Recommended settings for recording MS Excel tutorials

[pinebush]

I suspect that this will be an easy answer for someone better acquainted with OBS than what I am. I have struggled for a few hours on creating appropriate settings for recording MS Excel tutorials. I am not concerned about the streaming settings - only the recording. These will then be posted to YouTube, or used for other training. I need good clarity on the screen content, with a quick refresh rate. During my experimentation I have experienced times when scrolling the screen, the content turns fuzzy and it takes a second or more for it to clear up.

One big problem is that I cannot find a setting that will clearly show the gridlines in Excel. The recording shows fuzzy or missing gridlines lines.

I have experimented with both the x264 and NVIDIA encoder, as well as CBR & VBR rate control, as well as bitrates (in the 40000 range). Here are some computer specs which might be helpful in determining recommended settings:

• Windows 10
• Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630 [Display adapter]
• NVIDIA Quadro P1000 [Display adapter]
• 1920x1080

Thank you in advance for your time & expertise.

 

[koala]

For recording, CBR/VBR is not suited. Especially for mostly still images. Use some quality based rate control.

Use Tools->Auto Configuration Wizard and tell you're optimizing for recording. As resolution choose your native display resolution, as fps choose 30 (for showing office apps, even 15 fps would be sufficient. This vastly reduces bandwidth requirement, making images have less compression artefacts).
If available, choose Nvenc or Quicksync (hardware) as encoder. At least Quicksync should be available.
Apply the settings, and afterwards verify output (scaled) resolution and make sure it's your native display resolution. If it is reduced by the wizard, set it back to the native display resolution.
You can change the quality to "indistinguishable quality, large file sizes", but usually that's not needed for near still image videos like office app demonstrations.

 

[pinebush]

I followed your suggestion, but chose the high end of the ranges. I have attached a screenshot which was created with the following settings.

• 30 fps
• NVENC encoder
• Resolution / Native display resolution / Scaled resolution are all set to 1920x1080
• Indistinguishable quality, large file sizes

I have attached 2 screenshots - one taken of the Excel screen, and the other taken of the recorded video. It is severely lacking in quality, but I don't know which settings to tweak.

 

[R1CH]

This is probably because you have your capture or video player not exactly 1:1 with your source. Eg to capture 1080p, make sure OBS and your display capture source (and video player when reviewing) are all running at 1080p. Any downscaling will make fine details like lines slightly blurry.

 

[pinebush]

My native display is 1920x1080, as are my recording settings. I don't want to shoot down your ideas, because I really am begging for help, but I can't see that this is what is causing the problem.

 

[koala]

A logfile could help.

If you use window capture for Excel, you must not use the "fit to screen" option to make the Excel window occupy the full area - this will do rescaling that will make the video blurry.

I did recordings of Excel in the past, it is definitely possible to show the grid lines perfectly and not thinned out as in your screenshot with no magical settings - for me, it always just worked.

 

[pinebush]

I did not adjust the window capture in any way, so I don't see that it would have been rescaled.
I didn't realize there was such a thing as a log file. Here is the link. https://obsproject.com/logs/kHqGeXbakz7Hy3sV
I am no further ahead than I was 6 hours ago - only more frustrated. I thank you for all your assistance. Hopefully we can come up with working solution.

 

[pinebush]

I came to realize that there was nothing lost if I reset my OBS settings. So I used File > Show Settings Folder to locate the settings. After closing OBS, I removed all the files in the settings folder, then opened OBS. As koala suggested earlier, I used the wizard to configure OBS. Voila - much better. The recording now clearly shows the Excel gridlines, and other finer details. It must be that I had some settings which were conflicting with the settings I thought I was changing.

Now, I will move on to improving the audio. I am using VST2 Plugin filters, and it takes some playing with the filters to achieve the best sound.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to a solution for my problem. I believe I can say it is resolved. Is there some way I can mark this thread as solved?

 

[koala]

From the log: in Settings->Video you set Bicubic instead of the default Lanczos filter, this is directly affecting rescaling if there is any rescaling. And in Settings->advanced->video->Color range you set full instead of the default partial. Changing this default means trouble with media players or postprocessing software that doesn't properly handle full color range. Very bright areas become even more bright in this case, drowning light gray details like the Excel grid into white, and the same with dark gray areas - these drown into pitch black.

You reset everything to default, which fixed all this. If there is a lesson to learn, then it is: "don't change defaults unless you need to change them and exactly know what a change will do".