Video Recording: FRAPS Instructions here

Dungeon Master (NWN 2) Gender: Age: 27 Joined: 10 Apr 2007

Video Recording: FRAPS Instructions here

Download the most recent version of FRAPS from:
http://www.fraps.com/download.php

Current version as of the date this instruction was created:
2.9.4

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Install:

Very simple to install, simply run the downloaded executable installer file. Only thing to note is that you should install this software within the same drive that your NWN2 is installed in, for example, if you installed NWN2 in C://Atari, then install FRAPS in C://Fraps/

Set up:

Run FRAPS
Notice that in addition to the small configurable window that opens up, a FRAPS icon will appear within your task bar.
Notice there are four tabs within the FRAPS window, General, FPS, Movies, and Screenshots. I recommend the following settings for each of those tabs:

General:
Leave all three checkboxes unchecked.

FPS:In the figure that represents your monitor, titles Overlay Corner, seclect the lower left hand corner (this is so that information provided from FRAPS while you are in game will not interfere with your game UI).
Put a checkmark within the checkbox next to FPS. This will result in the number of frames per second you receive while playing the game. Very useful.
Leave all other four checkboxes unchecked.

Movies:

Folder to save in:
This is mainly a user preference for retrieval and subsequent compressing and editing later, though I would recommend that you install it in (install directory)/Fraps, for example, if you installed FRAPS and NWN within C, then set this to C:/Fraps/
This is because of disk writing… in case the HD needs to access parts of NWN while writing to your fraps location, having them in the same drive will mean less distance to travel, therefore, minimize any potential impact running FRAPS may have on your gaming experience.

Video Capture Hotkey:
The default is F9. This is the key that you will strike in order to start recording while you are in game. F9 is fine, though you may want to consider moving this to the plus sign on the numpad, or anywhere else on the border of your keyboard, that will be extremely easy to hit at a moment’s notice.

Chose Full Size, not half size. This is so that the event log, player list, and chat dialogs can be clearly and easily read during video review.

MAKE SURE to uncheck the checkbox associated with Record Sound. Recording sound greatly inflates the filesize and has no value toward exploit evidence (at least not for the particular exploits we are interested in at this point in time).

Next, selecting your fps (frames per second)… this is important. Though having less fps results in a smaller video file size, whatever number you select here will also limit your game speed displayed on your monitor. What I did was ran Fraps, (with the FPS box of the FPS tab checked, as noted earlier), then ran the game, and now, I see in real-time how many frames per second I receive while playing. I get about 55 most of the time, so I set mine to 50 fps, so that I won’t notice much of a decrease in performance when I start my video recording.

Screenshots:It doesn’t really matter how you configure this tab. I think that NWN2’s built in screenshot tool works fine for my purposes. You might want to try this one to see if it offers some advantage if you like.

That’s all, you are finished configuring your FRAPS software!

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Using FRAPS:

Insure that FRAPS is open by looking into your windows taskbar and seeing the icon. If its not running, you can open it by using the shortcut icon that was automatically installed onto your desktop during installation.

Next, run NWN2. Now if you set up FRAPS exactly how I recommended above, you will see a yellow number overlayed in the lowerleft hand corner of your monitor. This number takes precedence over the game, so you can always see it while NWN2 and FRAPS are running at the same time. This number is telling you how many frames per second are being displayed on your monitor. It is in real time.
This has many uses, mainly for tweaking your settings to maximize your fps for smoother gameplay, but why we will appreciate it most…. It turns red whenever you are recording. So when the exploiters are using their cheats, be sure that this number is red so that you are recording it. Whenever it turns yellow, just click on your Video Capture Hotkey (plus sign of the number pad recommended) in order to start recording again.

This freeware version of FRAPS will record for thirty seconds, then automatically stop recording. That’s probably perfect for our purposes, catching exploiters.

That’s about all there is to know how to use FRAPS. Using it will result in video files being generated in .avi file format, placed within your (install directory)/Fraps/ folder.

The files will be extremely large. They are huge in fact, a full screen 50 fps, 30 second recording will take up over 400 MB of memory. They are this big because they have not yet been compressed, coded, and converted into MPEG or other filetypes. We will cover how that will be done within another thread.

Just note that you don’t want to have too many of these huge files lying around on your drive. They will likely rather quickly start having an impact on your game performance if you do not move them off of your install directory regularly.

Because of that, I’d move them to a new directory, a directory you have reserved for data; My data storage drive is E for example, so I move them to a folder I set up called E:/_video_editting/ folder.