Laptop specs suitable? And a few other general OBS questions

jay60

New Member
Hi everyone, will my laptop's specs be enough to use OBS?

14" screen, Windows 10S/11, i5-1135G7 Processor - Quad-core - 2.4 GHz / 4.2 GHz - 8 MB cache. 8 GB DDR4 (2666 MHz) RAM, 256 GB SSD

Also, could anyone help with the following questions
- Is it possible to pause a recording and restart it? (I would like to record footage using an external USB webcam and need to be able to pause and restart the recording multiple times throughout the video. I am not planning on using OBS to do live streams)
- Is there a maximum length a recording in OBS can be? e.g. could I make a video that is 180 minutes long (having paused and restarted at different points throughout the recording)?
- Can I choose to save the recording straight onto my SSD or straight onto a micro SD card in my laptop?

Many thanks in advance!

Jay
 
Real-time video encoding is computationally intensive. Then you can layer on CPU intensive effects and filters like chroma-keying, audio filters, etc
So, there are those that have 10yr old CPU working (with a highly optimized Operating System and OBS setups). And there are those that struggle with modern gear. Laptop always have to consider thermal throttling when running intensive workloads, so it depends on make/model, and associated details.
So, unfortunately, .... it depends. That laptop could be fine... or not, depending on your setup
and time you are willing to optimize your setup

As to you other questions
- Yes you can stop and restart a recording. However, you may find the using a video editor makes more sense
OBS is a powerful compositing tool. If you are going to composite various sources, then OBS makes a lot of sense. For simply recording a camera, OBS is possibly complete overkill vs Windows built-in Camera app (video recording capability as well as native editing).. just depends
- 180 isn't an issue, though you have to consider recording quality you want and available disk space. The higher the quality, the more the disk space consumed
- due to write speed considerations, and read/write cycles on a microSD, that wouldn't be my first recommendation. Recording to local SSD, would be my recommendation, in general.
 
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