Question / Help Local recording 1080p@60fps, is my rig up for it?

pandaobs

New Member
Hi, I post in hope for some more experienced OBS users to help me with this possibly very simple question (as title). I'm laying out the background below, but a TLDR version is at the bottom.

I have been using OBS to do local recording for about 2 years on my last rig (i5-2500k, GTX-560ti, 8GB RAM). The basic setting I use was 5k bitrate(buffer was either 5k or 10k I forgot), 10 quality, CFR, no CBR, and I am recording 1080p downscaled to 720p@30fps. The outcome is not of very high quality but it's enough for my use (youtube), and I could record and play games like Titanfall and Watchdogs without much impact to the game's performance, given that graphics are only set to med-high.

I mention the above just to say that I do have some basic knowledge with OBS but it might not be very relevant.

Anyway, lately I've built a new rig (i7-4790k, GTX-970 4GB VRAM, 16GB RAM) in hope to produce some better quality footage. And I aimed to achieve 1080p@60fps (local recording, and I know youtube is 30fps, but they are starting to supporting 60fps and I also want my source files to be as good as possible) but it didn't go as smooth as I hoped. I've been testing with games including Mass Effect 3, Shadow of Mordor, and Far Cry 4.

The main problem is video quality is not quite high enough at like 8k bitrate, or if I increase the bitrate to 12k-15k above it seems to tax my system heavily, to a point where it either affect game performance, or the recording itself is not quite smooth.

I've since read a lot about OBS's other settings and did some test with custom CRF. I have read the guide about 1k bitrate, 0buffer and crf=x to do high quality local recording, but at =18 the recording starts to become not smooth at points. I can post some logs if needed but I will need to record some stuff while those particular settings again.

But before asking any in-depth question, I would first just like to know if my rig is supposed to be able to handle running (around very high setting) and recording these new games at 1080@60fps locally?

If it is, then I can try to figure out what is holding it back. Thank you.

TLDR: Is a rig of i7-4790k, GTX-970 4GB VRAM, 16GB RAM supposed to be able to handle recording these new games (e.g. Shadow of Mordor, Far Cry 4) at 1080@60fps locally?


P.S. To all who are involved in creating and improving OBS, thank you, not just for making a free software but also a non-resources-hog, which was the main thing preventing me from making game vids before.
 

Sapiens

Forum Moderator
Should be fine for local recording unless you pick a game that absolutely hoses your CPU, which is unlikely for a 4790K. I have a similar setup and just record 1080p60 on ultrafast, then recompress it with Handbrake later when I want to upload it. Use the Local Recording guide in the resources section of the forum for settings.
 

pandaobs

New Member
Thanks for the info. I use Premiere to do editing after recording, so I think I would control the size of the final video there.

So, here are some more question I have, thanks in advance for the help. Bolded for major questions.

I was testing with Far Cry 4, the game uses around 30-40% CPU mostly, 40+ at times. And OBS uses 30-50% with veryfast preset, 25-40% with superfast preset. Do these numbers sound reasonable?

I was mainly recording with veryfast preset in the past, but seeing that OBS seems to using a lot of CPU power doing high quality recording, I've changed it to superfast.I believe when CRF is used to lock the quality, a faster preset will not degrade the quality, only increase file size.

I've done a quick recording of Far Cry 4 in 1080p@60fps, CRF=18 (1k/0 buffer setup), superfast preset, tt's 2min10sec long and 803MB.

Analyzing the log gave me these issues (I tried to post the log but it says I can't post more than 10000 characters):

Multiple video cards detected <- I only have 1, but I've enabled the intel graphic or so in BIOS (was trying to use QuickSync). Do I need to disable it?

Faster preset in use <- since I am using CRF to constrain the quality, I don't think I need worry about this warning of reduced quality?

VBR in use <- I believe CBR mainly for streaming right?

1080p60 not recommended
<- again this more about streaming?

Bad resolution / FPS / bitrate combination <- I believe this comes up because of the 1k bitrate/0k buffer setup?

Does the log show any other problem I need to worry about?

The recording ends up around 51k bitrate. Compared to a recording I did with ShadowPlay (where i played the in the same area, for a similar length of time, also 1080p@60fps, 50k bitrate setting, actually around 49k in file), both the quality and file size are similar. Though ShadowPlay can only record with 99bit audio, while I was using 128bit in OBS, I'm not very good with sound quality so I'm not sure if it's a big difference.

The problem is, recording with OBS seems to impact the FPS in game more than ShadowPlay, for around 10 more FPS. On he other hand, the recording by ShadowPlay shows up as 59FPS, I fear that it will have some video/audio sync problem when I import it to Premiere for editing, especially for longer (40min+) recordings. I may have to do a test first.

What do you think is the better option here? Is my method of recording optimal? Oh and I'm recording the files to a WD RED series HD, I don't think the HD would be bottlenecking my recording capability though?

Sorry for the long post, but I want to explain my situation as clearly as possible. Thanks.
 
Last edited:
ShadowPlay uses NVENC.
x264 in OBS uses CPU.
OBS can use NVENC ;)

Set the Encoded to NVENC, set the bitrate ~30k, have fun.
 

alpinlol

Active Member
i cant really find a log here

but technically 1080p60 ultrafast
cbr unchecked
cfr checked

bitrate 1000
buffer 0
keyinterval 2
custom x264 settings crf=22 (to free up some more cpu)

if you want to you can also set bitrate/buffer to ~30000 quality should still be fine while this i limited with buffer 0 the encoder decides how much bitrate will be used for each scene


and as notmeagain already said nvenc (shadowplay) is kepler based this means it is hardware encoded
while x264 is based on your cpu and every other task other than your game will obviously try to find a way to get the needed performance

if the cpu usage hits the performance too much just go ahead and enable nvenc but then you are forced to set a bitrate and buffer
 

pandaobs

New Member
I wanted to post a log, but by putting the text from the log file in between [ code ] [ /code ] (no spaces I know) tags it said I can't post message over 10000 characters,

I am using the "upload" function now, but I don't know why this log seems to also contain info of many other recording sessions afterwards.

https://gist.github.com/anonymous/74a4bc0b270efd0a866d

Is posting the link acceptable?

I'm trying to avoid using ultrafast since the file size is already huge to me with veryfast. And if I am to use Premiere to edit, would compressing the file with Handbrake before importing cause compatibility problem? Or would it have a big impact on quality? And in the end I still need to export with Premiere, I suppose that's another layer of compression/encoding, And finally we have Youtube to recode it again.

Anyway, thank you both for the tips, I'm now trying out the NVENC option. I just wonder though, does NVENC has any negative impact on your display card's performance if it's using the GPU to the encoding (if I understand correctly)?
 
I
Anyway, thank you both for the tips, I'm now trying out the NVENC option. I just wonder though, does NVENC has any negative impact on your display card's performance if it's using the GPU to the encoding (if I understand correctly)?

NVENC is a special dedicated hardware chip on the cards, if you are saturating the PCIE lanes you might see a hit - but any game i've thrown at my cards (770's) haven't even come close.

I've not seen any appreciable FPS drops when recording via NVENC in the year or so I've been using it.
 

dping

Active Member
I'm not here to help... But This topic helped me out! THANKS ;)
Not that your comment isn't great or anything but please dont resurrect old posts.it brings the old poast back up to the top and makes it hard to sort through people who actually need help.
 
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