Massive File Size & Error Message

[mroberts327]

Hello,
I am not sure what I did wrong in my settings but my guess is it has something to do with the video encoder. I am on an M1 mac and a 35 minute video is ending up at close to 70gb. Not sure why, but if I put the raw video into an editor and render it, the size shrinks (in the 70gb example it shrunk to under 5gb). What am I doing wrong? (Logs attached)

Also, my files always get this error whenever I try to open them. Any idea what the deal with that could be?

Also

 

[AaronD]

From your logfile:

11:59:06.036: rate_control: CRF
11:59:06.036: bitrate: 40000 (kbps)

70GB for 35 minutes might be about right for 40000kbps. Your editor is throwing away a lot of data, which reduces the quality. You can set OBS to do the same thing, but then you can't get that quality back. If that's okay, then you can save the file size. Settings -> Output

---

The other problem is likely to be something else that I don't know. Solve one at a time, and see if the other goes away too, though I don't think it will in this case.

I find it interesting that they worded the error message to suggest that the content is the problem and not their product. I know of some products that used to be good and are now trash with the same name. (Windoze Media Player, for one example) And I've seen at least one popular paid DAW that exports malformed files that are *almost* a universal standard, but with critical information missing that it knows how to replace. That makes it appear as if everyone else is so shoddy that they can't even use a universal standard...when it's actually *itself* that withheld critical information to make it work. That's an anti-competitive move, so a free thing like OBS has no motivation to do that and doesn't do that.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

side note: You have quite a number of CPU intensive filters in place.. I hope you are watching System Monitor to make sure you aren't overloading the CPU

On Windows, using NVENC my 75 minute 1080p30 Recording using CQP at 3X my 7Mbs streaming bitrate (separate encoding 21,000kpbs) ends up being in the 11GB range and looks good

For reference, here are notes from this forum I saved 3+ years ago.. not sure what impact/options the latest M1 CPUs have on recommended recording options (maybe that is why you are using CRF?)

https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/best-settings.140188/#post-514693 @FerretBomb comment #2
...snip...

2) Record using CQP or CRF, not CBR. CBR is only used for streaming, where the back-end infrastructure requires it. CQP/CRF are quality-target based encodes, and will use as much or as little bitrate as is needed to maintain a constant image quality. No wasting bitrate on simple/slow scenes, no choking on fast-moving or complex scenes. 22 is a good starting point. 16 will result in much larger files, but near-perfect video. 12 should only be used if you plan to edit and re-encode later, and will be VERY large. Anything lower than 12 shouldn't be used unless you know exactly why you need it, and what problems it can cause.​

Related to # 2 above ["FerretBomb, post: 529433, member: 4349"]

Don't record with CBR or VBR, use CQP instead.
CQP is a quality-based encoding target that uses as much or as little bitrate as is needed to maintain a given image quality level.
22 is the normal 'good' point, 16 for 'visually lossless', and 12 is generally the lowest you'll want to go even if you plan to edit the video later (to cut down on re-encoding artifacts). The lower the number, the closer to 'lossless' video it gets. But below 16 the filesizes get ridiculously large very fast.

For easy setting, use simple output mode instead of advanced and choose "High Quality, Medium File Size" as quality. Or if you insist on advanced output mode, increase the cq value to get smaller files. Increasing the cq value by 3-4, you're halving the file size.

…. recording, use a quality based rate control like CQP (if you use nvenc on a Nvidia GPU) or CRF (if you use x264) or ICQ (if you use Quicksync on a Intel iGPU). CBR/VBR is for streaming only.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

And you may want to auto remux to MP4 when done (manually deleting MKV to save space) to simply avoid Apple Walled Garden nonsense on file name/file wrapper for video