Question / Help I need help setting up OBS with the right settings.

[EpicKingdom_]

First off, I have watched many videos and viewed many guides. A lot of them are not working for me. I'm not a streamer, I just want good quality and performance local recordings.

The only settings that I can make work are these.. although, I do not feel like they are right since sometimes I get fps dips in the video playback.

Settings:
Game capture.
2560x1440 @ 60fps.

Encoding:
Nvidia NVENC.
Use CBR = true.
Enable CBR padding = true.
Quality balance = 10.
Max bitrate = 75,000. (The higher, the better the quality is. Although, the higher the bigger the file size is).
Audio bitrate = 128.

Advanced:
Defaults except for..
NVENC Preset = high performance.

Video save path goes to a SSD.

Here is a test video with the settings above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZQ74ZR2Dks

It really doesn't matter what settings I have, if I EVER use x264 encoder my video playback lags or freezes while the audio remains. I've tried everything, low bitrate, high bitrate, unchecking CBR, changing quality balance, lowering FPS and resolution, setting crf anywhere from 0-20 etc..

(edit): A resolution downscale from 1440p to 1152 seems to fix everything... I would prefer not to downscale though. Is it my hardware or settings that cannot do 1440p @ 60fps?

https://gist.github.com/2713bce6f1aa36d8600f

 

[EpicKingdom_]

I found my issue I believe. I simply do not have the hardware to record at 1440p 60fps with x264 encoder.

x264 settings (ultra fast crf = 15) only works at 1440p 30fps or downscale 1080p 30-60fps.

The closest I can get to 1440p 60fps is with NVENC settings in OP.

 

[FerretBomb]

Have you checked the High Quality Local Recordings guide?

https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/how-to-make-high-quality-local-recordings.12600/

In essence: CBR off, buffer 0, Ultrafast preset, and ditch the custom x264 settings (there are a lot of guides out there written by people who don't know what they're doing, and just repeat random junk they've been told helps). It'll chomp your hard drive a bit, but should allow software-side encoding. Can always go back with a non-realtime multipass encoder and compress it down much better after the fact, with less quality loss and better efficiency.

That said, NVENC is mostly only useful for local recording anyway, when you can throw a big bucket of bitrate at it so it doesn't look poor. May as well use it, unless it's impacting your in-game performance.

 

[EpicKingdom_]

I ended up getting x264 to work with crf=15 on ultra fast with a low bitrate and CBR off etc. but I can only manage to do it with 1440p @ 30fps or 1080p @ 30-60fps. And down-scaling isn't too pretty.

So again, I'll stick to NVENC since it allows me to get closest to 1440p @ 60fps with good performance. Although, would you know what the best preset is to use for it? All of them freeze on me during playback except for high performance.