FRAPS is a small program whose name is an abbreviation for FRAmes Per Second and because of its growing popularity I decided to write the following short guide, describing its main features:

  • Detection of frames per second of all applications running under DirectX or OpenGL. The program displays how many Frames Per Second (FPS) you are getting in a corner of your screen.
  • Record videos in uncompressed AVI format with a special FRAPS codec. You can record video while playing your favorite game with a resolution of up to 2560×1600 with custom frame rates from 10 to 120 frames per second.
  • Creating Screenshots (supported formats: BMP, JPG and PNG). You can take a screenshot with the press of a key as there is no need to paste into a another program (like MS Paint) every time you want a new screenshot.

The main screen contains all the options of the program, divided into four pages: General (General Settings), FPS (settings for monitoring frames per second), Movies (settings for recording videos), Screenshots (settings for creation of screenshots). Let’s take a look at each of them separately.

1. General

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Registration Details – in this field you can find information about person registered the program. In my case it was demo.

Version and Build - shows the version of the program.

Start Fraps minimized – it determines whether to run FRAPS minimized in the system tray.

Fraps window always on top – it determines whether the window is above all others

Run Fraps when Windows starts - from here you can set up FRAPS to start automatically when Windows starts.

2. FPS
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Overlay Hotkey – use this option to choose a keyboard key, that changes the location  of the frame counter.

Benchmarking Hotkey - assigns a key, that activates the Benchmarking feature. Benchmarking is a function that calculates the average frame rate between two selected points.

Overlay Corner – sets the default location of the frame counter.

Only update overlay once a second – determines the refresh speed of counter that would be every second ( not in real time ) if selected.

Stop benchmark automatically after 60 seconds - from here you can choose whether the benchmark to stop automatically after a specified number of seconds.

MinMaxAvg - this option allows you to record the average, minimum and maximum number of frames, as well as the benchmark duration. When selected it creates a FRAPSLOG.txt file in the FRAPS folder.

Frametimes – allows you to record the times in milliseconds (ms) of each frame displayed on screen. Values are recorded in a .CSV file created in the Benchmarks subfolder.

FPS – Contains the frame rate value for each second of the benchmark.

3. Movies


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Folder to save movies in – this is the folder where FRAPS will store all recorded videos. Use the Change button to select a new folder, or the View button to show the current contents of the folder.

Video Capture Hotkey – here you can assign a button that will record movies.

Half-size / Full-size – when using Half Size FRAPS will store the movie at half of the current resolution of the game screen. It is possible to determine the frame rate of the output movie. You can choose between 25fps, 30fps, 50fps, 60fps, or a custom value up to 100fps.

Record Sound – allows you to save the game audio along with the video.

Detect best sound input - by choosing this option (recommended) you will enable FRAPS to determine the best audio input device. If you choose “Use Windows input” the default Windows recording input will be used.


4. Screenshots


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Folder to save screenshots in – this is the folder where FRAPS will store all captured screenshots.

Screen Capture Hotkey – lets you assign a button that will take a screenshot of the game screen.

BMP, JPG, PNG, TGA – allows you to you select the output format for screenshots.

Include frame rate overlay on screenshots – includes the frame rate counter in your screenshots.