** Official Recording/Streaming Tips & Tricks Exchange **

[arc@css]

I've always been confused by the terminology used in OBS to be honest mate. Just fired up mine to check what I use (changed a bit since I made that vid). Seems I use game capture when after games and target a specific .exe, but I do remember using display capture in the past when game capture failed me.

From member if you alt-tab whilst using game capture you'll likely bork your recording, but that's less likely to happen in display capture. At least from my experience and I break my recordings frequently by doing that..

I had a bit of a tinker with this over the weekend and found that setting it to game capture seemed to do the job. I also added display capture into the source box as well, though now I come to think of it, I can't quite recall which way round I prioritized them.

I like that it records one larger file than, for example, ShadowPlay - which breaks the recording up into smaller segments, though I understand you can do something similar where the latter is concerned, I just haven't got around to testing it properly yet.

As for performance when recording, I have a very limited experience so far but there did seem to be more of a performance drop than compared to SP. This wasn't evident so much in terms of fps, but more by way of how it 'felt', which is a little odd. That said, it's likely I haven't set it up optimally, so it could well be a case of user error. Too early to say.

All in all, an enjoyable experience & if anyone gets a moment, then a quick check of the following would be appreciated. Thanks for doing the video; I certainly learned a few things there though it might not be what I am after just right now, but I could see myself using those programs more as time goes on. Btw, that's a very nicely produced video.

Spoiler

Settings: General.



Settings: Output Recording.




Settings: Output Audio.




Settings: Audio.




Settings: Video.




Settings: Advanced.

I should have added that when I recorded using the steps in your video, it still only gave me one audio track despite me checking more than one box in the relevant options menus (ignore the fact that I've only got a single audio track checked in one of the above pics). Obviously, I must have done something wrong, but I don't know what yet.

 

[arc@css]

I went to publish a video today and all I get is a 'pending edit' message. It still reads that now even though it was many hours ago. Has anyone else had something like that occur before? Edit: YouTube just being slow, I suppose. All okay now.

Edit: do any of you back up the rendered project/keep the original video files even once your work is finally uploaded onto your channel?

 

[FloppyPoppy]

Hi everyone a quick question for you Shadowplay users.

Recently upgraded monitor to a 3440x1440 and am noticing a few oddities with shadowplay. At the moment im getting them with BF1 but will test more games at weekend. Set to record in game resolution and 40% of my recordings are in the shadowplay folder as 1280x720? And some of them are 3440x1440.

I have tried changing a few things around like using Alt + F9 to manually record instead of capturing the last bits of footage. Still happens there. It seems random, any ideas?

 

[uncle_rufus]

do any of you back up the rendered project/keep the original video files even once your work is finally uploaded onto your channel?

I don't back up the original files because they are massive if you record lossless... but I do keep copies of the rendered files (I guess if I ever decide to make a compilation/montage type video it'll be marginally better quality to use the originals rather than downloading from Youtube)

Recently upgraded monitor to a 3440x1440 and am noticing a few oddities with shadowplay. At the moment im getting them with BF1 but will test more games at weekend. Set to record in game resolution and 40% of my recordings are in the shadowplay folder as 1280x720? And some of them are 3440x1440.

I have tried changing a few things around like using Alt + F9 to manually record instead of capturing the last bits of footage. Still happens there. It seems random, any ideas?

Hmm... Shadowplay can be quite tricky at times - you could try using the same NVENC encoder but on a different program (like OBS) as it may just be Shadowplay the application is messing up (I haven't used it in a while but it felt quite basic compared to other recorders out there)

 

[FloppyPoppy]

Hmm... Shadowplay can be quite tricky at times - you could try using the same NVENC encoder but on a different program (like OBS) as it may just be Shadowplay the application is messing up (I haven't used it in a while but it felt quite basic compared to other recorders out there)

Thanks for reply,

I've spent a couple of hours now trying to use OBS + DXTORY and both ( for me ) are not pleasant to use. They are just far to much hassle. Compared to shadowplay that is. I spent some time trying to figure out what was causing it to record bf in such a weird resolution and i think ive solved it by turning it off and on again on the ALT Z Menu when i launch bf1. (the only game that does it) so i think when the game boots up it may launch as 720p then go full resolution, causing shadow play to recognize it as 720.

