Processing Flow

[arrmo]

Hi,

Apologies if this is captured somewhere, and is a dumb question, but just trying to understand :(.

I was hoping to stream to the OBS Browser, and just store that data directly ... no transcode, just stream directly to disk basically. It seems that's not the flow though, is that right? Meaning - the browser has to render, and then from there it captures the video, transcodes and outputs it. Do I have that correct?

Thanks!

 

[John Hartman]

What do you mean by "stream to the OBS Browser"? OBS scenes can have browser sources, but generally OBS DOES the streaming to some streaming service. OBS can record video to your disk. Is there a reason you want your disk image to look like stream data?

 

[AaronD]

OBS always transcodes. Or more accurately, OBS always decodes each source, then works with the completely uncompressed data, then encodes the result. No way around that.

If you must have lossless, there's a lossless encoding option, but it creates a huge file! Only use that if you really do, actually, NEED lossless.

OBS doesn't value bit-perfection. It's designed for live work, where "close enough is good enough, be happy and move on!"

We do have a concept called "live to tape", which came from the old TV studios producing a show as if it were live, but recording it instead to broadcast later. OBS can certainly do that, simply by recording and not streaming. Everything else is the same.

 

[arrmo]

We do have a concept called "live to tape", which came from the old TV studios producing a show as if it were live, but recording it instead to broadcast later. OBS can certainly do that, simply by recording and not streaming. Everything else is the same.

That explanation makes sense, thanks! In particular ... always decodes, then works on uncompressed data. But - that means double transcoding for a recording taken from a streaming source, like a browser (right?).

I want to try to avoid the quality impact of double transcoding ... so "live to tape" sounds interesting. Is there more info on that somewhere? For a browser, to disk ... is that an option?

Thanks again.

 

[AaronD]

That explanation makes sense, thanks! In particular ... always decodes, then works on uncompressed data. But - that means double transcoding for a recording taken from a streaming source, like a browser (right?).

There's the encoding step before it even gets to the browser. OBS undoes that, but of course it can't add any information that it doesn't have. Whatever the first encoder threw away is gone forever and replaced with compression artifacts. The degradation happens entirely in the *encoding*, not the decoding.

Then there's the encoding that OBS itself does, on the way out from OBS.

If that's how you're counting, then yes, there would be two generations there, to use the "generational loss" term. Whether that's noticeable yet, is up to you.

I want to try to avoid the quality impact of double transcoding ... so "live to tape" sounds interesting. Is there more info on that somewhere?

There's not really any more to explain. OBS still decodes what it gets and encodes the final result. You still can't escape that. "Live to tape" simply takes that encoding and dumps it to a file instead of an actual live stream.

Imagine two on/off switches after it's all said and done, and both are after the encoder: one is for the stream, and it goes straight to the internet from there, and the other is for the recording, and it goes straight to the file from there. Before the encoder, there's no difference whatsoever, and it must go through the encoder.
If you imagine that you're producing a TV show, it makes a lot more sense, and that's really what OBS is meant for anyway.

You can set OBS's encoder to not throw away very much, if at all, but like I said, that produces a huge file! Very rarely is it actually worth that much storage space for the amount of video that you get.

For a browser, to disk ... is that an option?

Only if the browser itself supports it. You might see what a regular browser does with the "Save As..." option, or right-click -> "Save Link As..." or whatever your browser calls it. Not in OBS at all, just your regular web browser.

 

[arrmo]

That all makes sense, thanks! And yes - the two transcodings I was referring to ... exactly as you noted it. Again, thanks.