| Developer(s) | Beepa |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 3.4.7 / October 22, 2011[1] |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows |
| Type | Screencasting |
| License | Proprietary, Shareware |
| Website | fraps.com |
Fraps (derived from Frames per second) is a benchmarking, screen capture, and real-time video capture utility for DirectX and OpenGL applications. It is commonly used to determine a computer's performance with a game, as well as record gaming footage. The program is very popular in the making of amateur machinima films.
Fraps utilizes a specialized codec designed for capturing videos with minimal impact on game performance, as it has been optimized to use much less CPU time than most other codecs while still reducing the hard-disk bandwidth needed to save the video. However the tradeoff is that the Fraps codec is considerably less space-efficient than standard video formats such as H.264, as well as making recorded videos unplayable unless Fraps (or ffdshow) is installed. Fraps recordings can be transcoded to a standard format using software such as Windows Movie Maker or VirtualDub.
The trialware (unregistered) version of Fraps is identical to the registered version, except for a watermark at the top of every video, and a 30 second video length limit. Screenshots are not watermarked in the free version but can only be taken in the BMP format.
Fraps can be used to record video at resolutions up to 2560×1600 in size. Fraps is designed to be able to record video at HD resolutions on modern computers, including 720p (1280×720) and 1080p (1920×1080).
Fraps can take screenshots in various formats: BMP, TGA, JPEG, and PNG.
In order for Fraps to take pictures or capture videos onto their system, users must first be using a program that uses DirectX or OpenGL. Programs that run in Windows without DirectX or OpenGL are not supported, and therefore Fraps cannot capture desktop applications under Windows 2000 and XP. The Windows Vista and Windows 7 desktop runs through DirectX when the Aero interface is used, and can therefore be captured by Fraps.
Due to Fraps not supporting AVI 2.0 OpenDML extensions (and using AVI 1.0 instead), the maximum clip size is about 3.9 GiB. Should the recorded clip exceed this limit, it is automatically split into separate files which must be joined in the transcoding stage.
Starting from version 3.0, Fraps supports DirectX 11, and generally is compatible with Windows 7.