Question / Help Tips on lessening file sizes without heavily affecting quality?

[Pwestfl]

I used this guide for my settings: https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/obs-classic-how-to-make-high-quality-local-recordings.16/

A simple 15 minute recording of a sub-region ended up being over a GB. So I downed some settings:

Encoding Options
Quality Balance: 9

Advanced Options
Custom x264 parameters: crf=20

I also set keyframe interval from 0(auto) to 2, changed Audio Encoding from AAC to MP3 (I heard MP3 gives you smaller filesizes and doesn't sound too different for simple recordings.), and set FPS from 45 to 40.

These changes downed the filesize by nearly a GB, but almost 600MB for only 15 minutes of recording this small is still too high for my liking. Is there anything else I can do to lower filesize without sacrificing a ton of quality? Maybe converting the file to MP4 and running it through a compressor? Any tips would help!

 

[Harold]

(I heard MP3 gives you smaller filesizes and doesn't sound too different for simple recordings.

You heard wrong. mp3 is WORSE quality and larger filesizes. AAC is mpeg layer 4 audio. mp3 is mpeg layer 3. The math is provably worse in mp3.

If you're uploading to youtube, run your recording through handbrake with the same crf value only with the "veryslow" x264 preset.

 

[Pwestfl]

You heard wrong. mp3 is WORSE quality and larger filesizes. AAC is mpeg layer 4 audio. mp3 is mpeg layer 3. The math is provably worse in mp3.

If you're uploading to youtube, run your recording through handbrake with the same crf value only with the "veryslow" x264 preset.

I'm not uploading to youtube, also thanks for the tip on the audio. Still, any tips on lowering filesize without sacrificing a ton of quality would REALLY help! :D

 

[Sapiens]

Re-encode the file with Handbrake afterwards as suggested. When real-time encoding isn't necessary you can use much more compression. If you're just archiving the files you could even use something like x265.