Ever saw that awesome killing shot or see something so hilarious you need to show to everyone? Unfortunately, as soon as you reach for your screenshot button, the moment has passed and you’re just left with an uninteresting screen.

Never worry about finding the screenshot button ever again, my friend. As long as you have a large enough hard drive, Fraps and VirtualDub will come to your rescue.
 

The Tools

Fraps is used to measure frames per seconds, has its own screenshot button, and best of all, Fraps can be used to record gameplay.

VirtualDub is a free tool that compresses videos into a much more manageable size to upload to the video sharing site of your choice.

With these two tools and an image editor like GIMP, Photoshop, or InfranView, you now have what you need to create some great looking screenshots without having to get timings right.

Recording the Shot

 
Make sure Fraps is running and launch the game of your choice. If you have the Frames Per Second counter enabled for Fraps, you will see it in the corner of your game with yellow numbers. Once you hit your record button, it will turn red.

Onto the actual recording, make sure you have plenty of hard drive space for the recordings! Recording at 1920×1200, 2 minutes of recording takes up around 4GB.

When you get to a scene you want to record, just hit the record button on your keyboard. Once you are satisfy you have enough footage, press the record button again to stop recording.

Exit the game and find navigate to the folder where you saved your recordings.

Finding the Shot

 
Launch VirtualDub and drag the video clip of the segment you just played into VirtualDub.

Drag the slider along the timeline on the bottom of the video to get to a section of the video you think is interesting. Once there, use the Left and Right arrow keys to advance or back the video one frame at a time.

Find a nice shot you want? “Press Control-1” or go into “Video —-> Copy Source Frame to Clipboard.”

What you have now is that frame saved and ready to paste.

Saving the Shot

 
Open up your favorite image editor, create a new file and paste. Alter the size or mess around with the image and then save it in the image format of your choice.

Congratulations, you just created a screenshot.

Adam Jensen, nipple twisting extraordinar