Major loss of quality?

[AzzaBoi]

Hello, I am using 'Fraps' to record footage of games, which results in a good quality video. But when I put that video into Corel Video Studio X4, it suffers a major loss of quality. The video used is 1920x1018 60 fps. What I think the problem is the video is too large for Corel?

[Ken Berry]

Welcome to the forums!

I am not sure if that is a typo, but is it really supposed to be 1018, or is it supposed to be 1080? If the latter, then it is certainly not to large for VS to handle as AVCHD video and others use that frame format size.

If on the other hand it is indeed 1018, then it is not a standard video measurement and that could be one reason for the trouble you are having. So could you please right click on one of the clips inside Video Studio -- either in the timeline or in the library window -- and copy ALL its Properties here. Then we will know exactly what we are dealing with.

One other thing which *is* too large for video studio, though, is the 60 frames per second. Video Studio has trouble with that frame rate, although there are ways of getting around it.

The main question, though, is what you are wanting to do with the footage: edit it and play it on your computer? Play it in its original format on a multimedia player over your HDTV? Make a Blu-Ray disc of it? Or make a standard definition DVD. If the latter, then you would lose quite a lot of the original quality since, by the international DVD standard, Video Studio has to reduce the frame size down to 720 x 480 (NTSC) or 576 (PAL). The bitrate has to be reduced to below 10,000 kbps, which is probably a good deal lower than the original -- and lower bitrate automatically means lower quality, with the effect multiplied if you are also reducing the frame size. A lot of information has to be thrown away. Moreover, a DVD must have a frame rate of 29.97 fps (NTSC) or 25 fps (PAL), so to get that, VS has to throw away 1 frame out of every two to reduce the 60 to 30 (i.e. 29.97) fps.

But all this is conjecture, and we can't really given you any definite answers until we know exactly the Properties of your video and what you want to make from it.

[AzzaBoi]

Thanks for replying so quickly!

http://i51.tinypic.com/w6ppw0.png

http://i56.tinypic.com/2ch7yc.png

I want to make a video and put it on Youtube. I have two video sizes im working with, their properties are in the image URLs above.

Thank you, in the mean time I will try to take some clips with the recommended FPS and sizes.

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

First the images can be attached to this post using the Attachment option below-left (when writing a post)

I would opt for a frame size 1280 x 720, using either 25fps (Pal) or 30fps (ntsc)
If Fraps allows use either Avi-Mpeg4 compression or Mpeg4.

Uncompressed Avi is 65 Gb per hour, rather large

[AzzaBoi]

Thank you!!

Your advice worked, I changed the settings around on Fraps and adjusted my screen frames and I got some better quality video finishes.

Runescape: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrs2Kkcf8Lcq

Crysis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__UapR5jaAw

I'm hoping to get 720p quality on Crysis though.. i'll muck around with settings.

THANK YOU~!

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

I have viewed the two samples, they seem to have a border to the right and left.
This indicates to me that the video itself is not using 16:9 ratio.
Notice that they have different size borders.

What you have though looks good quality, I think you are winning.
The video on Crysis seems to be 720P

The highest HD frame size would be 1920 x 1080, you could try that.

Good luck

[AzzaBoi]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ina0OyEsaqg

Yay. excuse the lag in the game.. My computer isn't the best. I set Fraps to record at 25 fps, do you think this is the best setting for all games that I record? I'm wondering if I can get it up to 1080p?