05-20-2010, 01:38 PM
I have always talked to nosound, admin, rene, and others about doing a comparison video of some of the fastest or most well known video capture software. I concluded to finally do a test of growler guncam, We game, and the infamous FRAPS.
Before getting to the video, let me explain what was done.
I recorded using each of the 3 versions while playing the beginning of the Wii game "Castle of Shikigami 3". The 3 files were put together in a video editor known as TrakaxPc. As a result, the videos will appear semi weirdly in aspect ratio do to the way trakaxpc accepted the resolutions of each file. This game can run fullspeed on my system but with a capture software running, I have seen fps drops. I concluded this would be a good enough game as a base in this case to see how major the fps hit is on each software.
With that out the way, let me show you what my basic process load is before turning on any software. Because We Game needs a internet connection to run, I was forced to keep a couple processes on and decided for sake of neutrality, to also keep Avast anti virus on as well.
I did this test on My XP 32 bit nlited as it was simpler for me to setup all the programs (need to move more stuff to win 7)
My Basic Processes
![[Image: QUo66.png]](http://imgur.com/QUo66.png)
I system has been put back to stock for running this test. As a Result, my E7400 is back to 2.8 ghz and my GTS 250 is back to 738 mhz core clock.
Here are the setup options for each of the programs
WE GAME version 1.2.1
![[Image: Mk1pw.png]](http://imgur.com/Mk1pw.png)
FRAPS version 3.2.2
![[Image: Oh9JA.png]](http://imgur.com/Oh9JA.png)
Growler Guncam version 3.2.6
![[Image: 0839R.png]](http://imgur.com/0839R.png)
As for the Dolphin base, I went with Dolphin 5006m (a spellforce version)
Here are those settings used for each 3 parts
![[Image: 7RO8X.png]](http://imgur.com/7RO8X.png)
Here is The Video after All was said and done.
WE Game 1.2.1 vs Fraps 3.2.2 vs Growler Guncam 3.2.6
WE Game 1.2.1 vs Fraps 3.2.2 vs Growler Guncam 3.2.6 CPU OCED 3.5 ghz
Extra... You will notice the first video on both has colors messed up. For some reason We game compression/ encoding and trakaxpc don't like eachother. The Colors get inverted. Blue's are now red and vice versa. I thought it looked cool and didn' really hamper the result so still used the file.
Conclusions I observed
WE game and growler guncam runs very much identical. We game though, is very simplistic with its approach to capture resolution and codecs for its file output. A result I found was that the WE game videos when even in HD recording would produce files with a very weird resolution of 1024x 574. As you can see in my options above, I had the resolution of dolphin set to 1280x720 windowed. Another hindrance was that the program did not run if not connected online. The program itself is tide to its online system in some way. FRAPS video files come out nicely but there are multiple problems observed. As the video capture rate of FRAPS is also tide with the games frames per second, problems can occur to result in either slow game frame rate or FRAPS causing the game to lag. In this case, Castle of Shikigami 3 is a 60 fps game. Because FRAPS capture rate is in this way, the video actually has to be recording at 60 frames per second for a game that is running at 60 frames per second. We Game and Growler Guncam both have the ability for the actual video being produced to run at 30 frames while recording a source at higher frame rate. This is probably why many people who use FRAPS loose so much fps in there game while playing. Fraps most like needs twice as much cpu power to handle the frame rate in comparison to the other programs tested. Also, Fraps runs in uncompressed avi. While this preserves the best quality, it does so at a great expense in hard drive space. Growler guncam can also have this problem in the way it produces .gcf files of the videos. Unlike FRAPS though, it has its own editing software and allows for files in other forms outside of uncompressed Off these 3 presented, growler guncam has the most flexibility. Output video frame rate can be at any level, any resolution can be placed, and videos can be output in almost any FourCC code (divx, xvid, m4s2 etc etc) as long as you have the codecs installed on the computer. The problem though on growler guncam is that sound is being captured not from source but from whats coming from your speakers. This usually produces ok sound quality when set up correctly but the hertz rate is much lower. For me I am only able to achieve a hertz rating of 22050 in comparison to We GAME and FRAPS 44100 hertz sound quality. For a comparison of output file sizes, FRAPS was 3.5 gb, We Game 512 mb, and Growler Guncam .gcf file was 1.8 gigs which after using its output AVI editor and xvid codec went to 850mb.