If i continue to get issues at weekend then i will look at OBS some more but the recording i got from it was simply awful and the performance it even with NVENC was significantly more than shadow play even when at a lesser bit rate. ( i could have set it up wrong ) ((Probably definitely set it up wrong)) but yeah i would prefer to use shadow play if possible as i love the shadow play last 20 minutes feature. It's a god send.

 

[uncle_rufus]

If i continue to get issues at weekend then i will look at OBS some more but the recording i got from it was simply awful and the performance it even with NVENC was significantly more than shadow play even when at a lesser bit rate. ( i could have set it up wrong ) ((Probably definitely set it up wrong)) but yeah i would prefer to use shadow play if possible as i love the shadow play last 20 minutes feature. It's a god send.

Yeah that's a really nice feature, would love to see a buffer feature in the programs I do use to record (but I expect the memory requirements when recording at higher qualities prevent this from working)...

It sounds like you've found a workaround for BF1 which is good - your explanation sounds plausible as well... you do tend to find when trying to record different games they all have different quirks and things; sometimes in the most extreme cases the way a game works means it can't be recorded at all by certain programs (depending on how they work) - I found this with Dead Space 3; DXTory wouldn't record it no matter what I did, I think maybe the Origin overlay was interfering with it somehow, so in the end I had to use OBS...

I get what you mean about OBS/DXTory... they can be a lot more fiddly to use; but it's generally a one-time sort of thing; once you've got them setup to your liking you don't tend to have to go through all the setup again every time

 

[arc@css]

I've spent a couple of hours now trying to use OBS + DXTORY and both ( for me ) are not pleasant to use. They are just far to much hassle. Compared to shadowplay that is.

If i continue to get issues at weekend then i will look at OBS some more but the recording i got from it was simply awful and the performance it even with NVENC was significantly more than shadow play even when at a lesser bit rate. ( i could have set it up wrong ) ((Probably definitely set it up wrong)) but yeah i would prefer to use shadow play if possible as i love the shadow play last 20 minutes feature. It's a god send.

I tried OBS quite a while ago but didn't get very far, however, recently I decided to have another bash at it, and I'm glad I did. I now use it in preference to ShadowPlay - which I happen to think is great, albeit rather basic. Should Nvidia implement a few extra features like being able to record the audio on a separate track, longer single file recording times and using constant bit rate instead of variable bit rate, then I'll consider going back.

I'm not as experienced with OBS as some on here, but if you want to see my current recording settings then let me know and I'll post a pic (now different to #421).

 

[Gimpymoo]

I have just discovered Mirillis Action, it seems to work a treat.

Is it better than OBS?

 

[arc@css]

I bought Mirillis a while back, and though I like using it from time to time, OBS tends to be my go-to for recording at the moment due to its customisation.

It is a fine piece of software, though.

In fact, come to think about it, I haven't used Mirillis for quite a long time so I think I'll reinstall it and see what's altered/changed since then.

Edit: I've just tried a few test 1440p recordings, and I'm surprised by how much the fps was impacted. Some more testing is required, though.

 

[ShortWarning]

Question!

I want to record gameplay from 2 devices and edit them together.

It will be World of Warcraft footage for now.

1 device is a PC, native res of 1080p the other is a rMBP with whatever the wacky res is, the game, funnily enough, runs best at this native res with render scale turned down but there doesn't seem to be an option to run it at 1080p anyway.

Now there is going to be a difference in image quality/framerate, I know I can't avoid that but I want to 2 videos to at least be at the same res.

When I tried to record with OBS at 1080p it cut off half the game screen instead of scaling.

What would you guys recommend?

 

[uncle_rufus]

Can you elaborate on what you want to end up with? When you say "edit them together" do you mean with cuts... picture-in-picture... how will the two bits of footage be merged exactly, and to what end?

