Graphic Plug-ins and Fraps

[Kagekaze]

I'm looking for a little help on what's been a rather annoying issue.

I have been trying to produce a few Let's Play type videos for both the Sengoku BASARA and Devil KINGS games to help possibly drum up support for future releases.

The games run fine except for a graphical overlay issue that only happens in GSdx Hardware mode. Software mode is fine, but using Fraps with software mode will crawl the system, needing too much CPU power.

I tried using ZeroGS. The good news, this removes the graphical problem, the bad news is that Fraps now records with a black box around the game when recording as full screen. It's almost like ZeroGS isn't playing at a true 16:9 even if I toggle it by using Shift+F9. I can't seem to change the resolution in the plugin settings.

Checking the videos I see that a full screen recording with GSdx records at 1680x944 while ZeroGS records at 1280x960. I'm not sure why, to be honest.

I would like to try the new Zero plugin being worked on in the sticky thread above, but I have had no success in finding out how to compile the code on my own and I don't have a copy of any programming environments.

For the record, I did try several levels of Skipdraw using GSdx and it did not seem to help. I have also tried the most recent builds on buildbot (r4933 as of this writing).

I can live with the issue, I was just hoping to improve the quality for presentation purposes. In the end, I will probably end up using ZeroGS to solve the overlay issue even if I can't resolve the black box problem. I was just hoping someone smarter could come up with a fix for either problem.

Plugins used:
GSdx 4873 (MSVC 16.00, SSE41) 0.1.16 [r4873]
ZeroGS 0.97.1 [r4488]

Screenshot from the original post in the GSdx thread:


Videos are available in 1080HD
Video showing one of the worst stages:

NOTE: The comment boxes don't show up very well on the small plugin screen, but if you were curious, it is a translation using youtube annotations as subtitles.

Video showing ZeroGS but with the black box surrounding the video:

[avih]

If only ZeroGS gives you good results, you can always crop/re-encode before uploading (possibly after using higher initial quality with Fraps, if you fear quality degradation due to re-encode).

[Kagekaze]

I may have to consider that. The only problem there is my video editing software consists of Windows Live Movie Maker. I would have to look into acquiring new software. I'll definitely keep it in mind, though.

[Shadow Lady]

You can try an older vrsion of GSdx, the one included in PCSX2 0.9.6 (GSdx 890 0.1.14) doesn't have that problem as far as I know.

[Kagekaze]

Wanted to provide a reply to thank you guys for the support and to hopefully update you guys in case it's something that can be eventually tracked down and squashed. It would have been sooner, but I got busy with work and all.

It took me awhile to hunt down a copy of 0.9.6, but I was able to load up GSdx r890 and r868, both seemed to work with my copy of PCSX2 r4873. I didn't notice any graphical issues with the games using the old version. I also ran a FRAPS recording and didn't notice any issues there like I had with ZeroGS, so it looks like I have a working solution for when I get back to making more translation videos.

As of r5082 the issue with Sengoku BASARA and Devil KINGS still exists. I haven't been able to try GSdx r890 with it yet, but I'm fairly sure it'll work.

Again, thank you very much for the information on r890.

[NoVaX1000]

You might have already solved it, but have you tried using Dxtory for video recording over FRAPS by chance?
Dxtory is what I use for just about anything. Gives me pretty solid playable & recording performance in any PC Game old/new or Emulator including games run inside PCSX2.

Recordings of "Spyro: A Hero's Tail" in PCSX2 made with Dxtory - http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB...e=view_all
Other games on PCSX2 also provide decent results when recording in 1080p/60FPS for me. Except I make the program record to 3 Hard Drives simultaneously using Dxtory Video Codec & RawCap.

[Kagekaze]

Thanks for that info, Nova. I might have to consider it if I run into more problems. FRAPS was just easy to use and had minimal impact, plus it seems everyone uses it.

I do have a question about Dxtory, based on what you said, I assume it can capture 2D data like the windows desktop and applications? FRAPS has very specific requirements to record, so I've been meaning to look into a way to record my windows/2d apps. For example, I could record the settings used when playing certain games under PCSX2 or just record instructions for using other windows apps that aren't directx enabled.

If anyone has any other video capture software recommendations, let me know.

[Kagekaze]

Just curious here, would it help if I got GS dumps of the 2 games (Sengoku BASARA and Devil KINGS) while having this issue? or would that not matter since software mode renders without issue?

[rama]

We know that hardware rendering has these overlay issues in a lot of games.
I bet the skipdraw hack could remove it in current GSdx releases btw.

[Kagekaze]

Okay, just wanted to help if possible. I'll give skipdraw another try on a newer SVN build. What's the maximum number allowed for skipdraw? I tried what I thought were some pretty high numbers last time.