OBS-Classic: How to make high quality local recordings

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

Boildown

Active Member
Jack0r said:
Well instead of doing the uncrompressed rendering I normally just setup the necessary youtube settings in Vegas. But do not forgot to deactivate the smart resample or whats it called for ALL of your videofiles in vegas. The resampling of vegas is just horrible, I dunno why its activated on default.

The problem with Vegas is that its output file alternatives that can be uploaded to YouTube are all horrible and crappy compared to x264's version of H.264. The only way to preserve quality out of Vegas is to save to a lossless format at the original resolution and then encode again with something that doesn't suck, like Handbrake. Handbrake has far superior downscaling capabilities compared to Vegas as well.

And HELL YES, TURN OFF THAT RESAMPLING IN VEGAS. Great point, and I think its on by default because they expect everyone's video sources to be shot with a camcorder. It god-awful for progressive video shot on a computer. I would upgrade to the latest version of Vegas if they made it possible to default it to off, and for no other feature. Such a pain in the ass, even worse if I forget and see the craptasticness after a long render.
 

Boildown

Active Member
Recently, including today's Twitch stream, I experimented with the advanced string setting "open-gop=1". Open GOP is a technique to increase encoding efficiency somehow, in theory, but its new and kind of experimental.

And my conclusion is that this setting is a failure with OBS. My Twitch stream fails to advance to the correct part of the stream in their player... if you try to skip ahead it just starts playing from the start again. Even when I made a highlight, it just replays the whole stream instead of the portion I indicate. Basically its all messed up.

And the save to disk file, more in tune with this thread, also a failure. Vegas Movie Studio choked on the file I saved to my hard drive with open-gop=1 set. And normally Vegas handles my saves to hard drive without any problem at all.

I was curious about this after reading that YouTube wants Closed GOP (which is an x264 default in every profile). Anyways, its not for us OBS users. In Open GOP's defense, I also experimented with it in Handbrake, and creating an .MP4 in Handbrake with Open GOP on works just fine. Something about streaming maybe makes it not work. So to conclude, don't use open-gop=1 with OBS.
 

EJIeKTPuK

New Member
Please tell me how to configure OBS to make quality local recording using the integrated video core and Quick Sync?
 

Jack0r

The Helping Squad
EJIeKTPuK said:
Please tell me how to configure OBS to make quality local recording using the integrated video core and Quick Sync?
Configuration of post one should be fine. Just activate quicksync and thats it, combined with those settings.
 

alexowolff

New Member
fearu said:
I'm comletely lost I've been trying to get local recording to work and the quality is just aweful, I know my computer can handle it im jsut trying to figure out what setting im messing up.
Up the bitrate to 5000 or 10000, so later u need edit mthe video and compress whit megui.
 

Jack0r

The Helping Squad
alexowolff said:
fearu said:
I'm comletely lost I've been trying to get local recording to work and the quality is just aweful, I know my computer can handle it im jsut trying to figure out what setting im messing up.
Up the bitrate to 5000 or 10000, so later u need edit mthe video and compress whit megui.

No, if you follow the main post you dont need to set any bitrate setting like that.
Bitrate 1000 + Buffer 0 means the bitrate is unlimited and will be choosen by the selected quality factor.
 

Boildown

Active Member
Jack0r said:
No, if you follow the main post you dont need to set any bitrate setting like that.
Bitrate 1000 + Buffer 0 means the bitrate is unlimited and will be choosen by the selected quality factor.

Does that work with Quicksync?
 

z0rz

Member
Last time I tried to use these settings with QSV enabled, OBS would crash immediately. I don't think QSV cooperates with 0 buffer.
 

Varuuna

New Member
Smashbro29 said:
Maybe this is the problem?

NcxG9gj.png
I'd like a bit of attention directed towards this issue again as I, just today, had the same thing happen to me.

While I notice that VLC can play it perfectly fine, anything else believes that the footage is 16x96. Why this is, I don't know yet.
For now, I'm using a temporary solution, by letting VLC re-encode the video into an .mp4 which Windows (and my editing software (Premier Pro and After Effects) can see and import correctly.

The settings I use are EXACTLY like the OP describes. I recorded a test-clip earlier and it looked so good and I was VERY pleased with the quality. However, the main difference between the successful test and the failed recording is the time. The test was only 3 minutes long, while the real recording was 1½ hours. Perhaps something happens when the recording rolls too long? The quoted post was just over 30 minutes, so I'm going to do some more testing after this post. Feel free to help me test as well.

