To encode our videos captured with FRAPS or Mirillis Action, we use MeGUI.

You will need the latest version of MeGUI and two files:

• MeGUI is downloadable on SourceForge.
• GSY_1_Update.zip
• GSY_2_Profiles.zip

Note: we do not guarantee that MeGUI will be able to encode all video formats.

How to install our profiles in MeGUI:

Extract MeGUI in a folder, then extract GSY_1_Update.zip in the same folder, replace files when asked.

Launch MeGUI, it will ask to do some updates, choose "Yes", then click on "Update" in the update window.
MeGUI will ask to restart once the updates are downloaded, choose "Yes", it restarts itself.

Once restarted, it will ask again for little updates, click again on "Yes" then "Update".
When the updates are done, close the update window, then close MeGUI.

Now extract GSY_2_Profiles.zip in MeGUI's folder (MeGUI has to be closed because it recreates every profiles files on exit, so it would delete the new ones if the extraction is done with MeGUI open). Once again, replace the files.

This time it's done, MeGUI is up to date and ready to use.

To encode a video with MeGUI:

Launch MeGUI, at the bottom of the window you'll find "One-Click", click it, a new window opens.

At the top of this window, you can open or drag and drop a file in the "Video" "Input".

At the bottom, in the "Output" fieldset, a dropdown lists all the profiles, the one we use most often is already selected, but depending on the length, resolution (720p or 1080p) and the desired quality, you may have to choose another profile (the best way is to try several profiles to know which one to use depending on the videos' content).

Now all you need to do is click "Go" to start encoding.

Details on the different profiles :

Profile name is made that way: GSY_resolution_quality_complexity

Choosing the resolution is quite simple, if the video to encode is in 1280*720 or less, choose a 720p profile, if the video's resolution is higher than 1280*720, choose 1080p.

Regarding quality, though the maximum bitrate is the same in every profiles of the same resolution (15Mb/s in 720p and 35Mb/s in 1080p), if the content of the video does not move a lot (like in a point-and-click for example), the maximum bitrate may never be reached and the quality setting would be limiting the final render (if some quality is reach with a low bitrate, the encoder wont raise it up), so two quality are proposed: q15 et q12 (Quantizer CRF or Bitrate Quantizer), and contrary to we would think, q12 proposes offers a much better quality than q15. For most of our video we use q15.

The complexity defines with how much precision the encoding will be done, we offer two of three complexity settings depending on the quality, going from the less to the most complex: medium, slow, veryslow.

The more the complexity is high (veryslow), the longer the encoding will be, but the video will have a better quality, and the final file size can be smaller (because the encoder analyses more images in advance and choose a better encoding logic for the upcoming images, while trying to maximise image quality).

For example Nvidia's ShadowPlay offers 50Mb/s bitrates, but with a very low complexity (along with other things) to be able to encode in real time, thus, the image quality much lower than our videos captured with Fraps or Action then encoded with a high complexity and a lower bitrate (the final file size is also lower in our case).

Some examples of profile choices that we use depending on the games or the videos:

(without taking into account resolution and complexity)

• racing games or FPS/TPS (gameplay): q15, because images changes quickly and moves a lot, so the maximum bitrate is reached quickly in this kind of games, q12 would not change anything or would increase file size in scenes not moving that much.
• point and click and top view games or 2D scrolling: q12, the image will have more details than q15, but if there is too much changes in the image, q15 is advisable.
• environment videos: q12, it's better to show environments with a better quality, and generaly it's made of panoramic movements that are not complex to encode.