OBS Recording a lecture clip playing on Windows Movies & TV app

silvanet

New Member
I want to record on OBS a short section of a course lecture in mp4 that plays nicely full screen in Windows Movies & TV app. I can't figure out how to configure or what capture device to use to be able to do that. My default playback app for mp4s is VLC. It plays movies fine in full screen, but when I try to play the course lecture, VLC plays it in a small screen that crops out much of the view. I haven't been able to find how to set that not to happen in VLC. Since Movies & TV is not my default app, I have to select the file and then Open with, and select the app. It plays full screen without any cropping, but now I can't get OBS to show it as a video source. I see a VLC source and I tried that. Adding the file it opens full screen nicely without the cropping, but I get no sound at all and can't figure out how to configure that so it will work. Can someone help me with this please?
 
OK, sorry, I found out how to fix the no sound problem. In the VLC Source settings I found Advanced Audio Properties. There Audio Monitoring was turned off. I changed that to Monitor and Output. Then the sound was available.
 
OBS Studio isn't a tool for video processing or cutting. Use a video editor for this. Very easy is Avidemux, and you can always use the video editor that comes with Windows 10. Search for the app "Video editor".
 
I may not have expressed myself clearly, but I'm not interested in processing or cutting. This isn't an issue of editing for me. I simply wanted to record in OBS from a video source. My initial problem with VLC was that if I opened the recorded mp4 file in VLC, it was not playing in full screen and for some reason was cropping the video screen into a box leaving out critical parts of the screen since I'm trying to view the lecturer's programming code.

I was trying to record the playback from Windows' Movies & TV app because it did not do that cropping. I could not find a way to set that app as a video source in OBS. Experimenting around I found that selecting VLC as the video source did in fact play it in full screen without the cropping and let me record it in OBS. Then, I had the problem of no sound, but as I mentioned, I solved that.

So, in the end, OBS worked perfectly for what I wanted to do. No editing or cutting required. Thanks though.
 
It's not clear what your original source is. Do you have a *.mp4 file and you want to extract something out of it? Or do you want to record live video from a hdmi capture device or from a webcam?
In case you already have a *.mp4 file, use a video editor instead of OBS.
In case you want to record from a hdmi capture device or a webcam, directly add a "Video capture device" as source to OBS and select the capture device in its properties. In case you get no image, make sure no other app is accessing the capture device except OBS (terminate VLC and the Windows-internal camera app).
 
My original source is a downloaded video course lecture. It is an mp4 file. As downloaded I can play it perfectly in the Windows Movies & TV app. It plays full screen. I don't particularly like that app.

I was experimenting around to see if I could play it in VLC, but I ran into a problem with that. While VLC plays any downloaded mp4s full screen, for some reason, these course files are playing in a small box, cropped so I can't see the full content that shows in the full screen playbacks. That is important to me because the course lecture video shows program coding as the lecture progresses. Any cropping makes following the coding impossible.

So, I tried every possible option setting in VLC but nothing made it work. In OBS, I found that you could set a video source to VLC. Testing that, I found that if I set the video source to VLC, recording the video via that source setting actually gave me a full screen recording without cropping. That's why I was interested in re-recording the lecture that way. I had to experiment a bit with the playback settings and found that in the Advanced Settings I could fix the no sound problem I was having with OBS.

Everything worked out fine, so my problem was solved. I learned something, and I'm happy all the way around.
 
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