Question / Help Gameplay Recording Quality Poor

[adamancy]

Hi everyone! I'm new to OBS and I'm trying to record some gameplay videos with it right now. I've been trying to get it perfect for a few days with subpar results. Currently, the only settings I can get to work even somewhat smoothly are 720p at 30fps, and even then, there is some lag. When I try to increase it to 45fps or to 1080p at 30fps, the resulting video becomes unwatchable upon playback. My system is pretty powerful and I don't understand why this is happening.

My specs are:

i7-3770
R9 290X
8 gigs DDR3 at 1333mhz
Qnix 27in 2560 x 1440 monitor

I play at 1440p at high/ultra settings and then use OBS to output at 720p. If I try to record at 1080p, I change all my settings -- monitor and in-game -- to 1080p.

I'm including the log of my recent attempt at 720p, 45fps below. Ideally, I'd like to be able to record/stream at 720p, 60fps or 1080p, 30fps. If anyone has any suggestions, I would be very grateful.

 

[Jack0r]

How to make high quality local recordings

In short: Bitrate 1000, Buffer 0, CBR off
in the advanced settings, check "Custom x264 encoder settings" and add crf=15

Thats about it, you can lower the cpu usage if necessary by lowering the preset. The quality will not suffer, but the recorded file will be a bit bigger in that case.

 

[adamancy]

Thanks for the reply! I input those settings and didn't get any change in my recording quality. As a test, I tried recording gameplay video with FRAPS, and there was no issue at all, even recording at 2560x1440 at 60fps. The only difference is that I didn't have a webcam window with FRAPS.

So I know my computer has the capability to record at pretty much whatever ratio I want, and I do not know why even at 720p, 45fps I'm getting such jittery results with OBS.

My main use for OBS will be streaming, so local recording isn't as big a deal, but I wanted to be able to record my streams to make highlight videos out of.

Any further suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Lain]

OBS uses a different encoder, x264. It specializes in high compression (which is especially useful for streaming), where as other encoders in other programs will often specialize for lower CPU usage, at the cost of very high file sizes. Another difference is that OBS is a video and audio mixer as well, so you can mix in your webcam and other things (all of which also have their own CPU usage, especially if you're running your webcam at 1080p like you're doing. I would recommend lowering the webcam resolution to only what you need)

So basically this is not quite the even comparison in this particular case, however OBS isn't by any means perfect either, on top of those above-mentioned issues.

If you're streaming you're going to need that CPU usage for high compression. Now, 720p 60fps shouldn't be too much of an issue. Even my old 2500k can do 720p 60fps, though it really depends on the game you're streaming as well. 1080p is usually not recommended for streams, though on that computer 1080p at 30fps should be doable.

As for what I would recommend, I don't know. I don't know what game it is you're streaming.

 

[adamancy]

Thanks for clarifying the differences between the two programs!

I've attempted recording a wide variety of games with similar -- unsatisfying -- results: Far Cry 3, Trials Evolution, Super Meat Boy, Supraball, Shadowrun Returns. All of these I play at 2560x1440 at high/ultra settings and then use OBS to output them at 720p. I've had my webcam set at default 1080p, at 720p, and no webcam at all. I've also tried recording just webcam footage, no gameplay. No matter what I've attempted, I get the same jumpy, laggy playback (video-wise that is; the audio remains perfect). When I monitor my resources while gaming and recording, my CPU gets to about 25% max load and my memory hits closer to 30%, so I know I'm not getting anywhere near to taxing my system.

Is there any other info you may need? I love, love, love OBS, but I've spent upwards of twenty hours messing with it this week with no results.

 

[Jack0r]

Maybe a new log of the test with "my" settings. It should have improved the quality quite a bit.
And your timings looked ok, not perfect, but not too bad.
By the way, you can keep OBS set to 2560x1440 and just downscale that directly to 720p. And as mentioned you could test superfast/ultrafast preset with the settings of our guide/the ones I mentioned.

 

[adamancy]

Here's the latest log. I believe all the settings are correct, but if they aren't, just let me know and I'll give it another whirl.

 

[Jack0r]

Yea, the recording settings are fine. Hmm I guess you could try lowering the preset from veryfast to superfast or even ultrafast. This lowers the needed ressources even further, but your timings look already fine. Only 0.02/07% of duplicated/late frames, should normally look smooth.
Apart of the jumpy playback, the quality should be good, but "remember" that you are decreasing the resolution from 2560x1440 to 1280x720, which is quite significant. And if you then watch the 720p video on your 2560x1440 monitor again it has to be upscaled by your video player.

 

[adamancy]

Do you have any suggestions as to how I could figure out if the issue is during recording or during playback?

 

[Jack0r]

Hmm, play the video through different video players, on different pcs, upload it to youtube and see, something like that?
If all show the exact same problem it is "probably" recorded and not a playback thing.