Hardware & Technical raptr vs OBS

[Dave1235]

I was using raptr after reading it was the AMD version of shadow play on this forum, The main feature I use is save last 5 minutes, I really liked the ability to see what I did wrong when I explode or record a bug or a good fight.

OBS was suggested as a better program (I did some tests and raptr did use a fair bit of CPU and cause crashes for me, so I would rather avoid).

I have had a look at the OBS menu's but I can't see the record last 5 minutes option (does it have one, I saw "buffering"), I am sure I have missed something obvious, at the moment it says I am trying to record a blank screen?

Thanks for your advice.
Dave

 

[adoredtv]

OBS is a bit of a nightmare to set up but it's well worth it in the end. Blank Screen issues are well known with it - I'd love to tell you what your issue is but it would take a forum of its own to do that. I would suggest you try out "game capture" or "window capture" if that doesn't work. Then try running the game in a window to see if that helps.

Never used Raptr or Shadowplay but I "heard" that Shadowplay (Nvidia's version) was poor quality. The great thing about OBS is that the file size is so small that you can basically record hours of gameplay, so there's no real need for that "last 5 minutes" thing.

 

[FoxTwo]

Never used Raptr or Shadowplay but I "heard" that Shadowplay (Nvidia's version) was poor quality. The great thing about OBS is that the file size is so small that you can basically record hours of gameplay, so there's no real need for that "last 5 minutes" thing.

You probably heard from an inexperienced person regarding Shadowplay. It has configuration options and the quality can be as poor or as awesome as you'd like it to be. You have to trade-off of course - awesome quality means more diskspace. Poor quality needs less diskspace.

To get a quality comparable to OBS, Shadowplay doesn't even need to be at max settings - somewhere around 50% to 60% would be enough to match or exceed OBS's quality, and also the size of the files would be similar - they're all using the same H264 codec.

I can easily record a 1 hour gameplay with only 10GB hdd space required - similar to OBS. My average is 1GB per 5 mins of gameplay for my "acceptable quality".

The advantage of Shadowplay (and Raptr to some extent) is that they use the GPU for recording hence having almost zero impact on framerates. The CPU is not used at all.

EDIT - Raptr has a separate set of configuration for quality so it might be not as great as native Shadowplay for some settings.

Also, the "save last x minutes" of gameplay is great to have because you don't necessarily have to have recording on all the time - most times in ED nothing exceptional happens so you don't normally record anything when you play. This feature comes in really handy when something absolutely cool just happened to you and this thing won't ever happen again and you can't reproduce it even if you wanted to.

So you just push a button and the whole thing just gets saved as a video recording and you can use it to submit bugs, view that cool event or whatever.

 

[Morbad]

Recent versions of OBS work really well for either streaming or recording. It's updated frequently and x264 is the best software encoder you can get.

OBS, and other software recorders/encoders will actually use more CPU than NVENC (Shadowplay) or VCE (what Raptr uses), but will produce much higher quality at the same bit rate than either, and should only have a small performance hit on a good CPU.

To get a quality comparable to OBS, Shadowplay doesn't even need to be at max settings - somewhere around 50% to 60% would be enough to match or exceed OBS's quality, and also the size of the files would be similar - they're all using the same H264 codec.

x264 produces noticeably better quality for the same bitrate than NVENC, despite both encoding to H.264. 15Mbps video with OBS will look like 25-40Mbps video with Shadowplay, and 50Mbps video with VCE.

All GPU based hardware encoders currently in existence (NVENC, VCE, Quicksync) are still far behind mature software encoders.

 

[sharpshifter]

OBS is a great program and I've found it very stable over the year that I've been using it so far. Normally problems only arise as a result of external programs that overlay things onto the game window, such as Fraps or RTSS.

Fraps cannot be running alongside OBS (I've tried many many ways around it with no joy), fortunately with RTSS you can add the OBS.exe and EliteDangerous32.exe files and tell it to ignore them.

As for using OBS as an alternative to raptr/shadowplay I recommend the following settings: (apologies for this being so long!)

OBS Settings

Settings > Encoding..
Video;
Encoder: x264
Use CBR: ticked
Enable CBR padding: ticked
Use Custom Buffer Size: unticked
Max Bitrate (kb/s): 15000
Audio;
Codec: AAC
Bitrate: 192
Format: 48kHz
Channel: stereo


Settings > Broadcast Settings..
Mode: File Output Only
File Path: (somewhere on your PC)
Replay Buffer Length (seconds): 300 (or longer if you need it and have enough system RAM)
Replay Buffer File Path: (somewhere on your PC)

Settings > Video..
Base Resolution: Custom: [your monitor resolution]
Resolution Downscale: None
FPS: (30 is fine - only use 60 if your rig can handle it)
Disable Aero: unticked (I've never had to enable it, but this may solve your blank screen problem. Leave it unticked for now though)

Settings > Audio..
(Should be fine to leave all these at default)

Settings > Hotkeys..
(Assign keys that aren't used by Elite, or anything else that might interfere, to Start Replay Buffer, Stop Replay Buffer and Save Replay Buffer)

Settings > Advanced..
(Leave all at default, except for--)
x264 CPU Preset: veryfast


Notes

- It's worthwhile playing around with the CPU preset setting to find the happiest medium between system impact and output quality. I have a Core i7 2600K running at 3.8Ghz and anything further down than Veryfast starts causing lag in-game. Of course if you have a better CPU then you could try options further down the list which will improve output quality and probably allow you to lower the Max Bitrate, giving smaller video files while retaining quality.

- With these settings the end result looks fine to me, but stuff like this is very subjective.

- With the right settings and enough hard drive space you could potentially record whole game sessions, but obviously you'll have to note down at what time in the recording something happens and edit the footage later.


Setting the Scene

As for the blank screen issue, I'd keep things simple to begin with. Set up 1 scene and add a Game Capture source. Within the options for Game Capture, I find Use Hotkey most handy; just set a key that isn't in use by Elite or some other external program.

Now you should be able to start the game and once it's loaded to the menu, press the key you set up for Start Replay Buffer, then press the key you set in Use Hotkey to start capturing the game window. When something happens that you need to save just press the Save Replay Buffer key you set earlier.

If you can, keep an eye on Task Manager to track CPU usage while playing the game and recording. If it's maxing out, change the x264 CPU Preset to an option further up the list until the usage decreases. Note that faster-moving stuff (i.e. combat) will cause CPU usage to rise, while static (i.e. docked in station) doesn't have as much of an impact.

Hope this helps!