabled).
Why doesn?t Fraps show above 30fps, 60fps, 75 fps (or any other
framerate) in my game?
This can be due to several reasons.
Many games have internal limits that prevent them rendering faster
than a certain framerate. In some cases this can mean they are locked at a maximum
framerate of only 30fps.
Another possibility is that you have Vsync enabled. Vsync is used
to synchronise the output of your graphics card with the display of your
monitor. When your graphics card has finished rendering the next frame it waits
for the monitor to finish displaying the current one before switching to the
new one. This means that the maximum framerate you can obtain will be equal to
the refresh rate of your monitor (which is usually 60hz, 75hz, 85hz, or 100hz).
If you disable Vsync then your graphics card will continuously
render without waiting for the last frame to be displayed in its entirety. With
fast graphics cards this means that your monitor may switch to a new frame
halfway down the screen. This effect is known as tearing as there appears to be
a visible line separating two different halves. Due to this, you should
generally leave Vsync enabled except when benchmarking.
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Screen Capture Questions
What do the options do?
You can select the folder where Fraps will store all screenshots
in. By default this folder is the same as the directory you installed Fraps
into, but you can customise it to save anywhere on your disk. Click the Change
button to select a new folder, or the View button to show the current contents
of the folder.
The Screen Capture Hotkey lets you assign a button that will take
a screenshot of the game screen. To change the Hotkey, click in the box and
type a new key to be assigned this function. Clicking Disable will stop the
Hotkey from having any effect.
Screenshots can be saved in Windows Bitmap (BMP), JPEG (JPG),
Portable Network Graphics (PNG), or Targa (TGA) format.
Selecting "Include frame rate overlay on screenshots"
will include the Fraps frame rate counter on your screenshots. If the frame
rate overlay is disabled, no counter will be saved on your screenshots.
What is the maximum resolution supported by the screen capture?
Screenshots can be taken in games running at resolutions up to
2880x1600 or 3840x1200.
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Video Capture Questions
What do the options do?
You can select the folder where Fraps will store all movies in. By
default this folder is the same as the directory you installed Fraps into, but
you can customise it to save anywhere on your disk. Click the Change button to
select a new folder, or the View button to show the current contents of the
folder.
The Video Capture Hotkey lets you assign a button that will record
movies of the game. To change the Hotkey, click in the box and type a new key
to be assigned this function. Clicking Disable will stop the Hotkey from having
any effect.
Choosing Half-size will store the movie at half the resolution of
the game screen. Full-size will store the movie at the same resolution as the
game screen.
You can choose the frame rate of the output movie from 25fps, 30fps,
50fps, 60fps, or a custom value up to 100fps. Higher values result in smoother
playback but will increase the file size. Some video editing programs will
treat movies recorded at 25fps as PAL, and those captured at 29.97/30fps as
NTSC.
Selecting "Record Sound" will save the game audio along
with the video. You can disable this option if you are planning to add your own
sound to the video.
When you select "Detect best sound input" Fraps will
determine the best input to record the game sound on. If you choose "Use
Windows input" the default Windows recording input will be used. The
Windows input may not capture all of the game sounds, so you should generally
let Fraps detect the input unless you want to capture sound from an external
source.
How do I record a movie while running a game?
First select the target framerate for the movie, which indicates
how many frames will be included in the movie each second. You can currently
choose from 25, 30, 50 or 60 fps.
In the game press the Video Capture Hotkey (F9) when you want to
start recording. While recording the frame rate counter will turn red. When you
want to end your movie, press the button again to stop recording. You will now
find the movie saved in your default folder.
What is the maximum resolution supported by Half/Full-size video
capture?
The maximum resolution for full-size and half-size capture is
currently 7680x4800.
Why is the AVI movie generated by Fraps so big? How can I reduce
the size?
The filesize is big because there isnt enough time to encode the
movie while the game is running. The movie frames are slightly compressed, but
still require a large amount of disk space due to the high resolutions. After
you have finished capturing you can convert the clips into a compressed format
using a video editing program. Probably the easiest one to use is Windows Movie
Maker which is included free as part of Windows Live Essentials. It allows you
to easily edit your clips and add text and other effects to your film. The end
result will also be compressed into the Windows Media Video (WMV) format which
can be played back in most media players.
How do I stop the frame rate counter being saved on my movies?
The frame rate counter shouldn't be saved on your movies. What you
may be seeing is Fraps showing the frame rate of your media player. Try exiting
Fraps before playing your videos and you should see clean images. If this
doesn't help you can disable the frame rate counter before recording by
pressing the Overlay Display hotkey.
When I view the movie I saved the video skips and the sound
crackles. What's wrong?
Your media player may be having trouble keeping up with the large
amount of data Fraps has written to disk. Fraps is optimised for processing
large amounts of data, but many players are not. If they can't read the data
fast enough skips in the video and audio may be present.
Keep in mind the raw data saved to disk should be fine. If you
encode the video into a compressed format you will likely end up with a video
file that plays perfectly due to the greatly reduced file size.
You can also lower the movie frame rate or use a lower resolution
to reduce the data saved to the hard disk.
How can I adjust the volume of the sound that is recorded?
You must configure the volume through the "Sounds and Audio
Devices" item in the Control Panel. Use the following steps:
• Click on the Control
Panel and select Sounds And Audio.
• Click on the Audio tab.
• Find the Sound
Recording device and click Volume.
• Adjust the volume for
the Input that Fraps is recording from. This is usually named "What U
Hear", "Record Master", or "Stereo Mixer".
If you can't see the correct Input on screen you may need to
enable it by clicking on Properties in the menu and ensuring all Inputs have a
check beside their name.
Where can I find the custom Fraps FPS1 codec?
The Fraps codec (FPS1) is put on the system when you install
Fraps. If you've reinstalled Windows you will also need to reinstall Fraps in
order to play back your movies.
Please keep in mind that if you want to give your raw footage to
another person they will also need to have Fraps installed.
