Fraps runs fine for an hour or so, then the framerate crashes

frapsrecordingtechnical-issues

Whenever I record footage with Fraps, everything will run silky smooth at 60 fps for about an hour or so, but then the framerate will constantly lag at 1-15 fps. This will happen when playing any game. I have plenty of free HDD space.

Here are my PC specs:

AMD Phenom II 3.4Ghz
Radeon HD 6870
8GB DDR3 RAM
Seagate Barracuda 1TB

Here are my Fraps settings:

60 fps
30-sec loop buffer
Lock framerate both on and off

Does anyone know what could be causing this? If not, then what would you suggest as an alternate recording software? (NOT CamStudio or Camtasia)

Best Answer

Well turns out I discovered the answer to this myself.

Fraps heavily writes to the HDD, and slows down the game if it can't write the videos fast enough. For me, this was because my HDD was becoming rapidly fragmented as Fraps ran over long periods of time (about 10% after 1 hour). This was causing Fraps to not be able to keep up with the action.

From my research, there are two fixes to this:

  • Record to a second HDD dedicated to Fraps
  • Set Fraps to record at a lower resolution or lower framerate. For instance, record at 30fps, but turn off framerate lock so the game isn't reduced to 30fps (probably the best solution).
  • Take a break every time Fraps decides to slow down, and defrag your disk.

I hope this helps someone out in the future!

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