Denizens of Maximum PC's forums and gamers everywhere are familiar with Beepa's Fraps, the benchmarking, screen capture and movie-making software made especially for gaming. But even if your idea of a good game is a rousing hand of Solitaire, if you ever need to capture screens or movies in Windows, consider adding Fraps to your toolkit.

Fraps to the Rescue in Windows Media Center

It's no exaggeration to say that Fraps had a major role in making my forthcoming book, Maximum PC Microsoft Windows Vista Exposed, possible. One of the most important chapters in this new book (available on August 24) is the chapter on Windows Media Center (WMC), the multimedia presentation and TV recording powerhouse updated from Windows XP Media Center Edition. WMC is one of the "must have" features of Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate editions.

As I worked on the chapter, I must have tried a half-dozen or more screen capture programs, from the biggest names in the business to various freeware programs. All tried - and failed - to capture WMC's famous "10 foot UI" in full-screen mode. Time after time I got black screens instead of menus. I didn't want to take the easy way out as some books have done of running WMC in a window: although you can do it (and capture the menus with most screen-cap programs on the market), WMC just isn't as much fun in a window - and hardly anyone runs it that way.

Fortunately, on the recommendation of my son Jeremy (the biggest gamer in the family - and a great photographer and digital artist too), I fired up Fraps and found the answer to my problem. Fraps had no problems grabbing WMC screens, enabling me to illustrate the WMC chapter properly. It's no surprise that both Jeremy and Fraps got a well-deserved "Thank you" in the book.

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news, windows xp, Windows Vista, DirectX, FRAPS, screen capture, movie capture, OpenGL

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