Question / Help Settings to record Minecraft on low-end laptop?

[GrannyGamer1]

Hi,
I've been recording Minecraft videos for a little over a year now.

I now have OBS, which has been a tremendous help, compared to the freeware version of Bandicam.

I am extremely low income, so purchasing soft & hardware is not an option ATM.

I'm on Windows 7 home premium
HP Compaq Presario CQ62
Notebook PC
Processor: ADM Athlon II P320 Duel Core 210 GHz
OS: 64-bit
I have upgraded my graphics card with some "Legacy" (meaning my laptop's so old, they're ashamed they made it) software.

I'm struggling to get bitrate, etc. just high enough for a decent video, but just low enough not to murder my frame rate.

Also: In Windows Live Movie Maker, I've set the View to Wide Screen and am rendering in Widescreen 480 p, but am still getting black bands on sides when YouTube finishes with it.

I'm including the most recent sample of my work -- not to promote my channel, but to ask for constructive criticisms WITH specific suggestions on how to set up OBS, Minecraft, etc.

The sample is recorded in the Beta 1.7.3 version of Minecraft, so there aren't many video settings. I'm recording with either "small" or "normal" render distance, whenever possible. I do not see any improvements whether I turn on or off Open GL And, of course, there's no F3 to check frame rate, chunk loading, etc. I'll come back with a sample video from a more recent version of Minecraft at a later date.

I do not have a "Verified" YouTube account, because I cannot afford a cell phone. So, any such suggestions won't help me.

My OBS is as follows:

Encoder: x265, using CBR with CBR padding disabled.
max bitrate is 4000 kb/s buffer size kbit 4000
Codec: AAC bitrate: 128 Format: 48 kHz Channel: stereo

Resolution: 854 x 480 Aspect Ratio: 477:240
Resolution downscale: 1.59 (568x320
Filter: Bilinear
FPS: 30
Aero is disabled

Advanced Settings
General
I've ticked Multithreaded Optimizations [bit IDK if useful, as I don't have a quad core]
Process Priority Class: High
Scene Buffering time 700 milliseconds
Video
x264 CPU Preset: superfast [this worries me & I don't really understand it]
Encoding Profile: high
Keyframe Interval: auto
I'm using CFR
Network
Bind to Interface: Default
I do not have "Automatic low latency mode" ticked; should I?
Latency tuning factor: 20

I've adjusted the audio Noise Gate as well as I can, but am tempted to use Audacity to record audio separately, if it won't strain my computer, and put it through a noise filter.

I am not now, but will be, using Blender's video editing suite, as soon as I have time to study & learn it.

http://youtu.be/B_HP-PG1ems
http://youtu.be/B_HP-PG1ems

 

[Lain]

The x264 CPU preset adjusts settings for x264 for CPU usage. 'veryfast' is a middleground of quality/CPU usage. 'superfast' lowers the CPU usage of the encoder, though at the cost of lower quality. 'ultrafast' lowers the CPU usage even more, and sacrifices even more quality to do so (you'll get things like blocking on your video and artifacts, but it'll play).

Next time just so you're aware, you can give us all your settings by including a log file, which has your system specs, stream settings, and performance information

If you are just recording so you can upload to youtube on a lower end computer, then, hmm. You could probably get higher quality just by using raw bitrate, for example:
no downscale (854x480)
bitrate: 8000
x264 CPU preset: ultrafast
custom x264 encoder settings: crf=16 tune=animation

That could allow you to achieve pretty high quality from minecraft in particular while using very little CPU usage, at least I think, though it'll require more disk space. The tune=animation setting is particularly good for minecraft and cartoony things, though not good for other things.

We also have another recording guide here for achieving the highest quality recordings (as long as you have the disk space): https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/how-to-make-high-quality-local-recordings.12600/