Interesting post about MSI Afterburner

[Knytestorme]

Seems MSI Afterburner now has video recording built into it that provides better loseless quality recording than FRAPS and removes the 4Gb file size limit, it will just record until you stop in one continuous file. This is definitely the biggest QoL reason to move from FRAPS for recording gameplay and will give it a test tonight.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2173195

[MiRai]

Seems MSI Afterburner now has video recording built into it that provides better loseless quality recording than FRAPS and removes the 4Gb file size limit, it will just record until you stop in one continuous file. This is definitely the biggest QoL reason to move from FRAPS for recording gameplay and will give it a test tonight.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2173195
Sounds like a nice free alternative but, there seem to be a few trade offs.

1. That 4GB limit, as the poster first mentions, is nice because you're able to find shit after you've recorded
hours of footage. My uncompressed FRAPS files are about 35 - 45 seconds per the 4GB limit and with MSI-A the
poster had 98 seconds at 15GB for uncompressed which is ridiculous. That would be like 90GB+ for 10 minutes
of footage -- Good luck opening a 90GB file in a video editing program. Might as well just drag, drop, and walk
away unless you've got a great system.

2. He has a RAID0 setup for video recording. I don't have a RAID setup for my recording drive and FRAPS, in
any mode, works just fine for me. I'm not sure where he's running into issues with FRAPS.

3. He doesn't mention anything about FRAPS's DWM desktop capture which is required if you want to
capture more than just the game window itself. I'd have to look at MSI-A to see if it's there.

All in all, sounds good and I'm willing to give it a try but, if it can't capture the desktop then I'll just stick with
FRAPS... it's done me no harm.

Last but not least, I'm really not sure this belongs in the movies section.

[Knytestorme]

Sounds like a nice free alternative but, there seem to be a few trade offs.

1. That 4GB limit, as the poster first mentions, is nice because you're able to find shit after you've recorded
hours of footage. My uncompressed FRAPS files are about 35 - 45 seconds per the 4GB limit and with MSI-A the
poster had 98 seconds at 15GB for uncompressed which is ridiculous. That would be like 90GB+ for 10 minutes
of footage -- Good luck opening a 90GB file in a video editing program. Might as well just drag, drop, and walk
away unless you've got a great system.

2. He has a RAID0 setup for video recording. I don't have a RAID setup for my recording drive and FRAPS, in
any mode, works just fine for me. I'm not sure where he's running into issues with FRAPS.

3. He doesn't mention anything about FRAPS's DWM desktop capture which is required if you want to
capture more than just the game window itself. I'd have to look at MSI-A to see if it's there.

All in all, sounds good and I'm willing to give it a try but, if it can't capture the desktop then I'll just stick with
FRAPS... it's done me no harm.

Last but not least, I'm really not sure this belongs in the movies section.


Taking last part first, I had the same concern as well but given it's mostly a tool for making movies, and there are stickies at the top about how to use tools to make movies it seemed the most logical place.

1. Agree, but don't we all have great systems :). Though yeah it could be an annoyance but it shouldn't really be that different opening up on 60Gb file for a 15 minute run vs 15 * 4Gb files to stitch together, they all still have to load and fit somewhere.

2. I don't think that a RAID setup is needed, it's not really that much faster than a single drive and I was thinking he just mentioned it in terms of how much space it gives him. I'm moving to an 8 * 2Tb drive RAID5 though, so having it available for single large files rather than multiple 4Gb files could be skewing my feelings.

3. Yeah, not sure about that either but I haven't used the functionality at all in FRAPS so didn't consider it as an issue...others mileage may vary.

I think the good thing to come from this though is more options for recording things between this, FRAPS, X-Fire's built-in capture etc....the fact this is built into MSI-A though means it can allow people to not have to run a secondary program if they are already using MSI-A like they should be :D