How to Measure Frame Rate on Consoles

We have also prepared a special video release that describes individual stages in more detail.

Frame rate or the time between frames is a very important indicator of how smooth a game is. But while on PC we can easily measure their values ​​using various overlays, on consoles it is definitely not so easy. But if you watch content from, for example, Digital Foundry, then you probably know that frame rate can be measured on consoles too. But how can this be achieved and is it possible to try something similar yourself? The answer to the second question is yes, and I will try to answer the first in the following text.

What we need:

1. Cutting the card
2. Image Capture Software (OBS)
3. Frame Rate Analysis Software (Trdrop)

What is a cut map

Since the frame rate cannot be measured directly on the console itself, and its recording capabilities are very limited and not suitable for our needs, we will have to use an editing card. A device that is located in the middle between the console itself and the monitor or TV. The image passes through the editing card not only to the display device, but also to your computer or laptop, where it can be further processed. This is the perfect solution for capturing video from a device other than the one we are recording on.

How to choose a cutting chart

Since many of you probably won’t have a cutting board at home, I thought I’d include some tips on what to buy here. Basically, we distinguish between two types of editing cards: internal and external, the differences between which are probably pretty clear from the names themselves. An internal editing card, like a video card, connects directly to your computer via a PCIe slot, while an external one is portable and connects via a USB cable. Until recently, it was believed that internal clippers usually had better parameters, but this is no longer entirely true.

You will be interested in choosing the following things. First of all, of course, the maximum supported resolution and frame rate, or various combinations of them, which you need to carefully study. And most importantly, you need to distinguish between passthrough (the image that goes to your monitor or TV) and capture (the image for recording that goes to your computer). The values ​​​​can often be different (for example, passthrough is 4K 60, but capture is only 4K 30), so be careful.

The format of the video that is transferred to your computer can also be a decisive factor. In the past, cards often had their own encoder, which would “degrade” the video in advance. Today, it is common to get a lossless image, but it is still good to check such characteristics when buying. For example, some cards have a combination of the highest resolution and frame rate, “fixed” by MJPEG compression. This is not a problem for classic use, but is unsuitable for frame rate analysis. It is also important to support technologies such as VRR and, for some, HDR imaging, but again this may be limited to certain resolutions and frame rates. In short, editing cards is a whole science, if in doubt, I recommend watching the videos of the EposVox channel, which deals with editing cards and video compression.

Anyway, there are two major manufacturers: Elgato and AverMedia. I only have personal experience with the first brand, but I have also had very good reviews about AverMedia cards. Both companies have recently released new products that fully support HDMI 2.1. Ironically, external cards have received more attention, while the Elgato 4K X is probably the best editing card on the market right now (which I personally use), as it supports both pass-through and 4K 120 capture, while the competition from AverMedia only supports pass-through. But if you don’t need the best of the best, you can go for a cheaper option. For example, before the 4K X was released, I was happily using the Elgato HD60 X.

Recording software (OBS)

Once we have the hardware that gets the image to the computer, we also need software that can load and save the image. Personally, I only have experience with the relatively popular OBS, but you can certainly use any other software that you like, although it requires some specifics. First, you need to set the editing card correctly, the desired resolution and frame rate. If you have the console turned on and you can see the image in OBS, you can move on. Otherwise, do not panic, with a black screen you can often just use the simple advice “just turn it on and off”, in this case, disconnect and reconnect the USB cable of the editing card to the computer (if you have an external card).

The good news is that you don’t have to “mess around” with the settings too much, but there is a pretty big catch. In order to properly analyze the frame rate, we need visually lossless shots. Even if we used high-quality compression, such as AV1, and a relatively high bit rate, the video would still have certain (though difficult to see with the eye) artifacts that would make it impossible to analyze the quality. The image must be absolutely clean, and therefore we must strive for this not quite ideal, but the only possible option.

Lossless imaging requires its own efforts, and the resulting file sizes are huge. If you record in 4K, then easily more than 5 GB per minute. But this is a fact that almost nothing can be done about and only a large enough storage can cope with it.

Otherwise, the setup is very simple, here you have two options. The easiest way is to select “Simple” in the recording settings, and then select lossless quality (use the UT codec with very high speed, but also increased requirements for subsequent work with the saved video).

The second option is to leave the advanced settings and select your preferred codec that supports lossless compression. If you have an Nvidia graphics card, I recommend using NVENC HEVC (H.265) to shift the load to the GPU. The files will be large anyway.

Frame Rate Analysis (Trdrop)

Now that we have the footage, we can finally begin the analysis itself, but here the choice of software is already quite limited. Although Digital Foundry uses its own, now very complex software, they only have it for their own purposes. So we have to rely on the work of people willing to share their creations, and since measuring frame rates on consoles is, in fact, a rather “niche” matter, there is practically only one option: Trdrop. Although the author initially promised a full-fledged second version with a number of improvements, but after two years of silence, I would not even expect that we will ever see it. So we have to rely on version 1.2, which works without problems so far.

After starting the program, you need to add a video file whose frame rate you want to analyze, there can be up to three of them next to each other at the same time. Later, you will be able to see how the data will be displayed. At the bottom is the frame rate time scale, on the left above it is the frame time axis (i.e. the time between frames), and at the top left is the current FPS value. If a gap occurs later, it will be shown in the video with white lines.

In the settings you can adjust a number of parameters, including the frame rate range, the color used, and so on. However, you need to set the “Pixel Difference”, I personally recommend a value of 7. This is because Trdrop works by converting each image to grayscale, and then comparing the difference between the two images (new pixels are white, old pixels are black). If the difference is sufficient, then it is a new image, if not, then it is still the same, i.e. a duplicate image, which means a drop in frame rate.

So the pixel difference sets the pixel tolerance (from 0 to 255), although neither extreme value is ideal. If you set it to 0, the program will treat even duplicates as new frames, and from a 30 fps image you will have 60 fps on the axis. If you set it to 255, on the contrary, Trdrop will also treat new frames as duplicates, and the measured frame rate will be significantly lower than the real one. If you want to check if it works correctly, you can enable delta rendering, which will show you directly the grayscale image the program is working with.

Once you have everything set up, you can start exporting. Be careful though: you can’t export the video directly, everything is saved frame by frame as images (JPEG or TIFF, your choice). In any case, you can choose whether you want to export the jumpsuit only (which you will then have to link to the video), which is a faster option, or the jumpsuit with the video, which is certainly more demanding, but will save you some work. Of course, it is also important to choose the resolution at which you want to render the result, or the option to enable a live preview so you can see what the frame rate looks like while rendering.

And we are done. If you want to convert the image sequence back to video, just drop them all into a video editing program (I personally use DaVinci Resolve) and render. As you can see, it’s not exactly a simple matter, but analyzing the frame rate is definitely possible even without significant technical knowledge. The biggest obstacle here is the file size, which makes it impossible to effectively measure FPS over longer sections. Unfortunately, this is a problem that can only be solved by measuring the frame rate in real time, which Trdrop does not allow, but maybe we will see such a program one day. In any case, until then, good luck with your frame rate measurements.