Why lower Resolution?
 

Ok so I record at 1152x864 since that's the highest I can record full screen without having a dual core.
Now when I encode it I can get it down small enough in file size to what I want, and the quality is near perfect.
My question is, if I wanted to make the movie public, should I be resizing it down in resolution to say 800x600 or smaller? I ask that since almost all WoW movies I've ever seen were no higher then 800x600, most around 640x480.
I tried resizing it down to 800x600, and the quality did go down a bit which I expected, but what surprised me was the file size was pretty much the same.
So I could either have this higher resolution movie with perfect quality or a smaller one without any difference is filesize. Makes no sense to want to resize it.
Is lowering the resolutions mainly just for compatibility for other users? Like for those that only use 1024x768?

Good question mate , one id be interested in knowing the answer to. I play at 1920 x 1200 and watching a fraps clip at half size looks HORRIBLE , but a full sized clip looks as perfect as in game.

Also would it matter if someone records on a widescreen monitor over a normal screen?

I cant fraps higher than 800x600 on my comp without falling below 30 fps so :P

I suppose you could downsize the 1152x864 to 1024x768 and itll still look good. Still a big difference between those kinds of res vs 640x480/800x600

Fraps video footage looks fine if your watching it in the same resolution as when you were playing it, it's crystal clear. The problem is when you edit the video using a program you have to encode it and make it a WMV or whatever you use and the resolution goes down, the raw footage is what your watching. You'll also notice that when you edit the movie and then encode it the size of the file goes down considerably.

I record at 1280x1024 with a Pentium 4 3.2ghz. So you do not need a dual core to go higher then what your recording at.

Fraps cant record 1280x1024 without a dual core so nope

How can your size not change much when there's 352x264 pixels less each frame? The reason why most people resize their clips is because of the size of them.

If we're talking about storyline movies rather than pvp movies, pulling footage that is beyond standard ntsc res (720x480) into After Effects or other compositing apps takes pretty hefty proccessing and lots of file storage. I render my movies to a 720x480 wmv so that it will look great on a TV.

If your really itching to keep that extra resolution, I'd recommend 1920x1080 resolution or 1280x720.

I don't recommend 1920x1080, it won't fit on most computer monitors, and the bit rate will have to be very high. I don't recommend that any WoW movie be bigger than 1280 wide or 768 high.

How do I make so fraps film in 1280x1020? I wanted to film in this quality but I never understood how to do it.

you need a dual core CPU to fraps higher than 1152x864.

About the OP; file size didn't change because you used the same bitrate settings... lower resolutions need less bitrate, but you also have to change it in the encoder settings. I don't recommend changing the resolution though; always encode at the same res as the fraps footage, otherwise the quality reduces alot and you get an overall blurry look on it.

Also not recommended to record higher than 1024x768 if you plan to publish your videos here... I tried 1152x864 for my latest vid because I wanted to present it at high quality, but WCM didn't approve it because of the bitrate being too high, since this kind of resolution needs high bitrate to look decent (otherwise there's too much pixelization/artifacts/etc). Really upsetting when all your work of frapsing and editing for months gets refused and ignored, but then there's many other ways to publish/semi-publish a video than WCM.