Test performance and recording gaming exploits with Fraps

You might be brilliant at games but how to do you prove that to other gamers? Fraps can record videos of games that can then be shared with other people. It can also be used to take screenshots and measure the performance of a computer.

Installation is simple, although Fraps does not install into the Program Files folder by default. Only a minor annoyance, but it could lead to confusion later on.

This unregistered version leaves a watermark (an image) along the top of the video and will only record up to 30 seconds. Screenshots are limited to BMP format. The full version can also save screenshots in Jpeg, PNG and TGA.

The first use for Fraps was to measure the frames per second performance of computers; how many times the screen is updated in the game. Thirty frames per second is considered a minimum for enjoying games. Fraps displays this figure in a corner of the screen so you can see how the computer is performing.

It is possible to set up keyboard shortcuts for starting and stopping video capture and displaying the frame counter.

The videos are saved using Fraps own video format. The software for playing this (called codec) are installed along with Fraps but you might need to convert the video before sending it to other people.

Interestingly we did find that one game, Racer, dims the display when it detects Fraps recording video. This hasn't happened in any other games.

System Requirements:

• Requires DirectX 9.0c
• Requires Administrator rights
• Supports all modern CPU's (Pentium 3 and above)
• Captures fastest with an Nvidia Geforce or ATI Radeon graphics card.