Question / Help Which is the better of these three encoder settings?

[Astralogic]

Hi, considering these three encoding options:

1) x264, CRF=15, cpu=veryfast

2) NVENC, CQP=15, preset=high quality, profile=high

3) QuickSync, target usage=quality, profile=high, LA_ICQ, ICQ=15, Lookahead Depth= 40

Assuming I can run all three flawlessly, which would give the best quality?

What I record are 720p, 30fps recordings of windows desktop stuff (my browser mainly). Maybe that is simple enough to make the encoder choice irrelevant but does one give better quality over the other in any way?

 

[koala]

Difficult to tell, because you cannot compare the same quality rating numbers. CRF=15 is not the same as CQP=15 and not the same ICQ=15. I did comparisons before, and x264 CRF=15 (file size 360 MB) is about the same quality as NVENC CQP=19 (file size 472 MB) and QSV LA_ICQ=19 (file size 638 MB).

My recommendation: go for NVENC CQP=15..18 or "Indistinguishable Quality" from the simple output mode. Using nvenc, you relieve your CPU from much stress, thus giving the app you're recording all CPU it needs, which means higher frame rates and no lags.
The output file size differs greatly between all these options, but with recording this doesn't matter, since you will do the final encode in a postprocessing step in your video editor and the raw footage from obs is only intermediate raw material.

 

[Boildown]

With a CRF/CQP/ICQ of 15, its anyone's guess. The resultant bitrate is high enough to overwhelm any deficiency of the encoder being used. Any of them can probably make an transparent recording of the original.