Question / Help Remux-ing vs just downloading in MP4

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CupcakeLove

New Member
I have no idea if this has already been answered, I couldn't find it anywhere. I am new to streaming, and want to record my videos to edit for later. OBS auto records my streams into an MKV file type. When I try to enter this into my editing software (Sony Vegas Pro 17), it won't take it. However it instead takes MP4. While going into the settings to change to MP4, OBS screamed at me saying to instead Remux. Not only is this such a headache to remux every recording, but the file sizes are gigantic (or so it seems. It might be the same size, but I swear MP4 is much more compact). Is there any problem with me just changing the setting to MP4, or is there some serious problem with doing MP4 over MKV? Any help would be nice/
 
C

CupcakeLove

New Member
Edit: I've just remuxed roughly 20+ mkv videos totaling roughly 300+ gb into mp4, and the new files are actually bigger so my comment on better size I believe is wrong. However I still need the mp4 file for my editor however so any help is nice
 
koala

koala

Active Member
If you remux with the integrated remux function of OBS, file size and quality isn't changed. It's only remuxed (encoded stream data only gets different container), not recoded (whole stream data is uncompressed and encoded again, which results in quality loss).

Using mp4 as recording format isn't recommended, because if the recording is aborted due to some error (for example OBS crashes, PC crashes, disk full), the whole file isn't usable. It's trash. Completely, not just truncated. It's this way, because an mp4 needs a vital index to be written on closing, but in these error conditions this index is lost and cannot be rebuilt. MKV doesn't rely on such an index - what got written to the file is usable, even if recording was aborted prematurely.

You can use mp4 for recording with OBS, if your OBS runs rock stable and never crashes and you monitor disk usage, but don't complain about destroyed recordings on crashes, if you do.
 
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