OBS-Classic: How to make high quality local recordings

OBS Classic OBS-Classic: How to make high quality local recordings

Chanc3

New Member
I dont get Where X is anywhere from 1-20, lower being higher quality / higher CPU usage. A good place to start is the 15 - 20 range. A CRF of 0 enables lossless recording which will have very high file size and CPU requirements and introduces compatibility issues, so be careful! So if i just put crf=x will it work or do i have to set the X as a number
 

Mr357

New Member
Does anyone have a recommendation for a crf/CPU preset combination that should result in the smoothest video possible? I've tried seemingly everything, and although my CPU (2700K @ 4.6GHz) can handle even crf 10/faster, I still get some choppiness or stutter in all of my recordings. The best setting so far has been crf 20/superfast, but even that's not quite good enough for me.

I'm recording from a 1920x1080 window at 30fps. The first of the two logs I've attached was my typical settings for a few days (crf 10/veryfast). The second is what I figured would turn out better (crf 20/faster). Both give decent results but exhibit the problem I'm trying to solve.

Edit: The stutter only happens in high-motion scenes, so I'm assuming I need to keep my bitrate down, or reduce the compression somehow.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.
 

Attachments

  • 2016-02-17-1244-07.log
    21.9 KB · Views: 110
  • 2016-02-19-1148-20.log
    10.8 KB · Views: 92

Sapiens

Forum Moderator
@Mr357 Use the ultrafast preset like the guide suggests. No reason to crank up compression when the encoder can just use a higher bitrate to compensate. If crf=10 doesn't give results you find acceptable you may as well switch to OBS Studio and use the lossless recording function. If your goal is simply uploading to Youtube then you're wasting your time chasing better quality anyway, as they'll re-encode everything you upload.
 

Mr357

New Member
@Mr357 Use the ultrafast preset like the guide suggests. No reason to crank up compression when the encoder can just use a higher bitrate to compensate. If crf=10 doesn't give results you find acceptable you may as well switch to OBS Studio and use the lossless recording function. If your goal is simply uploading to Youtube then you're wasting your time chasing better quality anyway, as they'll re-encode everything you upload.

Thank you for the response. I should've mentioned that this is for editing with Vegas Pro before uploading to YouTube. That rules out lossless, right?
 

Sapiens

Forum Moderator
If you're uploading to Youtube then most of your effort is being wasted since you'll never see the original source quality of what you upload. If you're using Youtube to check the quality of your videos then you're really wasting time. :P
 

Mr357

New Member
If you're using Youtube to check the quality of your videos then you're really wasting time. :P

Of course not. What made you think that? I'm not talking about image quality, I'm talking about frame rate (assuming they don't go hand-in-hand). I don't really care about how it looks on YouTube; I want the original output to be as close to perfect as possible since I might distribute the final product through some kind of file sharing.
 

Sapiens

Forum Moderator
If the ultrafast preset isn't sufficient then consider downscaling or using a hardware encoder instead.
 
This work very well for like 2 days. I tried it again today and for some reason my whole game started lagging and it says hight encoding even though it was always fine before and i changed nothing. I reinstalled OBS and i have the same issue. Can anyone help? Thanks.
 

Boildown

Active Member
Make a new thread on the help forums with your OBS log file from a five minute or longer recording of high action gameplay.
 

N1GHTHAWK

Member
update....i just tried monitor capture instead of game capture and it is working way better with no frame drops. This is contradictory however to what I read online. Comments?
 

N1GHTHAWK

Member
I'm not worried about the webcam, I'm talking about CS:GO gameplay. And I've heard that monitor capture is worse and less efficient than game capture, but why am I dropping frames in game capture and not in monitor capture?
 

Boildown

Active Member
If you're still having problems, make a new thread. Edit your post here with the link to it if you wish. In the new thread post an OBS log file from your most recent setup, after the webcam adjustments, from five minutes of high action gameplay.
 

carlos1103

New Member
Hey im trying these settings but once you have the video on flv converting it to mp4 looses quality and i want to upload the records to youtube any tips to get great quality record and not loosing quality converting the file?
 

Boildown

Active Member
Hey im trying these settings but once you have the video on flv converting it to mp4 looses quality and i want to upload the records to youtube any tips to get great quality record and not loosing quality converting the file?

You're re-encoding it then instead of just swapping containers. Do it this way instead: https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/how-to-convert-flvs-to-mp4-fast-without-re-encoding.16429

Added benefit is that its a hell of a lot faster too.
 
Top