A small tutorial on how to record your own Ragnarok Online game videos with Fraps.
Written by DarkOverLord.
Version 1.1 - Updated November 27th 2005
1. Download & install the required programs
2. Set your computer
3. Configure Fraps
4. Configure RO
5. Capture your files
6. Convert to DivX
Appendix 1. DarkOverLord's computer
1. Download & install the required programs
A) Fraps: The program to capture your game feats.
http://www.fraps.com/
The unregistered version is all good, the registered will only allow to make bigger resolution videos and completely slower the pc while capturing and just make big files (~18mb/second of capture with 800x600).
You will need a registered version if you want to make videos longer than 30 seconds or not have the "www.fraps.com" in the captured videos.
B) DivX: The codec to encode the captured videos or read encoded videos.
http://www.divx.com/divx/download/
It makes them take about 1/70th of the original size. (12 second: 215mb ->3.2mb).
C) VirtualDub: The free program to modify and encode the captured videos.
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/virtualdub/VirtualDub-1.6.3.zip?download
This program doesn't need to be installed, you unzip and you can run VirtualDuB.exe right away.
2. Set your computer
A) Choose the drive:
If possible choose another hard drive than the one with your operation system and RO. When Fraps will capture it will flood the hard drive with raw video: writing/reading for the operating system, RO and fraps on the same hard drive may slow down the game a lot, at the same time making jumpy/laggy captures. That space will be used later when setting Fraps' capture folder. Another reason to not use the main drive is that Windows will cry badly at 99.9% of the space. If you have SATA hard drive, a RAID 0 or RAID 3 architecture, it is the best to choose.
B) Space:
Free as much space as possible in the partition/hard drive you will capture in. Reason: the videos will be raw when capturing, 12 seconds take ~230mb. In 1 hour of play i filled my 5gb partition with 10 random short 10-20 second captures.
C) Defrag:
Defrag your hard drives, it will make it easier to write on the disk, it causes less lag in the captures. VERY important if you have only 1 drive on 1 partition.
D) Set the sound for capture (optional):
Go to the sound settings in the control panel and click on Options->Property
-Select the audio card you use.
-Select Recording
-Check "Wave Sounds" in the list below.
-Press ok
-In the sound settings window, if "Wave Sounds" isn't checked, check it and put the volume to the max.
*Remember that you changed that. Your microphone or other input that was checked before wont work until you put it back to normal.*
DO NOT FORGET: All the sounds you hear in the headphone/speakers will be recorded, close ICQ, MSN, WinAmp (unless you want background music) and anything that can make sounds in the computer. It's annoying to watch a video and hear a *KAKOoO* of ICQ.
3. Configure Fraps
A) General Tab: Nothing to be changed or whatever you prefer.
B) FPS Tab: I suggest you to activate the FramePerSeconds display because you will know when you are capturing or not. A green number will appear in a corner while you are playing and will turn red when you are capturing. If you enable the FPS display, it wont appear in the videos you will capture.
VERY IMPORTANT: while FPS display is enabled and Fraps is opened, you will see the frame rate in any 3D programs AND videos, example it will appear while watching a DivX video or in any games. You must disable FPS display or close Fraps when you are not using it.
C) Movies Tab:
-Select the capture space/folder you created in 2.A).
-Select the record key to use to capture, i highly suggest F11 because its the one closing all status/items/skill/etc windows in the game and its easy to reach since its near the quickslot keys.
-Select Full-size, if you select half-size it will resize the capture on the fly and it will lower badly the capture's frame rate unless you have a very powerful machine.
-Select FrameRate from 15 to 25, i suggest 25fps because DivX will convert in 25fps anyway when encoding to the DivX file, but it will have the same size and the video will look like the fps you had capture. Use FrameRate lower than 25 ONLY if you have bad hard drive space problems and you have slow action, just like a full support priest with no buffer fighting with a Claw (you know, its about 2aspd). Don't use 30fps because like i said above DivX will encode to 25fps, the raw will be big for nothing and you might have some glitch in the conversion from 30 to 25.
-Check "Record Sound" ONLY!! if you have set the sound in section 2.D), otherwise it will record silence, making the files bigger for nothing. Its also annoying for someone watching a video to wonder why the sound isn't working. When unchecked, the video will display there is no sound while playing.
D) Screenshots Tab:
Disable, RO already has the screenshot capture feature.
4. Configure RO
A) Check "Full Screen", Fraps works only in full screen.
B) I highly suggest to play in 800x600 or 640x480, good capture speed, not gigantic raw files, nice video size and it wont slower the computer much while capturing. If you have a very powerful computer, you can try higher res and half size in section 3.C) ...but that usually makes bad results.
C) Set the sound in game not too loud nor too low so you can hear something on the videos.
5. Capture your files
A) While playing hit F11 to start, F11 to stop, Make sure to not fill your hard drive, alt+tab often to check how full is your drive. (it may be something else than F11 if you chose another key in 3.C) ).
B) Do Not Hit the key by mistake, you are gonna cry if you forget to stop it. Keep your eye on the Led of the hard drive, you know the little light telling your hard drives of your computer are in use, that will give you a good hint you are currently capturing. Another hint: some hard drive make *KRRRRRRRRRR* sound when they are highly in use, that will mostly happen while capturing.
C) When you are done, i suggest you to close Fraps, it can be annoying if it starts when you aren't really ready for that or it might display the FPS in many odd places like explained in 3.B).
6. Convert to DivX
A) Open VirtualDub and select Video->Compression... and then choose DivX. You may want to adjust the DivX settings but i don't know anything yet about that, if you don't know like me, press ok it will work just fine.
Select Audio->Compression... then select MPEG Layer-3, 22hz (same frequency in the settings of RO), mono/stereo, and the KB/s you want. I use 3 KB/sec and mono. Then check Audio->"Full processing mode".
B) Watch your raw file and give it a name (i suggest you to add "RAW in the name if you want to keep the raw later Ex: "Rammmmpage RAW.avi").
C) Drag the file in the VirtualDub window.
D) SKIPPABLE: You can edit the file using the options, like removing segments, etc. I wont explain how it works just play with that yourself or read the faq and tutorials at http://www.virtualdub.org/.
E) Press File->Save as AVI, you can decide to override the raw or make another file. Personally, I keep some of the raws in case I can re-encode them better later.
F) Test if the new file works. You will notice the colors are a bit different but I don't know how to fix that yet in the DivX's encode settings.
G) Repeat from 6.B) to 6.G) until you don't have more raw to encode to DivX.
H) Close VirtualDub.
Appendix 1. DarkOverLord's computer
- AMD AthlonXP 2200+ 1.8GHz
- 1GB RAM Kingston DDR400 Dual channel
- Asus FX 5700 V9570GE/TD 128mb videocard
- Asus A7N8X Motherboard
- 2 Hard Drives Maxtor 7200rpm 40GB (10GB for Windows / 30GB for program files) and 80GB (75GB for storage, 5GB for downloads and captures)
- Windows XP on SP1 with optimizations
Back to the main page
website © Kinky Kitten 2005 - 2010 | videos © DarkOverLord 2005 - 2006