FRAPS Video Conversion

Ok, this is for those of you who use FRAPS to grab video of your gameplay but have had issues converting the files from there...

If you don't konw what FRAPS is, do yourself a favour and look here.

If you don't think just recording game play is a good enough reason, Google machinima (or maybe look for classics like Red vs Blue.)

Info in this post comes mainly from here.

Now this may not be a problem for many, but if you have the issue such as no audio when you convert fraps avi's, this is for you. For some reason, Adobe Premiere (as well as Sony Vegas) does not like the files generated by fraps when they include audio. Here is a quick method to get things in a format that will not cause issues. This was discussed more at length in this thread.

To Setup:

1. Go download virtualdub at this site: http://www.virtualdub.org/
2. Extract the folder from the zip and set it on your desktop, or at least make a shortcut to the VeeDub executable. (its VeeDub64 if you downloaded the 64 bit version)
3. Download and install the Lagarith codec from http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html (i used the windows installer link)
4. Run Virtualdub, and go to File>Open Video File>YourFrapsFile.avi

Converting:

1. Go to Video, select "full processing mode"
2. Go to Video>Compression
3. Select Lagarith Lossless Codec and click ok
4. Go to Audio, then select "direct stream copy"
5. Go to File, select "Save as AVI" and give it a name

The footage will be slightly larger than the fraps file, but will not be using the fraps codec which sometimes causes issues in editing programs such as Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere.

So that's that, feel free to convert or use it however you want now... like I did here, taking 1 gig of good graphics and bad driving and converting it to a 20mb flash video :)

Partition change boot repair...

OK, so it may not be the most common thing you would do, but I had left an area of my hard disk empty and without partitioned so that when I had settled in, I could use it for whatever would benefit most from the space.

Now, the setup of my main boot disk was as follows:

• Partition 1 - Windows Vista C:
• Above mentioned empty space
• Partition 2 - Ubuntu Studio
• Extended Partition:
  Linux Swap Partition
  Gaming Partition G:

So, I then without a care in the world quickly added a B: for documents in the space mentioned... moved all my locations and files there... and shut down.

The fun started the next day... Of course, as I am multi-booting, I use a Linux boot manager... they just can't be beaten... GRUB being the system of choice for Ubuntu.

Now, only when the Grub menu puts out nothing but an error did I realise what I had just done... (the error didn't really help.. it was just then that I worked it out;) Linux including the Grub files, according the the hard disc, are now not on partition 2... but partition 3.

Phew.. glad I knew that... now, how to fix it.

I'll skip the things I tried with my USB live dists and the like and go straight to the solution I think:

1. Pop in your installation disk and boot to it (if you don't have it any more.. download a new one... it's Linux for goodness sake :)
2. Choose the recovery option and then open a console on the partition of your linux installation (you should know this, having just edited the partition)
3. If use an older version of grub you will first need to edit your menu.lst file to point to the correct partitions.
4. Finally, just reinstall Grub. In the following example, my linux root is sda3 and sda is the boot disk:
   sudo grub > root (hd0,2)
   > setup (hd0)
   > quit
5. Now just reboot and breath a sigh of relief :)