Question / Help Not recording video ... only sound and still frames

[Mike091020]

I'm brand new to OBS. I am trying to get my feet wet by recording any old video from YouTube. I have it set up to record only and reduced the quality and FPS because I thought it might be a CPU issue. I also killed all other processes except the one tab in Chrome for YouTube, and the OBS software. What I get is clear audio but on the video, I just get screenshots about 5 seconds apart. Any clue as to what I'm doing wrong.

I know this thing is insanely complicated and kind of user-hostile but if someone could just give me a clue as to where I should start looking it would be immensely helpful. Oh, and yes, I watched a handful of videos on how to set it up and tried a number of alternatives already.

Thanks again.

 

[koala]

If your video looks like a slideshow, you're totally overloading your computer with encoding the video. Video encoding is an extremely resource-demanding task, taking up to 100% and more of your CPU. It's not a thing that just runs casually in the background - it's a monster that pulls your CPU down like the most stressing game.
To lower the CPU demand, lower the output resolution and the fps. You should also try to use a hardware encoder instead of x264, which is a software encoder that uses only the CPU.

For a start, use Tools->Auto configuration wizard. This will benchmark your machine and create an appropriate base configuration for you.

Don't try to copy a configuration from youtube guides. You never have the same hardware as the guys in the video, so their guides never apply to your machine. Usually, they have very powerful machines, while you don't have such. You have to work out a working configuration for your machine yourself.

 

[Mike091020]

That makes sense. I thought I had a fast enough machine but maybe not. I'll do as you suggest to see if I can strip things down to the minimum. What I'm trying to do is record video from the net ... a YouTube video, for example. Clearly, there are extensions to let me do that for YouTube but I'm trying to find a more general approach. I'm starting to gather that this is not the right product for my purpose and I ought to be looking at something else. Apparently, this is more designed to create a video to upload to the net rather than vice-versa. Anyhow, thank you for your response.