Feedback on Why Recording my PC screen = Potato no matter what settings I try.

[ESRaistlin]

Hi guys! I'm hoping someone can give me some direction here. I've changed my OBS Settings sooo many times after watching a ton of Youtube videos and tutorials on this with no resolution to my issue. I'm trying to be able to record my PC screen and whatever I bring up, MS office stuff, web browsers etc. I can stream at a nice clear 720p 60fps and it looks fine! But when I try and record my screen I get potato graphics and I have NO idea why. When recording via my Elgato for PS4 and console gameplay, I can get decent 720p 60fps quality as well (my PC has issues with clean 1080p 60fps unfortunately).

Here's the log: Log File
Also, here's a YT video of what a recording looks like no matter what I change in my recording settings:

Thanks for your feedback!

 

[PaiSand]

Analyzer | OBS

OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) is free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. Stream to Twitch, YouTube and many other providers or record your own videos with high quality H264 / AAC encoding.

obsproject.com

 

[ESRaistlin]

Hi @PaiSand - thats a cool tool! I didnt know about that. Will definitely use more in the future!

With that being said, the two issues that come up are recording to FLV / MKV - I did that. the video preview I posted was recorded in mkv. So that doesn't help. Also, the audio issue I'll look into but my CPU usage (depending on what settings I tweak for recording my desktop) stay under 15%. So I'm not sure what do.

Would it be something with my monitor settings? Or my PC desktop resolution?

 

[WBE]

I'm not an expert at this, but my first pointer would be to:

Non-Default x264 Preset
A slower x264 preset than 'veryfast' is in use. It is recommended to leave this value on veryfast, as there are significant diminishing returns to setting it lower. It can also result in very poor gaming performance on the system if you're not using a 2 PC setup.

 

[Kraezy]

Analyzer | OBS

OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) is free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. Stream to Twitch, YouTube and many other providers or record your own videos with high quality H264 / AAC encoding.

obsproject.com

Address these so that there are no further advisories.

Looking at your video and your log file it looks like a resolution issue.

(my PC has issues with clean 1080p 60fps unfortunately).

So is your monitor 1920x1080p native?
If so change the following

22:36:42.327: base resolution: 1280x720
22:36:42.327: output resolution: 1280x720

Base canvas to: 1920x1080
Output Resolution to: 1280x720
Downscale Filter: Lanczos

 

[PaiSand]

Hi @PaiSand - thats a cool tool! I didnt know about that. Will definitely use more in the future!

With that being said, the two issues that come up are recording to FLV / MKV - I did that. the video preview I posted was recorded in mkv. So that doesn't help. Also, the audio issue I'll look into but my CPU usage (depending on what settings I tweak for recording my desktop) stay under 15%. So I'm not sure what do.

Would it be something with my monitor settings? Or my PC desktop resolution?

Do what @WBE and @Kraezy sugest.
Base canvas = your monitor resolution
Output Resolution = your stream resolution

Check the blue recomendations with an emphasis in running OBS as admin and enabling windows game mode.
In early win10 versions the game mode was broken but they fixed it and actually helps. Much like win11, it's aon a broken state now, so wait to upgrade to it until they fix it or release win12.

Videos with transparency have a better performance using webm. You can use ffmpg to remux the mov video preserving the transparency. In the webs (youtube included) there are several guides on how to. You can try using a program like handbrake but I got mixed results on the size of the video.
The videos must be at the same fps of the output resolution.

And remember, in OBS less is better.
Remove as much browser sources as you can. This sources consume lots of system resources.
For alerts, chat and other overlay resources consider using just one browser source creating it on your overlay service of choice. Most services allows you to set in the same place all the resources you need and you can create several overlays for different scenes as you need.