Improving recording with shadowplay

DEL 707

DEL 707

DEL 707

Soldato
Joined
20 Mar 2004
Posts
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I've got a new video card and I've been playing around with shadowplay, trying to do some ingame recording, but I could do with some help.

I do have a vid uploaded on youtube, not sure if I can upload it though, was playing BO3, getting my butt kicked, so my language is "colourful".

The colour in the vid, seems more paler then it did in game, is there anyway to correct that?

Also I could really do with some help with my mic, I'm using a HyperX Cloud headset and my mic seems really quiet, even with it knocked up to 100. I can get extra by knocking up the mic boost, but then I get static. In the vid I have the +30db, can't say I noticed it too much because of the gameplay sounds.
 
Well, I know next to nothing about the microphone audio, as I don't yet include that in my videos, though I think I have read people on here suggesting that you're best off recording a separate track for any commentary? Dxtory allows this, if I recall correctly.

With regards to ShadowPlay, I don't think it provides thee best image quality, but it's simply a very good balance of file size, quality and performance, and yes, your videos will be a little more washed out in terms of colour than compared to, for example, a raw format (insane amount of disk space required).

Check out this video, which may interest you :

 
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ShadowPlay is excellent but quality can be a little questionable at times but saying that, I use ShadowPlay and Sony Vegas and people do ask how I get such good quality, so as long as you don't mind fiddling with encoding programs, that is probably the best way to go.
 
Thanks for the replies.

I'll post the vid to show what I mean, I'm sure an admin will delete it if the language is too foul... :o

and removed
 
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As you've not read the FAQ about signatures I'd recommend doing that and also checking out the other forum rules, such as those about swearing in videos.
 
Does anyone know if it's possible to set up the microphone as voice activated (like Teamspeak) on Shadowplay?

I only just found out that there are two settings: Microphone Always On, and Push-to-Talk

Mic always on means I can hear my keyboard clicking away and PTT won't work since I can't bind it to the same key as TS (and I'm used to Voice Activated anyway).
 
When recording I would use a separate program like audacity (free) as its very powerful and you can easily edit out sounds like keypresses afterwards (as well as any swearing if you wish) you'll just have to Sync it up with the game play again in your editing program of choice.
 
Muska said:
When recording I would use a separate program like audacity (free) as its very powerful and you can easily edit out sounds like keypresses afterwards (as well as any swearing if you wish) you'll just have to Sync it up with the game play again in your editing program of choice.
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I think trying to line up Audacity tracks within Windows Movie Maker will be too much of a pain.
 
I used Shadowplay, Sony Vegas and Audacity

When gaming with friends I'll use teamspeak (voice activated) and have Shadowplay set to only record mic when a button is depressed. This way I don't get an audio that's full of my coughing, swearing etc and only has my friends voices and in-game sounds.

It'd be handy if Shadowplay recorded in-game sounds to it's own track but for now that's not possible. I've tried just about every other tool but keep coming back to Shadowplay for it's simplicity, reliability and small file size of recording. The likes of Mirilis action/dxtory are on paper better but having tried them, Fraps, OBS etc I just always end up back on Shadowplay. :(

I have recorded teamspeak itself and commentary using a netbook in the past then lined up with the recording using sony vegas, was simple enough but requires me to have the netbook up and running when I jump in-game which isn't always the case :D Audacitys noise removal function is nothing short of amazing though.
 
At this point I think the best option for me is to just have the Mic recording set as off on Shadowplay since I curse like a sailor and my mic volumes go up and down due to varying levels of excitement or fear during in-game.
 
SuperG said:
At this point I think the best option for me is to just have the Mic recording set as off on Shadowplay since I curse like a sailor and my mic volumes go up and down due to varying levels of excitement or fear during in-game.
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Could you not just go over it and bleep swearing if you're wanting to post to (e.g.) a forum that has rules against it?
 
Some of this has been said but...

1. You want to record the game audio and your voice separately (and if you have friends on TS/mumble really you ought to record them separately too - you can use software like Virtual Audio Cable to enable this)

2. (part of the reason for the above is) You should process the audio in something like audacity to level out the noise (by applying compression, EQ, noise removal etc.)

3. Shadowplay doesn't record at a constant framerate, so you may also need something like Handbrake to re-encode it or you won't easily be able to sync it up with your audio

4. (If you're going to do the above) learn to do a sync at the beggining of the recording (where you do an obvious action on screen while saying an obvious count or similar - something that you can line up in your editor)

But I agree the recordings from ShadowPlay aren't great, depending on how much you care about quality (especially if you edit and re-encode them and hence take another quality hit - and a 3rd when Youtube re-encode it again). I switched to DXTory (~£20) and it's a lot better (though you require much more space to store the raw footage!)
 
uncle_rufus said:
3. Shadowplay doesn't record at a constant framerate, so you may also need something like Handbrake to re-encode it or you won't easily be able to sync it up with your audio
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That's interesting. I don't know whether it's some setting in the game audio, but I've found it necessary for almost every S.T.A.L.K.E.R. SOC video I've done to use handbrake to sync everything together.

uncle_rufus said:
But I agree the recordings from ShadowPlay aren't great, depending on how much you care about quality (especially if you edit and re-encode them and hence take another quality hit - and a 3rd when Youtube re-encode it again). I switched to DXTory (~£20) and it's a lot better (though you require much more space to store the raw footage!)
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Another one I've tried fairly recently is Mirillis Action. Due to the blocky mess which is very commonly evident in Stalker when moving through the outdoor environment, I decided to compare Mirillis with ShadowPlay, Dxtory, Afterburner & Fraps. Dxtory and Afterburner gave out the best colour, while Mirillis (in this instance) demonstrated the better quality - and had the second smallest file size (still pretty large, though). Fraps had the highest file size, and unsurprisingly ShadowPlay had the poorest quality, but also the least performance hit / was the most pleasant to use when recording. Interestingly, I also tried uncompressed for a laugh : 36 seconds = nearly 9gb. What was strange was that it didn't look good at all when YouTube had finished compressing it. One of the worst in fact. Not sure what the deal was there.

As you say, the file sizes ramp up significantly, so I'm still using ShadowPlay. The only other game I've briefly tested is Deux Ex. Maybe it was the age of the game, but Mirillis made little improvement over ShadowPlay & wasn't as smooth in performance either, so definitely not worth the extra disc space, imo. I'm probably stating the obvious, but personally I think the drop in quality is most related to YouTube's end, regardless.
 
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Were you using the builtin DXTory codec or did you download one of the better ones? (e.g. Lagarith)

The framerate thing is definitely shadowplay - I think Nvidia must be assuming that you want to record the footage and then immediately upload it without doing any editing etc. and if you do then the way it records (variable frame-rate, reasonable quality with compression for small file sizes) is perfect... But it's terrible for editing
 
uncle_rufus said:
Were you using the builtin DXTory codec or did you download one of the better ones? (e.g. Lagarith)
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I honestly can't remember. :/

Incidentally, I'm working on a Stalker video right now, and guess what? It's out of sync. :D I just tried using handbrake - which normally works fine, but the file it produced was still well out. I'll try again.
 
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I think in Handbrake you want to be setting it to whatever your FPS was in Shadowplay (so probably 30 or 60) and then set the quality thing (RF?) all the way to zero (i.e. don't affect the quality in any way)
 
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