 

[ShortWarning]

Essentially, 2 of us will be playing together (One on the PC, one on the MAC). We'll record our gameplay together on separate HDDs then edit together cuts of the 2 recordings. Mostly clean cuts between the 2, maybe the odd picture in picture.

I'm guessing if I try to edit 2 different resolutions together it may end up looking a bit weird.

I'll be using final cut pro to edit (which I've never used before) just in case there's a solution built into that.

 

[uncle_rufus]

Essentially, 2 of us will be playing together (One on the PC, one on the MAC). We'll record our gameplay together on separate HDDs then edit together cuts of the 2 recordings. Mostly clean cuts between the 2, maybe the odd picture in picture.

Ah okay - that's pretty much what we did with our Dead Space 3 videos - although in our case it was both on PCs playing at 1080p...

Still I'm not sure that 2 different resolutions would look too bad as long as the aspect ratio is the same... It sounds like if anything the Mac might be a higher resolution scaling down to 1080p which I imagine would be fine (although your rendering may be slower since every frame has to be scaled down)... you could perhaps use a tool like Handbrake to reduce the resolution of the Mac footage first prior to editing? Are you sure there's no way to output at 1080p on the Mac? What about running the game in windowed mode, will that allow you to set the resolution?

 

[ShortWarning]

Thanks for the info. The native res for the mac is 2880×1800, as it's a bit of a weird res would it scale okay?

The other thing is, if I capture OBS at 1080 it cuts off half the picture? Should I try and record at native res? The problem with this is massive video files.

In wow there is no way of outputting to to 1080p as far as I could tell, at least it wasn't an option in the resolutions available.

Edit - Just after posting, I may have found an app which can force 1080p. I'll try it when I get home.

 

[uncle_rufus]

Thanks for the info. The native res for the mac is 2880×1800, as it's a bit of a weird res would it scale okay?

Hmm no probably not - that's 16:10 whereas 1080p is 16:9... we actually have that problem too as my PC is 16:10 (1920x1200) and my other half's is 16:9 (1920x1080) but we get around it by setting my PC to 1080p (either in-game or in Window's settings depending on which works) - it means while I'm playing the image looks slightly stretched vertically, but the recording is 1080p scaled properly...

The other thing is, if I capture OBS at 1080 it cuts off half the picture? Should I try and record at native res? The problem with this is massive video files.

That sounds odd - are you sure you've setup the capture area properly? It sort of sounds like you might just need to mess with the OBS settings - turn on the preview pane and you should be able to scale down or move the capture area so that it fills the actual 1080p area to be captured, or just generally have a mess about...

 

[ShortWarning]

The other problem is, OBS game capture wouldn't work. Wow was open but it just doesn't find it in OBS so I couldn't use the preview pane.

 

[uncle_rufus]

The other problem is, OBS game capture wouldn't work. Wow was open but it just doesn't find it in OBS so I couldn't use the preview pane.

It usually varies from game to game - if game capture doesn't work try screen capture or some of the other types until you get one that works

 

[arc@css]

The Snowball seems to get a lot of praise, but due to it being a condenser microphone I would have thought it's not as ideal as a dynamic mic. Does anyone here use a Snowball, and if so do you notice much in the way of unwanted audio like mouse clicks and so forth?

 

[dakaiez]

The Snowball seems to get a lot of praise, but due to it being a condenser microphone I would have thought it's not as ideal as a dynamic mic. Does anyone here use a Snowball, and if so do you notice much in the way of unwanted audio like mouse clicks and so forth?

I was looking at the Snowball, ended up going for the AT2020 but instead of the USB one the XLR. It's brilliant and super clear.

 

[arc@css]

I was looking at the Snowball, ended up going for the AT2020 but instead of the USB one the XLR. It's brilliant and super clear.

Yeah, I bought an AT2020, though by 'mistake' I bought the USB version. Tbh, I like the sound quality a lot, but boy.....does it pick up extra audio.