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

[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...

 

[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

 

[uncle_rufus]

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?

All comes down to your recording environment... my advice would be unless you're positive your environment isn't too noisy and you will project your voice loud enough to dominate the background/signal ratio then you might want to consider a dynamic mic...

We used a Snowball for quite a while and always seemed to get unwanted background noise (we were trying to record 2 of us, mind)... we got terrible echo from our hallway and took to hanging a big fur blanket behind us to absorb some of it... Eventually we switched to Dual Shure SM57s (one each) and never looked back; they've been great!

(Not a plug for our channel but if you want to compare the difference in the sound try any of the earlier videos - link in my sig - anything before Stardew Valley I think, and compare that to something more recent... although it's cringingly bad commentary - "Foul Play" is quite a good example of the sort of noise it picks up because it's quite a button mash-y type of game)

 

[uncle_rufus]

I've heard only positive feedback about the Shure mics, so I'll start hunting around for reviews and prices (I'm also considering the ATR2100 and the Samson Q2U).

Edit: Yes, I can certainly hear the difference, though I wish mine only made that level of noise! The Shure mics you're using make you sound clearer, too.

Glad you think so! The SM57s (or 58s) are really good mics often used in studios to record all sorts of things (that's partly why we went with them; as we play guitar/bass as well so figured we could get use out of them recording instruments etc. as well)... They're not actually too expensive either for what you get, but you need to have an audio interface to use them (and one with decent pre-amps drives the price up a fair bit)

Does anyone know if the 'Acelectronic Suspension Mic Studio Boom Scissor Arm' is worth considering, or is a bit on the cheap and nasty side?

I think we had something similar when we were still using the snowball... it was okay - functional and didn't cause any problems despite feeling a bit flimsy. When we upgraded everything we bough Rode PSA-1s which seem to be fairly highly regarded (expensive though, can't decide if it was really worth it)

 

[uncle_rufus]

It is OK I guess but OBS Studio (or Xsplit) using the NVENC option gives you exactly the same performance benefits and the same quality options with way more features. I just don't see the point of Shadowplay these days unless you really can't work out how to use OBS Studio or Xsplit.

The one feature I did like with Shadowplay was the buffered recording thing (hit a key to instantly save the last X minute window of recording) as I don't think all of the other programs have that (some certainly do but not the ones I've used; DXTory and OBS)... I think there are a few more fully featured programs that do though

 

[uncle_rufus]

I expect you're falling foul of the non-constant frame-rate of the Shadowplay recordings... You should be able to use Handbrake to re-encode to a constant framerate and that might help (I think this was discussed a little earlier in the thread or failing that there are plenty of guides what settings to use if you Google)... Were you using VLC on the laptop as well?

 

[uncle_rufus]

A heads up for those that use ShadowPlay.....the latest GeForce Experience update finally allows ShadowPlay users to split audio tracks up.

Version: 3.10.0.95.


Edit: it would seem that this was implemented a little while back. Well, I knew nothing of it...

Nice - I also had no idea they'd added this, might make ShadowPlay worth another look!

 

[uncle_rufus]

Has anyone else heard of/experienced this, and if so, what did you do to help or solve that problem?

Hmm... it's been a while since I last used VAC but I don't recall it causing any performance issues at all... not used Voicemeter though... could you have a mismatch between the two? (sampling rate, etc)