Question / Help OBS and Audacity

Fluffyvoir

Fluffyvoir

New Member
Hey guys. I'm getting very close to starting my YouTube channel, and I need some tips and advice. I have both OBS Studio and Audacity installed, but I was wondering, since OBS can already record my microphone's audio, what is the point in Audacity? Should I be recording audio with both, or just the video with OBS? What are the dis/advantages of either? Also, what are the optimal settings of OBS to get the highest possible quality of video and audio? I have a Blue Yeti Pro, if that matters, though I'm not using the XLR input yet (still gotta get the thing it plugs into, which is another topic entirely because I don't know a single thing about those). Also, what format should I save the video as? MP4? Mov? FLV?

I don't know what most of the settings in either program mean so the more details provided the better. Explain like I'm 5 please. ^-^

Hardware:
RAM: 16 GB DDR3
CPU: Intel i7-4770K @4.0GHz
No GPU at the moment
SSD: Samsung 850 Pro
Microphone: Blue Yeti Pro
Capture card: Razer Ripsaw
 
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For recording your raw footage, use OBS alone. OBS is able to record each audio source in its own audio track in the video file, so you can postprocess each source individually and independently. Postprocessing can be done with Audacity, if you like. Audacity is able to read the audio tracks from the video for mixing. It's also suited to record audio comments you speak at a later time and want to add to the video. Don't record game video with OBS and game audio with an external app, because it is somewhat difficult to get them both synchronized afterwards.

As recording format, use FLV or MKV. They are both robust against crashes during recording. If your PC or OBS crashes while recording a MP4 file, that recording is unrecoverable and broken. With FLV or MKV this doesn't happen. FLV is able to record only one audio track, so use MKV if you want to record more than one audio track. If you postprocessing software doesn't support MKV, remux to MP4 afterwards. OBS is able to do this without quality loss - it's only the container format that is converted. If you need MP4 and your PC and OBS is reasonably stable for you, you may consider taking the risk of directly recording to MP4.

Exact recording settings depend on your hardware spec, which you did not provide. As starting point, for recording, check how using simple output mode with "Indistinguishable Quality" works out for you. With this quality setting, as Encoder, use Hardware (NVENC) if available. If not available, use Hardware (QSV). If still not available, use Software (x264 low CPU...). You might have read that using a hardware encoder produces worse quality than x264 software encoder. This is not the case for recording and using a quality-based (and not bitrate-based) recording setting. The encoder only produces bigger files but the quality is the same. What you gain with a hardware encoder is full CPU power for your game.
 
Added hardware list to original post. Changed my settings to save as MKV, and QSV as well. I did crank the audio bitrate from 128 to 320 and the video bitrate from 2,000 to 3,000, assuming the higher number means higher quality. I do have the advanced settings in each section enabled, but other than the previous two settings, I haven't touched anything as I don't know what they do. Space isn't really a concern for me, as I will probably be deleting the file from my computer once its edited and uploaded.

Is there anywhere on the forum (I didn't see any threads) that explain in great detail what every possible setting does, for someone who knows nothing about audio or video yet so I don't have to Google every single thing does?

EDIT: Found this, will read up and make a new post if there's anything I don't understand.
 
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After reading this article (that also seems to be outdated), I do have more questions that I couldn't find answers to.

What is color format, YUV color space, and YUV color range? For the latter two, I'm assuming again that the higher number will be better, as will full vs partial. But if that's the case, when would one ever choose the lower? Which color format should I use for the highest color accuracy? And what does it mean to enforce streaming service bitrate limit?
 
In the advanced settings, the defaults are there for a reason (generally viewer compatibility) and should not be messed with.
 
I still would like to learn about this stuff, regardless if it will have any impact on my specific use-case.
 
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