Question / Help Issue with Video Recording (non-streaming)

[SleekHare]

Noticing a huge quality issue between Action! and OBS. I suspect I need to tweak my settings, but I'm clueless as to where to begin.

Here's a video showing the difference between the two programs:

The OBS portion was taken in Window Capture mode.

The.log files should be uploaded.

These are my settings:

 

[Krazy]

https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/how-to-make-high-quality-local-recordings.16/

Set everything up according to this thread to get high quality local recordings.

 

[SleekHare]

Thank you, Krazy, for taking the time to help me trouble shoot this. I'd really prefer to use OBS because of the flexibility with graphics placement.

I changed all my settings as the How-to instructed, fiddled a bit with the CFX setting (15 vs 20), as well as the CPU Preset setting (VeryFast vs SuperFast vs UltraFast). The UltraFast setting seemed to make a difference, but the choppiness is still enough to give viewers a headache.

Also: There is a noticeable lag to my system every time I start recording in OBS.

Here's a video of the difference:

 

[alpinlol]

get rid of that odd base resolution

use whateve base resolution you are using on your monitor probably 1920x1080

then go ahead and downscale it by 1.5 (1280x720) use whatever filter you want

fps 30

if you want a forced bitrate i would suggest going 10000bitrate/buffer (since we change the preset it might even have to be higher)

preset of ultrafast

cbr UNCHECKED

cfr checked

custom command
05:34:01: Using custom x264 settings: "15"
does nothing
change it to crf=22 or leave it empty and set quality settings to 10

then i would suggest using game capture, because window capture with aero disabled has HORRIBLE performance

if you are going to use game capture make sure that you check "stretch image to screen" (can be found by right clicking the source and then properties)


if you want the encoder to use as much bitrate as wanted just set bitrate 1000 and buffer 0

 

[SleekHare]

Thank you for replying so quicky, alpinlol.

My monitor resolution is 1768 x 992.

Recorded two clips with your suggestions, using the 10,000bitrate/buffer and crf=22 options. The first one is with my native monitor settings downscaled to 1.5. It hung up a little bit at one point. The second one has the base resolution customized to the standard ratio, downscaled to 1.5. Could it be the monitor resolution that caused the hang up on the first clip, or was I just lucky on the second clip?

Your settings suggestions alleviated the obvious system/game lag I was experiencing with previous settings.

 

[alpinlol]

mhm it still looks choppy tbh

yet its by far not as worse as it was but still i think the real problem is the fact that the gt 630 is videocard with gddr3 vram

 

[SleekHare]

The NVIDIA GeForce 630 is the highest GPU I can get with the motherboard/power supply in my rig. It's a store bought Dell Inspiron 580. If I upgrade anything else, it'll be to a whole new computer. That won't be for another few months.

Is it that OBS has an issue with that graphics card and its vram?

I tried another comparison between OBS and Action! using a similar game (Block World) that's not as GPU/CPU intensive as Landmark. The hang ups you see in the video happened to the game as I was recording.

Thank you, again, for your help with this.

 

[alpinlol]

well technically you got an pci-e lane going so you could upgrade to an gtx 750/750ti as example

and if im not completly wrong obs captures the data from the gpu directly through the vram so if your vram is too slow there will be problems and gddr3 is pretty damn slow compared to gddr5


well there was one huge hiccup that could have been some background task.

so far as my opinion goes the framerate at the beginning (i assume obs) is way smoother than at the end with action

the hiccup might come from some cpu usage hit or just bad luck.


now its your part monitoring the cpu usage and deciding if you are satisfied with the current result.



as another test you could run the "heavy task" game again but reduce the downscale to 1.75 which should be 540p

 

[SleekHare]

Upgrading my system will not be an option for at least a few more months. :)

While running the Resource Monitor (assuming this is how to correctly monitor CPU usage?):
Landmark - 99 Threads, bounces between 33 and 99 CPU, CPU Average of ~70
Block World - ~30 Threads, ~30 CPU, CPU Average of ~30

OBS was on par with Block World for Thread and CPU usage - they would switch places for the top spot.

After that was Systems Interrupt and Systems. The CPU Average for them never reached 3.

The hiccup only happened once during all this. Couldn't determine what caused it from CPU usage. I ran around for several minutes in each game with OBS recording.

I suspect it's either something to do with Systems Interrupt, or perhaps Steam. Block World launches Steam, and it runs in the background even after Block World is shut off. I killed the Steam process via the task manager before testing this. Tested Landmark first (had one hiccup, which may have been the world loading a cave, it does that some times), then Block World (not a single hiccup).

 

[alpinlol]

well the -44.log is the landmark log
12:12:20: Total frames encoded: 79, total frames duplicated: 30 (37.97%)
12:12:20: Total frames rendered: 64, number of late frames: 26 (40.63%) (it's okay for some frames to be late)

and your system performs horrible as soon as you try doing stuff with it.

yet for the block world i guess everything runs pretty much perfect.

i would suggest downscaling a bit more as already mentioned and then test landmark again

 

[SleekHare]

I tested Landmark with three different settings, each on three different filters.

What do you think, and do you have any further suggestions? :)