Fraps and its use in testing

In this article, we are going to take a look at such a tool as Fraps, its basic principles, and functions.

Fraps – is a software that allows taking screenshots and videos of the screen, and calculating the number of FPS during the testing of games. Fraps is proprietary software, which means it has a time limit for screen recording and a watermark on the videos it captures. The program is developed by Beepa Pty Ltd.

Even though the latest version was released back on February 26, 2013, Fraps is still quite popular among gamers thanks to its many advantages, such as ease of use even for a beginner. This program is not complicated but multifunctional.

Fraps can be downloaded from the official website to get acquainted with the main features of the utility. The installation process is the same as the classic one, so it does not cause any additional complications.

Nevertheless, it is worth noting some peculiarities of working with this program:

• work with the program is possible only on Windows OS;
• the recording is saved in .avi format;
• desktop recording is not possible. Fraps works only in windows of already running applications.

How to use Fraps?

The program's interface and functionality are designed to be as user-friendly as possible.

After launching the utility, the user will see the window below with the «General» tab opened by default, which displays minimal information:

To take FPS, video, or screenshots, select one of the tabs that appear: FPS, Movies, or Screenshots.

The FPS tab

One of the main functions performed by Fraps is taking the FPS (Frames Per Second), which allows you to test the performance of the game. 

For this, you need to go to the appropriate FPS tab, which will provide the following information:

1. The path to the folder containing the file with the FPS data.
2. Setting up a hotkey to start recording FPS.
3. Optional selection of FPS, frame time, minimum, maximum, and average values (3 separate files will be generated after finishing the measurements).
4. The amount of time in seconds during which the values will be recorded.
5. The overlay hotkey shows the current test results.
6. Selecting the corner in which the FPS rate will be displayed.
7. Change of the value per second, not in real-time.

For convenience, the above parameters can be customized individually.

Steps to take FPS values

1. Launch Fraps.
2. Launch the game.
3. Press the hotkey to record FPS (F11).
4. Start playing the game.

The FPS will be displayed in real-time in the upper left corner of the screen.

When you want to stop recording the data, press the same button you used to start it - F11. After the recording is finished, three files are generated: fps, frametimes, and minmaxavg. They can be opened in the path that was specified for saving files (C:\Fraps\Benchmarks).

The fps file stores information about the number of fps per second in the game. It helps to calculate at what point the game sagging appears:

The frametimes file contains information about the time when all frames appear during recording. With its help, one can understand when the game starts to sag (if the time between frames begins to increase). In the screenshot, you can see that the frames of this game appear with the same speed of 0,4 to 0,5 msec.

The minmaxavg file contains information about the number of frames and recording time in seconds, the minimum and maximum FPS during recording, and the average value for the entire measurement period. In the screenshot below, you can see that at some point the sag was up to 28 frames per second, but the average FPS for the entire time was 90:

The Movies tab

 The «Movies» tab has the following functions: 

1. The path to the file folder where videos will be saved.
2. Setting a hotkey for video capture.
3. Setting the video quality.
4. Sound settings.
5. Other settings.

Steps to capture video 

1. Launch Fraps.
2. Launch the game.
3. Press the video recording hotkey (F9).
4. Start playing the game.

 Keep in mind that the FPS indicator turns red while recording the video.

The Screenshots tab

The «Screenshots» tab contains the following functions: 

1. Path to the folder with the file where screenshots will be saved.
2. Setting up a hotkey for taking screenshots.
3. The screenshot saving format.
4. Additional settings.

Steps to take screenshots 

1. Launch Fraps.
2. Launch the game.
3. Start playing the game.
4. Press the hotkey to take a screenshot (F10) at the chosen moment.

At this moment, the FPS indicator will temporarily be on a white background.

There is a «View» button on each tab of the program to quickly open a folder with saved fps files, videos, or screenshots, and a «Change» button to change the file storage path.

In conclusion, Fraps is a pretty decent utility for taking screenshots, videos, and FPS readings in games. However, there are also some shortcomings of this program, and one of the most significant is the large size of the files. But in practice, everyone decides for themselves whether to sacrifice these advantages for other benefits.