Want to point out that I was recording 'Monitor Capture', fullscreen, on my primary monitor, as that is the only way for me to record footage from my Hauppauge Capture Card.

EDIT: I do apologize if this seems like an unecessary post in this thread, perhaps Help would be better? But it was already mentioned here so...
 

Boildown

Active Member
Varuuna said:
I'd like a bit of attention directed towards this issue again as I, just today, had the same thing happen to me.

The posts you're referring to are from 8 months ago. There's no context as to what the heck you're talking about.

Make a post in the Questions and Help section and include your OBS log file that created this problematic .mp4 along with a full description of the problem. Also post the full media info from the .mp4 as well, in the post you make in the Questions and Help forum.
 

Varuuna

New Member
How is it not making sense to you? No solution or workaround was ever found, so I doubt it was ever fixed.

Regardless, I will make a post in the Questions and Help section.
 

Cander

New Member
I've tried read through most of the pages here and made a search for a good answer for this probably already asked question: how do I best do simple cut-editing in a video editing program like windows movie maker, render it to a new mp4 without losing quality or making the file bigger?

I'm using the settings suggested in the first post works great, having CBR disabled make really good quality at low output file size. Compressed and ready for the web, but if I need to do after-editing in a video editor, what's the best practice to as least damage to quality/size?

In movie maker, would the solution simply be when exporting to set the video's bitrate the same as the input video's? Or is there more parameters that affect quality/size?
 

Boildown

Active Member
Cander said:
I've tried read through most of the pages here and made a search for a good answer for this probably already asked question: how do I best do simple cut-editing in a video editing program like windows movie maker, render it to a new mp4 without losing quality or making the file bigger?

I'm using the settings suggested in the first post works great, having CBR disabled make really good quality at low output file size. Compressed and ready for the web, but if I need to do after-editing in a video editor, what's the best practice to as least damage to quality/size?

In movie maker, would the solution simply be when exporting to set the video's bitrate the same as the input video's? Or is there more parameters that affect quality/size?
I think you just need to make sure CRF setting is enough to guarantee transparent quality in the initial save to disk file.

Once that's done, I just recommend my guide post here for the highest quality final output: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2972&start=70#p48617

You said "simple cut", "without losing quality", and "[without] making the file bigger".

1) Well I'm not sure what you mean by simple cut, but how ever many edits you make really doesn't matter. If you make one or more changes, you're going to have your next item affected.

2) You're going to lose quality any time you edit the .mp4s. Perhaps some program can cut and splice on keyframes and not lose quality, but I'm not familiar with any. Outside of that, any NLE will cause a quality loss by definition (of lossy compression). That's why you want to keep quality high from the initial save through every intermediate step.

3) The method I describe in my link above only makes the end file potentially no bigger (entirely depending on the quality you tell Handbrake to compress at in the final encode). But the intermediate files, which can be deleted when you're done so you get your hard drive space back, are huge. Even so, if you want a high quality final product, I think its the way to go.
 

Cander

New Member
Boildown said:
Cander said:
I've tried read through most of the pages here and made a search for a good answer for this probably already asked question: how do I best do simple cut-editing in a video editing program like windows movie maker, render it to a new mp4 without losing quality or making the file bigger?

I'm using the settings suggested in the first post works great, having CBR disabled make really good quality at low output file size. Compressed and ready for the web, but if I need to do after-editing in a video editor, what's the best practice to as least damage to quality/size?

In movie maker, would the solution simply be when exporting to set the video's bitrate the same as the input video's? Or is there more parameters that affect quality/size?
I think you just need to make sure CRF setting is enough to guarantee transparent quality in the initial save to disk file.

Once that's done, I just recommend my guide post here for the highest quality final output: https://obsproject.com/forum/viewtopic. ... =70#p48617

You said "simple cut", "without losing quality", and "[without] making the file bigger".

1) Well I'm not sure what you mean by simple cut, but how ever many edits you make really doesn't matter. If you make one or more changes, you're going to have your next item affected.

2) You're going to lose quality any time you edit the .mp4s. Perhaps some program can cut and splice on keyframes and not lose quality, but I'm not familiar with any. Outside of that, any NLE will cause a quality loss by definition (of lossy compression). That's why you want to keep quality high from the initial save through every intermediate step.

