benjaminpp
Crypto Transaction Analyst
LEVEL 1
400 XP
Refresher for those who don't know why FRAPS/DxTory recordings have such a high filesize
When it comes to recording your game footage without a dedicated capture card solution, you'll have to rely on software-based recorders that can
take some of the performance away from your videogame.
So to alleviate this performance drop when recording, FRAPS and DxTory set their output recordings to have an uncompressed (high bitrate) filesize which
demands more from the hard drive's write speed than the CPU's power for compression.
In this tutorial, you'll be using a command line program called FFMPEG which will allow for you to set a maximum bitrate for your compressed footage.
What settings should I use for FFMPEG
Let's go by https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171
So here's a small list of accepted bitrates for recordings that have a display ratio of 16:9 and 16:10 (HDR):
How do I put the commands into FFMPEG?
FFMPEG is a bit tricky to learn when you begin, but after some time you'll get the hang of it and I would recommend setting up your environment to
use FFMPEG and ImageMagick commandline tools since those two can go hand-in-hand if you're working with animation and SWF conversions.
Since my copy of DxTory isn't working with Stereo Mix, I didn't have to mess around with audio compression so the command for me was:
How about some images and proof?
My results
Here's the full information about how long it took to compress the footage on an Intel Core i5-4690k and 7200RPM HDD:
When it comes to recording your game footage without a dedicated capture card solution, you'll have to rely on software-based recorders that can
take some of the performance away from your videogame.
So to alleviate this performance drop when recording, FRAPS and DxTory set their output recordings to have an uncompressed (high bitrate) filesize which
demands more from the hard drive's write speed than the CPU's power for compression.
In this tutorial, you'll be using a command line program called FFMPEG which will allow for you to set a maximum bitrate for your compressed footage.
What settings should I use for FFMPEG
Let's go by https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171
So here's a small list of accepted bitrates for recordings that have a display ratio of 16:9 and 16:10 (HDR):
- 720p30 - 6500k
- 720p60 - 9500k
- 1080p30 - 8000k
- 1080p60 - 12000k
- 1440p30 - 16000k
- 1440p60 - 24000k
- 2160p30 - 45000k
- 2160p60 - 68000k
How do I put the commands into FFMPEG?
FFMPEG is a bit tricky to learn when you begin, but after some time you'll get the hang of it and I would recommend setting up your environment to
use FFMPEG and ImageMagick commandline tools since those two can go hand-in-hand if you're working with animation and SWF conversions.
Code:
ffmpeg -i -vcodec libx264 -b:v <your chosen bitrate> -acodec libmp3lame -b:a 192k <output filename>
Code:
ffmpeg -i "D:\Recordings\NFS11 2017-02-14 05-09-05-756.avi" -vcodec libx264 -b:v 15000k -an "D:\Recordings\output.mp4"Here's the full information about how long it took to compress the footage on an Intel Core i5-4690k and 7200RPM HDD:
Code:
frame=52213 fps= 19 q=-1.0 Lsize= 1612221kB time=00:14:30.18 bitrate=15177.6kbits/s dup=590 drop=0
video:1611761kB audio:0kB subtitle:0kB other streams:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead: 0.02859
4%
[libx264 @ 048c31c0] frame I:237 Avg QP:22.32 size:115547
[libx264 @ 048c31c0] frame P:37724 Avg QP:25.21 size: 35182
[libx264 @ 048c31c0] frame B:14252 Avg QP:28.33 size: 20758
[libx264 @ 048c31c0] consecutive B-frames: 46.3% 51.7% 1.1% 0.9%
[libx264 @ 048c31c0] mb I I16..4: 12.4% 65.5% 22.1%
[libx264 @ 048c31c0] mb P I16..4: 2.9% 12.7% 1.4% P16..4: 37.6% 13.2% 6.2% 0.0% 0.0% skip:
26.0%
[libx264 @ 048c31c0] mb B I16..4: 0.5% 4.0% 0.3% B16..8: 41.4% 9.5% 1.9% direct: 3.1% skip:
39.1% L0:46.5% L1:47.9% BI: 5.6%
[libx264 @ 048c31c0] final ratefactor: 21.32
[libx264 @ 048c31c0] 8x8 transform intra:75.2% inter:72.6%
[libx264 @ 048c31c0] coded y,uvDC,uvAC intra: 52.5% 43.5% 5.7% inter: 24.1% 18.4% 0.8%
[libx264 @ 048c31c0] i16 v,h,dc,p: 15% 35% 6% 44%
[libx264 @ 048c31c0] i8 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 8% 15% 26% 7% 10% 6% 13% 5% 10%
[libx264 @ 048c31c0] i4 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 12% 26% 18% 5% 11% 5% 14% 3% 6%
[libx264 @ 048c31c0] i8c dc,h,v,p: 63% 18% 15% 4%
[libx264 @ 048c31c0] Weighted P-Frames: Y:1.1% UV:0.5%
[libx264 @ 048c31c0] ref P L0: 59.1% 15.4% 16.6% 8.7% 0.1%
[libx264 @ 048c31c0] ref B L0: 78.3% 21.5% 0.2%
[libx264 @ 048c31c0] ref B L1: 99.4% 0.6%
[libx264 @ 048c31c0] kb/s:15172.70