HOWTO GTA2 Screen Capture

Sections:

• Software you will need
• Using Fraps
• Using Virtualdub

Software you will need

Download and install them preferably in the same order as listed below. When ffdshow asks you which programs should use ffdshow codecs, just leave the settings at default.

• VirtualDub for working with the video, free.
• ffdshow for the codecs, free.
• Fraps for recording the video, proprietary not free.
• LAME ACM codec for encoding audio. Download "LAME x.xx ACM codec", unpack anywhere, right-click on LameACM.inf and select "Install". Do this before opening VirtualDub.

Notes: There is another program called VirtualDubMod, it supports MPEG-2, Matroska and Ogg Theora, but this project is ABANDONED so do not use it. There are also two free/open source alternatives to Fraps, one is Taksi and the other is Camstudio, but I couldn't get neither to record GTA2 in a smooth and satisfying way. Try them if you wish, and if you succeed in a smooth 30fps video capture, email me.

If you want to edit the video, you can use the crappy Windows Movie Maker, or one of the free programs listed below. Note that this is optional and I will not write a guide for using them.

• WAX OPTIONAL, free non-linear video editor.
• Mewa Film OPTIONAL, free non-linear video editor.

Using Fraps

Open Fraps and set it up as follows:

• "Folder to save movies in" should be a folder with a lot of free space, preferably 10-20GB. A typical 20 minute game takes about 6GB of temporary space. If you have 2 hard drives, you should choose a folder on the 'second' hard drive, NOT the one you booted Windows from.
• "Video Capture Hotkey" is simply the key you will press to start recording, I chose F11. Remember to choose a key that GTA2 and Windows wont be using while you will be recording.
• "Record Sound" blabla will finish this later

Now its time to make sure your recorded sound isn't too loud. You do this in the Windows volume mixer. See the image below. Go to Control Panel > Sound and Audio Devices > Device Volume > Advanced. In the window that pops up, go to Options > Properties, select "Recording", in the box below tick "Stereo Mix", click OK, and move the Stereo Mix slider more or less to the 3rd notch from the bottom. Close it.
If you have that slider at max, then your recorded videos will probably have the sound so loud that it will be clipped. Moving this slider down should solve that. To find the best placement you should experiment (record a test clip, if its too loud move the slider down, record again, etc) but the third notch from the bottom should be good.

Using Virtualdub

1. Open Virtualdub.
2. Open the recorded file. Click on "File > Open", browser to the file, click OPEN.
3. Fraps records files up to 3.9GB (16 000 frames at 640x480, 13 minutes at 20fps), then it starts recording to a new file. If your match was a long one, chances are it will be split up into 2 or 3 files. In order to merge them, you already have the first part opened, so now click on "File > Append New Segment" and open the second, and repeat that for all the parts. They will get appended to the end of the currently open file(s), you do not need to scroll to the end.
4. If you recorded audio:
1. If you recorded GTA2 audio and want to keep it, click on "Audio > Full Processing Mode", and then again "Audio > Compression", and select Lame MP3, "44100 Hz, 128 kbps CBR, stereo".
2. If you recorded audio but do not want to keep it, click on "Audio > No Audio".
3. If you want to have some other song playing during your video, click on "Audio > Audio from another file", select your file with music (make sure its the same length as your video) and click OPEN. If it is an mp3 file then you are done with setting up audio. If it is not an mp3 file, then once you did this go back and do audio step 1 and then you will be done with audio.
5. Now click on "Video > Fast Recompress".
6. Click on "Video > Framerate".
1. If you recorded the video at less than 30fps, e.g. 20fps as I recommended before, then select "Source Rate Adjustment > Change frame rate to (fps): 30". Click OK.
2. If you recorded the video at 20fps AND its an incredibly laggy game, e.g. a Poland vs USA game, then select "Source Rate Adjustment > Change frame rate to (fps): 60" and "Frame rate converion > Convert to fps: 30". Click OK.
7. Click on "Video > Compression", select "ffdshow Video Codec" from the list and click CONFIGURE. Set everything as the screenshots show EXCEPT for "Number of threads" - that value should be the number of processors you have +1, so since I currently have an Intel Core 2 Duo processor (2+1=3), then I entered 3. Everything that is not in the screenshot you should leave as it is by default.
   
   Quality is important, 60 is a good compromise, but SEE THIS as well!
   Click on OK and then again on OK, you are done here.
8. When you upload this video to youtube for example, it will automatically get re-encoded into a lower quality video. Some guides might tell you that you will get better quality if you yourself scale the video down to 320x240, BULLSHIT, DO NOT DO THIS! Why? The answer is long and it would be off-topic for this tutorial. To make it short - do that only if you really know what you are doing and WHY. On the other hand if your recorded video has a high resolution like 1024x768 and you dont really need it that high, you can scale it down to e.g. 640x480 using the lanczos algorithm. Here's how:
1. Go back to ffdshow video encoder configuration, "Video > Compression > CONFIGURE".
2. Click on "Input", tick "Enable image processing" and click on CONFIGURE.
   
3. Tick "Resize & aspect" and enter your desired resolution, i downscaled to 480x360 in this example.
4. Go to "Settings", in "Luma method" select "Lanczos" and drag the "Number of taps:" slider all the way to 10.
5. Click on OK and then again on OK, you are done here.
6. Click on "File > Save as AVI", set the destination filename and folder and click on SAVE when you are done. Your video will be saved with all the changes you made, including resizing and audio recompression. Ready to upload!