Question / Help Increasing Local Recording Quality vs CPU, What should I buy?

[death_unites_us]

Hello OBS Forums! My name is death_unites_us, I've been a content creator for over 10 years, and a twitch streamer for 3 years.

I'm looking to improve my local recording quality from "same as stream" to at least high quality, indistinguishable quality would be ideal. My CPU runs at a nice 20-25% on "same as stream", but on high quality it reaches 40-50%, which is about where I start to feel lag, especially if I'm also running a game on the same PC.

I don't wish to lower any other settings (unless it didn't effect quality), like resolution, bit rate, fps etc., so my question is: What should I buy/change to keep my CPU where it is but improve my local recording quality?

Streaming setup (with comp specs): https://pastebin.com/5p3qf359
OBS Log: https://obsproject.com/logs/hnmrtT6oDR5ZW4Jx
Current OBS Output Settings: https://imgur.com/a/p1MsGoG
Example of a recent local recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8IBR1YryG0

 

[koala]

If you want to record a different quality than to stream, OBS needs to encode the video twice: one encoding for the stream and one for the recording. Usually, the CPU is not powerful enough to sustain 2 encoding sessions and a game.

The solution is to use at least one hardware encoder for one of the encoding sessions. Standard setup for this is to use x264 for the stream (software encoder, high cpu load) and nvenc for the recording (hardware encoder, no cpu load). Unfortunately, you don't have a nvidia GPU, so nvenc is not available. You have a amd gpu and have vce available, the AMD hardware encoder, but the quality is not very good, even with the highest encoding settings.

But it is possible to enable Quicksync for you. Quicksync is the encoder of the iGPU of your Intel CPU. Enable it in your BIOS. Quicksync is not very good for streaming (it's as lacking as AMD VCE), but for recording it can produce indistinguishable video quality. File size will be very big, but very good quality. AMD VCE videos will always be somewhat grainy and foggy, even on highest settings, on the other hand.

So do this:

• boot into bios and enable Intel iGPU
• let Windows install the iGPU drivers from Windows Update (usually, you don't need to connect any monitor at the iGPU.)
• start OBS Studio after you find the Intel GPU in Windows device manager
• find and choose QSV/Quicksync as encoder for recording in OBS

Unfortunately, there are issues with the latest and greatest Intel drivers, and with the current OBS if it comes to Quicksync. It should run fine, but if OBS crashes when you're starting the recording, don't despair. Come back to this thread and post about it, if OBS crashes.

 

[death_unites_us]

Quicksync.

Sounds great, I'll give it a shot and let you know how it goes!

 

[death_unites_us]

Just gave it a whirl and I have to say, this setting is amazing. My settings right now are balanced target, main profile, 2 keyframe, 4 async, CBR, and 18000 bitrate, and the difference is staggering. I'm also using a ton less CPU even though the quality is better! My file size is about 10x bigger, which I can handle as long as I keep up with it. I really thought upping this would cause CPU strain but it's quite the opposite! If you have any tips about the settings let me know, otherwise I'll stick with this for a bit and see if anything crashes.

 

[koala]

Don't use CBR for recording. It produces not so good quality for high motion scenes and wastes disk space for low motion scenes. With Quicksync, use rate control ICQ with a ICQ value of 15-20 (lower values mean better quality). If ICQ is not available, use CQP. If the value is low enough (probably around 18 and below, depends on the visual complexity of the stuff you record), you will not be able to distinguish between the original and the recording.
For every other value, try to keep the defaults and don't change settings you don't know.

 

[death_unites_us]

Sounds good, just changed my settings to ICQ and we'll see if it causes any issues in the future!

 

[death_unites_us]

Streamed with new settings a few times now and things are great! Only issue seems to be more GPU usage while playing a graphically intense PC game, and streaming, and recording at the same time. This is expected, since the GPU is doing more work now, and my GPU isn't super high end. I can always switch back to old recording for PC games only until I upgrade my GPU, or lower the settings on the recording and see if it makes a difference.