Before getting to the video, let me explain what was done.
I recorded using each of the 3 versions while playing the beginning of the Wii game "Castle of Shikigami 3". The 3 files were put together in a video editor known as TrakaxPc. As a result, the videos will appear semi weirdly in aspect ratio do to the way trakaxpc accepted the resolutions of each file. This game can run fullspeed on my system but with a capture software running, I have seen fps drops. I concluded this would be a good enough game as a base in this case to see how major the fps hit is on each software.
With that out the way, let me show you what my basic process load is before turning on any software. Because We Game needs a internet connection to run, I was forced to keep a couple processes on and decided for sake of neutrality, to also keep Avast anti virus on as well.
I did this test on My XP 32 bit nlited as it was simpler for me to setup all the programs (need to move more stuff to win 7)
My Basic Processes
I system has been put back to stock for running this test. As a Result, my E7400 is back to 2.8 ghz and my GTS 250 is back to 738 mhz core clock.
Here are the setup options for each of the programs
WE GAME version 1.2.1
FRAPS version 3.2.2
Growler Guncam version 3.2.6
As for the Dolphin base, I went with Dolphin 5006m (a spellforce version)
Here are those settings used for each 3 parts
Here is The Video after All was said and done.
WE Game 1.2.1 vs Fraps 3.2.2 vs Growler Guncam 3.2.6
WE Game 1.2.1 vs Fraps 3.2.2 vs Growler Guncam 3.2.6 CPU OCED 3.5 ghz
Extra... You will notice the first video on both has colors messed up. For some reason We game compression/ encoding and trakaxpc don't like eachother. The Colors get inverted. Blue's are now red and vice versa. I thought it looked cool and didn' really hamper the result so still used the file.
Conclusions I observed
WE game and growler guncam runs very much identical. We game though, is very simplistic with its approach to capture resolution and codecs for its file output. A result I found was that the WE game videos when even in HD recording would produce files with a very weird resolution of 1024x 574. As you can see in my options above, I had the resolution of dolphin set to 1280x720 windowed. Another hindrance was that the program did not run if not connected online. The program itself is tide to its online system in some way. FRAPS video files come out nicely but there are multiple problems observed. As the video capture rate of FRAPS is also tide with the games frames per second, problems can occur to result in either slow game frame rate or FRAPS causing the game to lag. In this case, Castle of Shikigami 3 is a 60 fps game. Because FRAPS capture rate is in this way, the video actually has to be recording at 60 frames per second for a game that is running at 60 frames per second. We Game and Growler Guncam both have the ability for the actual video being produced to run at 30 frames while recording a source at higher frame rate. This is probably why many people who use FRAPS loose so much fps in there game while playing. Fraps most like needs twice as much cpu power to handle the frame rate in comparison to the other programs tested. Also, Fraps runs in uncompressed avi. While this preserves the best quality, it does so at a great expense in hard drive space. Growler guncam can also have this problem in the way it produces .gcf files of the videos. Unlike FRAPS though, it has its own editing software and allows for files in other forms outside of uncompressed Off these 3 presented, growler guncam has the most flexibility. Output video frame rate can be at any level, any resolution can be placed, and videos can be output in almost any FourCC code (divx, xvid, m4s2 etc etc) as long as you have the codecs installed on the computer. The problem though on growler guncam is that sound is being captured not from source but from whats coming from your speakers. This usually produces ok sound quality when set up correctly but the hertz rate is much lower. For me I am only able to achieve a hertz rating of 22050 in comparison to We GAME and FRAPS 44100 hertz sound quality. For a comparison of output file sizes, FRAPS was 3.5 gb, We Game 512 mb, and Growler Guncam .gcf file was 1.8 gigs which after using its output AVI editor and xvid codec went to 850mb.
![[Image: qAquP.png]](http://imgur.com/qAquP.png)
, FRAPS is a mayor hindrance for me because of hard drive space it takes up and as you mentioned it drives the fps down for most of the dolphin games (pc games don't lag as much). I recorded my silent hill: sh videos at 30 fps and that gave me pretty good results but as you know, each clip ended up being like 3gbs (or whatever is the limit before fraps splits it up), I think I ended up with about 100gbs in clips by the time I finished recording.