FRAPS 3.2 Introduces Buffered Video Recording

Have you ever had FRAPS running while playing a game, and couldn’t hit your video record hotkey fast enough to capture something amazing that just happened? That can be frustrating, to say the least, but beepa, developer of the popular screenshot and benchmarking tool, has released a new version that aims to prevent this kind of “Doh!” moment from ever happening again.

Beginning in version 3.2.0, FRAPS can utilize a feature called “loop recording”, which when used, begins a 30 second buffer. When I first read this in the changelog, I was stumped. For some reason, the actual use for the feature just went right over my head. beepa’s support team was quick to get back to me and explain the feature in more detail though, and I have to say… it’s pretty cool.

To put it simply, if you begin this “buffer”, FRAPS will continually record the previous 30 seconds of your gameplay, but not save it to your hard disk. If something interesting happens in the game, you can hit the video recording button again and it will save that 30 seconds to the disk, while also continuing to record as normal. With this mode constantly running, you’ll essentially never miss out on that perfectly-timed capture again.

The loop recording mode has a couple of obvious downsides. For one, it will decrease your frame rate to 30 FPS, only goes as far back as 30 seconds, and it will constantly barrage your hard disk with writes, even for gameplay you aren’t going to be recording. But on the other hand, if you do happen to use this feature, it may really pay off in helping you capture that cool moment in your favorite games.

Fraps 3.2 brings a new feature for registered users – loop recording, constantly capture the previous 30 seconds of video. To start the buffering press and hold the video capture hotkey for a second. The Fraps counter will turn pink to show that video is being cached. When you want to save the action simply tap the capture hotkey and the recording will continue as normal (including the previous 30 seconds of footage). Never miss a moment again.