Recording directly from OBS to Google Drive or OneDrive

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Supernova2235

New Member
Hi, I'm a student and since COVID-19 forced me, we are going to have online lessons.

I don't really have a lot of Hard Drive space, so I'd like to record my lessons directly to either Google Drive or OneDrive.
I can't use Google Drive File Stream (GDFS) since I don't have a G Suite account and I didn't really manage to set up Video Recorder for Google Drive (seems like it is only for videos from a webcam and also I read it's only for G Suite users).

Is there a way to set up OBS to save directly to the cloud, or have my GoogleDrive/OneDrive to be shown as a folder on my pc?

and this is my log file url....i attached it because it was mentioned to attach...
 
koala

koala

Active Member
If you have a drive letter with your cloud drive, OBS can save a video to it. If you don't have a drive letter, OBS cannot.

My advice: don't do it. Your network upload bandwidth is probably somewhat low, so you probably have to limit your recording quality even more to be able to use some kind of network storage. If you manage to make OBS work with your network storage, you might encounter issues with the video, and you will not be able to detect if the issue is due to the recording itself (capturing and encoding) or due to saving to disk (cloud).

I have 1 TB storage with Onedrive, but it's not possible to directly mount Onedrive as drive letter. Instead, every app saves to local disk into the Onedrive directory, and this is mirrored afterwards to Onedrive. So you're not saving any disk space locally.
 
koala

koala

Active Member
Buy more disk space. If not possible internally, try how it works with a USB stick, and if you need more disk space for the long term, buy an external USB hard drive. They became really cheap these days. The cheapest TB per euro ratio is with 6 or 8 TB drives with 19 Cent per TB, which makes a 6 TB about 115 Euro. If this is too expensive for you, for about 50 euro you can get a 1 TB drive (50 cent per TB, more than double the price for 6 TB drives), and with only 10 euro more you get double the space: 2 TB drives start at 60 Euro (33 cent per TB).
Consult the hardware dealer of your choice for your local prices.
 
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gnorm

New Member
koala said:
If you have a drive letter with your cloud drive, OBS can save a video to it. If you don't have a drive letter, OBS cannot.
Click to expand...
True enough, we've been doing this at my church for a couple of months, but we've encountered some problems and will probably stop using Google Drive this way.

When you tell OBS to start recording, a new file appears in the hot folder, and Google Drive immediately begins to sync it. When the sync is complete, Google Drive discovers that the file has changed (because we're recording to it and it continuously grows) so the file is re-queued and syncs again. When that sync completes, the cycle begins again, each cycle taking longer to sync because it syncs the entire file from scratch each time.

We may resort to recording to a regular folder and copying the file once the recording is finished, either to Google Drive, or Vimeo, or just an external drive.
 
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Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
gnorm said:
.... When that sync completes, the cycle begins again, each cycle taking longer to sync because it syncs the entire file from scratch each time.
We may resort to recording to a regular folder and copying the file once the recording is finished, either to Google Drive, or Vimeo, or just an external drive.
Click to expand...

We use OneDrive, but concept is the same. Our process is to always turn off such sync services BEFORE livestreaming, as they will compete for upload bandwidth. Now, if you have Quality of Service (QoS) configured, and operating properly (and I've rarely seen such a setup as it isn't easy), then maybe allowing both to run at same time would work out. But unless one is technically sophisticated, running inappropriate background processes while livestreaming is just asking for trouble (and the technically advanced will more often than not simply avoid the problem by turning stuff off when not needed, and restarting later)

Our recording is set to MKV as recommended, then remux by OBS to MP4 for broader ease of use [less important to us now that DaVinci Resolve natively edits MKVs, but separate discussion]. After remux, we have both the MKV and MP4 video (12+GB for 80+minutes of 1080p30). After OneDrive syncs the recording, I then move the recording from the OS NVMe drive to an internal HDD for archiving. As noted above, if a laptop without internal option, then an external drive works ok (beware of different options and resulting transfer speeds).

As to original poster.
Assuming relatively current machine, then you have a SSD. Running SSDs near full is a good way to ruin them [I'll let you research on your own why this is true.. short version is impact on wear levelling when drive is full]. So... first rule - don't run your drive full. If you do, expect things to break (and you'll probably permanently lose data). So, if you follow this recommended practice, that means you will have sufficient space for recording today's video locally to internal drive storage. Then upload (overnight?) such video recordings to your cloud storage provider of choice. But beware the sync nature Kaola mentioned.. which does keep a local copy. Make sure your upload folder/location is configured to NOT keep a local copy [verbiage/setting depends on which tool in use]
 
Nass86

Nass86

Member
Dobrowney said:
Stream to Youtube under a private stream that no one can see and keep the recording as private. Also to that dude telling you to buy more HD space. OK BRO your kind of a DICK.
Click to expand...

Might want to calm yourself down.

If the person asking for help invests a significant amount of time trying to get record a video straight into youtube and his connection encounters a problem, they have lost the work and potentially have to start that one-shot all over again. Which could be hours of work and loss of important enthusiasm.

Ideally for a solid 1080p x 30fps stream to youtube, you need a wired 8mb upload for a 6000kbps bitrate to stream quite nicely and words will read quite nicely if he's teaching at that bitrate.

If there's an interruption, or his broadband is shared, the screen can go choppy or look unprofessional - it would cost him so much in time re recording or maybe editing that he may wish he had the storage after all . The risk to this over Wifi is sometimes quite high, the risk to this over 4G LTE is even higher. I've tried all of these, so many times. If you have to do Wifi and your router has a 5GHZ option, use that, and disconnect / airplane mode everything else in the house whilst it is happening to give your computer exclusivity on upload speed.

A genuinely good option here is what someone else suggested. USB Stick, or a 256GB SD Card, or an External Hard Drive etc. Making sure they operate at USB 2 speeds or faster, you can easily record in high quality without the anxiety of something going wrong out of your control. It doesn't even have to be SSD - you could buy a 1tb 5200rpm USB2 drive for quite cheap and that will work for this.

To the original poster, learn the differences between formatting an empty USB or SD Card to ExFat and FAT32 (MS DOS) (one doesn't let you record above 4gb, I can't remember which, and my 2 hour 1080p x 30fps videos in FLV or MKV format often end up around the 20gb mark), buy a USB stick for quite cheap, and and when finished recording just upload to Youtube, check you are happy with it, and delete the content from the USB.

Be aware you can only download 720p versions of your lessons from youtube so also factor this in and consider backing up on external storage if you want full 1080p.
 
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