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Frapsing, Editing, and Rendering


porky

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OK, after trying for a while to get the avi tool to work, and failing, I'm now trying to work with Fraps. But there are a few difficulties, namely, whenever I record in Fraps my FPS goes down to about 4 or 5. Which means I have to slow down time to 1/6 or even slower so capture all the frames. The resulting video file is huge for even a few seconds of capture. This is half OK because at least I have the file which I can start to work with in Premiere.

 

So I speed up the clip in Premiere and change the levels a bit. All's fine, until I render... Just this minute I rendered a 45 second clip of an Su-33 popping his nose out of a hangar. 800x600 uncompressed avi straight from Premiere was 1.88gb, much larger than the original Fraps footage, and much worse quality. Considering it's six times shorter aswell, I dunno what I'm doing wrong. Final compression also turns up a large file with ridiculous quality.

 

Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?



 

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Ok, you might wanna check that you have "AnitAliasing" turned OFF when you are using FRAPS to record.

 

For some people, the fps dont really change that much whether they record WITH AA, or without.

 

Myself, i have to record without the use of AA, if i dont, my FPS drops down to the low 14-15's. When i record without AA, i can maintain my set fps, which is 25-30.

 

Now, regarding editing/compression....i have never tried Premiere for more than a few seconds, so i cant say much about editing.

 

But compression..... you can't render the final movie into uncompressed .AVI. The resulting file will be, obviously VERY huge, and you're right, the quality actually is worse.

Since i'm no "renderer guru", i really cant tell you why this is.

 

Try to render your movie into .WMV format instead, and then see the quality/filesize.

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AA is turned off, I think, can't find it anywhere in LO but in nVidia CP it's turned off.

 

Can't find any WMV option in Premiere, but I tried Quicktime instead. Even bigger file, even worse quality.



 

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AA is turned off, I think, can't find it anywhere in LO but in nVidia CP it's turned off.

 

Can't find any WMV option in Premiere, but I tried Quicktime instead. Even bigger file, even worse quality.

 

Your system specs, please?

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Ya, I dont know how to make WMVs in Premier. (I've used it before.) I think it does not support it because it's a profesional edditing program and thus, WMVs are not something a profesional would wan't to use.

 

How do you reduce the FRAPS file sizes?

DCS Wishlist: 1) FIX THE DAMN RIVERS!!! 2) Spherical or cylindrical panorama view projection. 3) Enhanced input options (action upon button release, etc). 4) Aircraft flight parameter dump upon exit (stick posn, attitude, rates, accel, control volume, control-surface positions, SAS bias, etc). 5) ADS-33 maneuver courses as static objects. 6) Exposed API or exports of trim position and stick force for custom controllers. 7) Select auto multiple audio devices

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Hm, well, you could always try to compress them into Divx, or Xvid then.

 

And if you want to reduce the fraps file size (but i really dont understand why you would do this....), you could just import the footage into Windows Movie Maker and just save the files into a smaller size..

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Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

 

I think you probably just expect a little too much from your poor, over-worked PC! :-) LOMAC makes PCs cry all on its own. Add Fraps on top of that, which is transferring *huge* amounts of data from the vid card to the HD every second, and even the best PC on the planet will shed tears.

 

That means, as you've discovered, flying at half or quarter speed and setting Fraps to record at a lower frame rate to get anything useful. But the tradeoff is that the files are huge. There's no way round that. And those huge files mean that when editing (another task which makes fast PCs weep) you'll have more problems associated with the amounts of data being worked with.

 

In your position I would be flying at 800x600, 1/2 speed if possible (1/4 if not), with LOMAC details turned down quite a bit and Fraps set to record at 15fps & half resolution (ie 400x300). That will not give you excellent video quality, but you don't have many options with your hardware.

 

You might have some success flying at 1024x768 and recording at half that, but I think you need to learn to walk before you can run, and keeping the file sizes as small as possible will save you some frustration while you're getting used to the movie making process. I've spent far too much money upgrading my PC trying to make movie creation simpler, but no matter how much hardware you throw at this job, it's never enough. :-)

 

Good luck.

 

Andrew McP

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Woooo!! I've done it! :D

 

I'm working around large file sizes Andrew by recording very short clips in Fraps, speeding em up, rendering that and then deleting the Fraps file. What I was doing wrong was selecting the wrong way to export in Premiere. Anyway, now I can encode WMV, and good quality WMV at that :D

 

If you wanna see a 8 sec clip of me flaring randomly, then here ya go:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=R5ZYZZZ8

 

I'm so proud, lol, can't imagine what a feeling it is when you actually made a proper movie and not just a short clip. Expect to see a (rubbish ;)) movie coming from me in the far future, that's if I get the hang of Premiere.



 

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6Mb for an 8 sec clip? that' not exactaly great file size. When I had used premire, i made this A-10 movie that was 5 minuites in length, but was a gig in size. :( (not great, is it)

DCS Wishlist: 1) FIX THE DAMN RIVERS!!! 2) Spherical or cylindrical panorama view projection. 3) Enhanced input options (action upon button release, etc). 4) Aircraft flight parameter dump upon exit (stick posn, attitude, rates, accel, control volume, control-surface positions, SAS bias, etc). 5) ADS-33 maneuver courses as static objects. 6) Exposed API or exports of trim position and stick force for custom controllers. 7) Select auto multiple audio devices

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Nope, but the quality is good. I can take that into DivX now and compress it even further if I wanted.

 

In fact, I'll do just that :) Let you know my results when I'm done.

 

 

Edit: Just over 4mb with no loss in quality or resolution. But I reckon 30mb a minute for 1152x864 is pretty good going.



 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hmmm....

 

When I click on the Show button, I get a screen with a list of tracks, and I can choose a track and click Start or Cancel. The menu bar at the top just says Play Demo.

 

If I choose start, the track plays, and if I press Esc I go back to the list of tracks, with the same options I had before. I only get a menu bar after I've just created or edited a track.

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But compression..... you can't render the final movie into uncompressed .AVI. The resulting file will be, obviously VERY huge, and you're right, the quality actually is worse.
I have contrary experiences. Before I finish the video in e.g. AfterEffects I only use uncompressed files. Indeed resulting files are big b/c every single frame is saved in it's full resolution (filesizes of 100GB, or 200-300GB for HD content are common) but I don't see the point that quality would be worse when using no compression codec.

 

Generally, compression should be the very last step in video editing, even though archiving the video with x264/Quicktime H.264/XviD codecs and using high bitrates is a valueable method to store movies without having to worry to loose much quality (in the case you'll edit and compress the video again at a later time).

Lock+On+-+Su-33+TakeraEins+Selection+11.jpg
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I have contrary experiences. Before I finish the video in e.g. AfterEffects I only use uncompressed files. Indeed resulting files are big b/c every single frame is saved in it's full resolution (filesizes of 100GB, or 200-300GB for HD content are common) but I don't see the point that quality would be worse when using no compression codec.

 

Generally, compression should be the very last step in video editing, even though archiving the video with x264/Quicktime H.264/XviD codecs and using high bitrates is a valueable method to store movies without having to worry to loose much quality (in the case you'll edit and compress the video again at a later time).

 

I was referring to compression in VEGAS. If you select "uncompressed .AVI.", the file will be HUGE, but the quality will also be slightly worse.

In AE on the other hand, the files come out uncompressed in it's full quality.

 

That's my experience so far at least.

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