Question / Help How to improve my settings for game recording?

[DubskiDude]

I'm trying to fine tune my recording settings for capturing gaming footage. Recently I changed to H.264 and CQP for recording so that the recording sizes aren't massive, but found there was subtle screen tearing and at least one instance of dropped frames. I record primarily as MP4, for rendering in Sony Vegas and uploading to Youtube.

EDIT: Redid some settings, here are my new settings for H.264 (new): https://imgur.com/a/iLuGNnG

I also have my base and output resolutions set to 1920x1080, with Lanczos (32 sample) downscaling.

Is there anything I can do to make my recordings better? I want to retain as much quality as I can, without screen tearing and dropped frames.

 

[koala]

Update to the most current version of OBS. The version you're running has a broken updater, as far as I know, so it will never show any update for itself - just download the current full installer. This alone may perhaps make your problems go away.
In addition, change color space/color range from 601/full to 709/partial. This suits the common full hd resolution postprocessing workflow better.

 

[DubskiDude]

Update to the most current version of OBS. The version you're running has a broken updater, as far as I know, so it will never show any update for itself - just download the current full installer. This alone may perhaps make your problems go away.
In addition, change color space/color range from 601/full to 709/partial. This suits the common full hd resolution postprocessing workflow better.

What effect would that have, out of curiosity?

And I take it my output settings are good? I'm trying to figure out if they caused the screen tearing.

Also thanks, I would've never known there was a new OBS version lol

 

[koala]

709 is the standard color space for resolutions considered "HD": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._709, which is according to that article every content that is 16:9 aspect ratio.

Partial is the standard color range for standard consumer videos, and Youtube recodes everything to partial. So if you intend to upload to Youtube, it's best if you create the raw video as partial in the first place, so no conversion is required, which may lead to quality loss. If you want to know more, see this very extensive guide: https://obsproject.com/forum/resour...t-color-range-settings-guide-test-charts.442/

The other settings are ok. After you update, change the nvenc encoder to "nvenc (new)" to lower your system load. It's the same encoder with the same visual quality as nvenc but it works a bit differently internally, so it uses less system resources.

 

[DubskiDude]

Ah, didn't see there was a new version. That's a whole new thing to tinker with. I looked over the GeForce guide to the new encoder and used it as a template, so here's what it looks like now: https://imgur.com/a/iLuGNnG if you might suspect any issues, let me know!

I also believe the lower the CQ level is, the higher the quality? I was using 22 before but 15 seems to be the default, and I think that means higher quality.

 

[koala]

Correct. The lower the CQ value, the higher the quality. You can interpret this parameter as "amount of detail removed".
The other settings are optimal for quality, except the file format mp4. Don't use mp4, because if an mp4 file cannot be finished due to program or computer crash or due to disk full, the file is irrevocably broken and lost. This is due to a missing internal index that is only written when the file is gracefully finished. Record to *.mkv instead, this file is robust against failures. In case you require mp4 for your postprocessing software, record to mkv and activate Settings->Advanced->Recording->Automatically remux to mp4. Then OBS will convert your recording to mp4 safely afterwards.

 

[DubskiDude]

I'm having trouble in Sony Vegas - the preview lags like hell, and all the fixes I've looked up don't seem to work. I suspect it may be because the bitrate of my new footage is now 180,000 - 230,000 which is a massive leap from before. How do I lower the bitrate? Do I just increase the CQ level, or is there something else I need to do?

 

[carlmmii]

Use a higher CQP value. 18 is the lower end of what's considered "sane" file sizes. Normally 20-23 is good enough. Also, try setting your keyframe interval to 1 second -- this should help with seeking.

 

[DubskiDude]

Use a higher CQP value. 18 is the lower end of what's considered "sane" file sizes. Normally 20-23 is good enough. Also, try setting your keyframe interval to 1 second -- this should help with seeking.

What's seeking? (Apologies, still pretty new to this)

 

[carlmmii]

When scrubbing through your timeline in Vegas -- the term for what it's having to do to pull the relevant frames it stops on is called "seeking". If it doesn't land on a keyframe, then it has to decode the video file from the last keyframe up until the requested frame using all of the intermediate frames. If the last keyframe is several seconds back, this can take a noticeable amount of time, resulting in what you're seeing.