Is OBS the best software for recording offline?

[Mike21Daisu]

I have all the well known/the best softwares for offline recording, none of them managed to record in 1920/1080 60 fps 10+kbs without any lag/frame drops or lag spikes once in a while when I'm recording.

I was using OBS to Stream Live, I thought: How can this software record offline videos better than any of those softwares that are created just for offline recording?

I've set the highest settings that I needed for recording, 1080/1920 full HD resolution, 60 fps, 10k bits, sound quality: AAC 192 bitrate 'cause I wanted for YouTube and MP4 files need AAC codec and not MP3.

And what you know? It recorded without any lag, any frame drops, when I had the game set on highest quality. This software uses the minimum of computer's power at maximum, this is amazing. Thank for developing this good software.

 

[ppy]

Totally agree on this. I've started recommending it to anyone having issues with FRAPS and the likes.

 

[Helixia]

I agree also. I began to hate FRAPS of the big files for good quality recordings.
Also you need to pay for FRAPS with limited record settings...

 

[chronek]

I love OBS it take about 20% of cpu and 50MB/s disk transfer when recording Full HD game lossless x264 (cfr=0) with yuv444p (use444=1) on ultrafast setting (without quick sync) or only 10% of cpu and 10MB/s with losy compresion slowy preset but quick sync enabled , fraps is no good (60% cpu and 150MB/s for lossless record .. pff)

 

[Krazy]

I love OBS it take about 20% of cpu and 50MB/s disk transfer when recording Full HD game lossless x264 (cfr=0) with yuv444p (use444=1) on ultrafast setting (without quick sync) or only 10% of cpu and 10MB/s with losy compresion slowy preset but quick sync enabled , fraps is no good (60% cpu and 150MB/s for lossless record .. pff)

Just a note here, changing preset has 0 effect when using Quick Sync.

As you guys are probably starting to realize, actual "lossless" recording is completely unnecessary for high quality recordings, even ones you want to edit later.

 

[Boildown]

I like FRAPS, I bought the full version years ago and still use it. Its great, superior to even built-in features in most or all games for taking screenshots.

The main problem with its movie recording capabilities is that there's only two quality settings you can change, with two options for each: 50% downscale or full-size, and low quality or lossless.

The downscale has too few options: half-size or full-size. The standard quality capture looks pretty crappy for how much CPU and hard drive resources it uses, and the lossless quality recording is very CPU intensive, and uses a ton of disk space (because its lossless, no fault of FRAPS there).

I love to record FRAPS lossless, but it causes such a framerate hit that I'm often unwilling to use it when playing against other humans because I don't want to reduce my chances of actually playing my best, most of all when I'm recording it. That said, certain games play nice with FRAPS more than others... for example, I was always able to play WoW just fine while recording with FRAPS. But the combat flight sim I sometimes play (Aces High) was absolutely unplayable while FRAPS was going.

The main advantage (IMO) of x264 encoders are their flexibility. You want a high quality recording with light CPU impact? No problem, just put it on SuperFast or UltraFast with a high bitrate. You want a small file? No problem, lower the preset to something stronger and/or lower the bitrate (or increase the CRF) and use a larger downscale.

With x264 encoding (especially OBS) you can choose just the right amount of CPU-usage and disk space usage for your needs. FRAPS is comparatively extremely inflexible. But I still turn to FRAPS when I want a lossless recording or want to take screenshots, or even if all I want is a framerate counter in the corner of the screen.

By the way, FRAPS lossless .AVIs load just fine into all your major NLEs, including the one I use (Sony Vegas Movie Studio). The lossless .MP4s are much less compatible. That said, I find my need to capture lossless diminished greatly once I found that I could just use OBS at a very high bitrate (actually very low CRF) for essentially the same high quality effect.

 

[chronek]

As you guys are probably starting to realize, actual "lossless" recording is completely unnecessary for high quality recordings, even ones you want to edit later.

I not agree , my colours in video game green and yellow was almost grey on YouTube if i not use 444p and had many artifacts if i not use crf=0 , cause of many reencodings (game rgb24 -> obs compress x264 420p -> editing rgb24 -> compress x264 420p -> compress by YT 420p)

 

[Krazy]

As you guys are probably starting to realize, actual "lossless" recording is completely unnecessary for high quality recordings, even ones you want to edit later.

I not agree , my colours in video game green and yellow was almost grey on YouTube if i not use 444p and had many artifacts if i not use crf=0 , cause of many reencodings (game rgb24 -> obs compress x264 420p -> editing rgb24 -> compress x264 420p -> compress by YT 420p)

You still don't need lossless to get better colors. It will be definitely possible in the future to record in other color formats.

 

[Lain]

Thank you, I appreciate the compliments, I spent the last 13 years of my life doing graphics and game programming, I'm really glad to see all that time and experience has paid off.

There are so many awesome people who contribute to development -- especially r1ch and palana who are crazy good programmers and have implemented big features, improved key functionality with the current revision, paibox for fixing much of the device code, muf for being muf and giving very good insight, faruton for his endless help on the plugin front with some amazing plugins, warchamp for being the most incredibly supportive and one of the most awesome individuals I've ever met (on top of being a web wizard), homeworld for adding all the nice text features and other bugfixes. There are so many awesome people helping out all the time and I'm honored to be working with them.

(And don't think I've forgotten the people who help on other fronts, dodgepong, krazy, kharay, ferretbomb, and just so many people who kindly give free time to help manage the forums and answer questions so we can spend more time on development. The amount of awesome people on here is just so astounding)

The new rewrite that's in the works will hopefully fix most of the current issues and things that are missing from the design, all those features that many people want, things like lossless encoding and all that nice stuff. We're fixing up major design flaws and allowing better developer access for more features, as well as osx and linux support. The most important thing is better developer access though -- making it so more features can be added more easily by developers.