3) The method I describe in my link above only makes the end file potentially no bigger (entirely depending on the quality you tell Handbrake to compress at in the final encode). But the intermediate files, which can be deleted when you're done so you get your hard drive space back, are huge. Even so, if you want a high quality final product, I think its the way to go.

Thanks for the response

Well by "simple cut" I meant ordinary video editing, and I understand now no matter "how little" or "how much" editing you do, quality will decrease when rendering the new output, how much depending on settings in the video editor.

Thanks for the techy guide given, although as I didn't have Sony Vegas, I tried in CyberLink PowerDirector to render the OBS-video (with crf=5) with the suggested 9000kps bitrate for the 1280x720 resolution (which I recorded in) and the new output looked great and close to the OBS-output. Coincidentally the OBS ouput was about 9000kps too in my test, which is low for such close lossless recording I believe, but that's should be expalined by because I was simply recording my screen and really no motion occured. So the file size after video-editing was pretty much the same, in this case. When recording a motionfull game I guess the bitrate on the OBS-output will fly sky high and the output after video-editing using 9000kps bitrate will make it alot of smaller, hopefully also keeping decent quality.

Anyhow, as I'm trying to complete a little tutorial to be used by "non-advanced" users, giving them good recommendations of how to record, edit and upload videos in best way without going nuts. I would need to find a free video-edtior that can decently render output directly ready for youtube-upload. I tried Windows Movie Maker, but even when I created a custom profile and tried to make the settings similar to the ones I succeeded with in Cyberlink PowerDirector, the quality got really worse. Maybe I'm missing some setting there, or the program is simply just worse. Any recommendations on free video editors I could try?
 

Boildown

Active Member
Not really, I think Vegas is worth the money. It has a free trial download, and there's about 4 different versions, so you could string those out for quite some time if you wanted to insist on not buying it.

I use the Movie Studio Platinum edition instead of the lowest-end Movie Studio, because I want/need to be able to customize my Render As options, and the non-Platinum doesn't let you do that. At least in version 11, they're up to 13 now it seems: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegassoftware

The price says 79.99 USD but Amazon always seems to have it (or an older version, I still use 11) much cheaper: http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/?rh=i%3 ... o+platinum
 

Cander

New Member
Boildown said:
Not really, I think Vegas is worth the money. It has a free trial download, and there's about 4 different versions, so you could string those out for quite some time if you wanted to insist on not buying it.

I use the Movie Studio Platinum edition instead of the lowest-end Movie Studio, because I want/need to be able to customize my Render As options, and the non-Platinum doesn't let you do that. At least in version 11, they're up to 13 now it seems: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegassoftware

The price says 79.99 USD but Amazon always seems to have it (or an older version, I still use 11) much cheaper: http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/?rh=i%3 ... o+platinum

Personally I got all the professional video editing programs I need :-), I'm just hoping I'd be able to fix this job with some free alternative as it would great value to this particular tutorial

But thanks for the tips!
 

Boildown

Active Member
Unfortunately Windows Movie Maker (a long long time ago) and Vegas Movie Studio are the only ones I've ever used and can speak on. There was one other I thought had some good features that was free, lemme see if I can find it. I was thinking of checking it out 'cause I heard it could handle non-constant framerate video, but that turned out to be misinformation (I think).

Ahh it was Lightworks: http://www.lwks.com . Looks decent, I'm mostly put off by their requirement to buy yearly licenses for the more capable versions.
 

Cander

New Member
Thanks again for the tips.

I did some reserach and what you refered to as "cut and split on keyframes", and it was very well possible and there's software for that! Very nice, you can make simple hard cuts in the video without re-encoding, thus no lose of quality.

Found a guy that show how to do that, coincidentally firstly recording a test file with OBS, and with a simple free video editor/encoder called AviDemux: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-cgnmmJ5Y4

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/AviDemux

Although ofcourse it's a bit limited, as there's seems to be no such video editor/encoder that support "smart editing", or "frame accurate editing" for the h264 codec, which mean you can go nuts and cut on any frame in the video giving you total flexibility. In AviDemux for example you can only cut out parts between the keyframes (I-Frames), which is located like every 5-10 second in the video. So not suitable for any serious editing. Unless you do it like the guy in the video, just producing a "new" video out of a selected part of the video, then you apparently can select any start/end frame.

Here's program that I read rumours about that could do "smart editing" for h264, haven't tried it myself though. Probably worth checking out if this after-editing method is of interest. Not freeware but with trial: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/VideoReDo
 
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