Game recording on old CPU, which SW with lightweight video format/codec?

postcd

postcd

Weaksauce
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Hello,

if i want to share video from my Windows 10 PC game, which software should i use so it does not do any resource hungry encoding?
My CPU is old Xeon which does NOT support VP8, VP9, HEVC (x265) and such video codecs. Maybe it should be some RAW format or the format.
What SW do you suggest to have lowest possible performance impact during gaming?

Note that i am using dedicated GPU for the gaming which i think has quiote abundance of computing power for that game.
 
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postcd said:
i would guess it is a Trial SW and license seems to cost like $34
Click to expand...

I've only used the free version but that might have limitations that won't work for you.

I just mentioned it because I recall it being extremely lightweight while still producing quality video. There's newer software that's better and free but all the ones I'm aware of are much more resource intensive.
 
postcd said:
i would guess it is a Trial SW and license seems to cost like $34
Click to expand...


Well yeah, you want to pull-off a miracle? Either get your hands dirty digging through the options on free encoders, or prepare to pay miracle prices :D

A quad-core system from 2007 is not exactly a modem game-streaming dream platform. And Nvidia didn't add real-time transcode support until Kepler, so you've got all-the-wrong-tools in your toolbox!

Encoding without noticeable slowdown is going to take effort for you, unless the game you're playing is from 2005. 720p@30 h.264 is the best I would hope for.
 
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@defaultluser My computer performance will likely be fine if the software allows lower video quality modes. Instead advice software you are using to keep this thread ontopic and useful.

I want to feedback regarding Dxtory advised above. It seems indeed lightweight and small in site, but the trial is placing big watermark on the video and the video is too huge (less than minute goes into GBs), i tried compression and such and not easy to get working video with good size/quality ratio. Mostly video is either freezing or image damaged. When good quality, then the video size is too high as mentioned. So i will likely not use Dxtory. I used Fraps (SW) before, maybe i will return to it if there will be no better SW advices.
 
You could also look into external hardware encoders that take SSDs and would have zero load on your machine.

I’m not sure what sort of budget you have to put into this. I suspect that there is a tipping point in terms of dollars spent versus simply buying a newer computer that will be able to handle encoding on the fly.

EDIT: For clarity, in professional workflows as an example there is a tipping point between high(er) compression and light weight codecs. These two things oppose one another. Higher compression takes more processing power to encode and decode (especially if the codec is preserving a lot of information) but then takes the least amount of space. Whereas a lightweight codec will take virtually no processing power to encode or decode, but will then have a much larger file size (ProRes is a great example of an industry standard that was designed to be lightweight, intraframe, but very high bitrate).

The issue you're likely to have either way if you're going to be doing any amount of recording footage for any amount of time is that either way your pocket book is going to get hit. If you choose to go with a lightweight codec, you're going to have to invest in lots of media to store these files. If you want something that is more compressed you're likely going to need a faster computer... followed at some point with more storage space. Creating, archiving, and editing video is incredibly taxing on computers in general. It's probably something worth thinking about, it terms of plans and budget.
 
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Back in the day I'd use Fraps along with RunwithAffinity, create a fraps shortcut restricting it to one core while recording. Seemed to work pretty well.
 
What GPU do you have? That link just takes me to sapphires site not a specific GPU. Is it an RX560 ? If so that GPU would have hardware encoders in it so you should be able to just use the Radeon ReLive software built into the drivers and it will do the compression using the hardware encoder on the GPU. That would be your best bet.

If you have an older GPU that does not have a hardware encoder, your CPU is a Core 2 Quad based Xeon which simply isn't going to be fast enough to encode video and play games at the same time on it's own.The only way you will really make this work is with a GPU that has an encoder.
 
You might want to invest in a frame grabber. Many come with streaming software for the popular sites, etc.

(there are also standalone grabbers, for those that don't have slots/ports, but usually not for "live" streaming)
 
https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/dh-023

It's free with the AMD drivers so give it a try and see what results you get. I briefly tried it last year but the audio was terribly out of sync. I ended up moving to a 2 PC setup with a capture card. They constantly update Relive though so maybe you will have better luck.
 
> use OBS

Thank you and also others. I just tried this OBS (SW) and let it detect configuration for my PC. I have found that it can do various video extensions and either huge uncompressed lossless files or ones compressed using x264. When i used x264, then the video GAMA was into darker colors, orange tint of the video, but more importantly the video quality was bad (FPS, resolution, bitrate all good, but image quality bad). I tried to play with some OBS recording settings but no luck. So i can only use it for uncompressed huge video streams, it does not slowdown my gaming and quality is good. But there is problem with the huge videos, i will rite about that below. But now about other recording SW, Fraps..

Regarding FRAPS, it does uncompressed video files same as OBS (Fraps is not free SW). Just a small observation - when i change bitrate from 30fps to 25fps, then video is not acceptable quality.

For both SW the uncompressed video bitrate is something like 80MB/s. And when i compress/convert it using x264 (either by external app or do it using OBS when recording), then it somehow is unable to properly decrease bitrate while preserving quality. Even if bitrate is 2MB/s (some movies i downloaded has even 1MB/s bitrate and its quality is much better than my gameplay video) the quality is terrible. I am unsure if there is any x264 encoder parameter that can help. I see OBS accepts encoder parameters.

Result: i can record lossless video in very high bitrate 80MB/s without game freezing, but i do not know how to convert such video into low bitrate video with acceptable quality and file size. :-/
 
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2000kbps bitrate is dog shit, I'm not surprised it looks terrible. 6000 is probably where it starts becoming not miserable at 1080p

You can also try changing the CPU usage preset to "faster," trading CPU time for better quality
 
I spent alot of time trying to figure out best quality in OBS and following works for me on RX 560:

let OBS detect best settings
go to File/Settings/Output/Recording/Advanced. Set mp4, x264.

Rate control: VBR
Bitrate: 20000 Kbps (15 or 10 was bad quality - strange to me when much nicer image quality movie 1080p x264 has only 2000kbps :unsure:)
CRF: 20 (higher number means lower bitrate/file size and so worse quality)
CPU Usage Preset: ultrafast (other modes had too high impact on my CPU likely)
Profile: none
Tune: none (zerolatency tune was interesting in CBR rate control mode)

I tried to convert that huge 20MB/s video into VP9, but the quality was decreased to unacceptable level.
 
Yeah you're definitely trading even more quality away by using ultrafast

Also if you have an RX 560, it probably can do hardware encoding. Does OBS list a hardware encoder or just X264?
 
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postcd said:
I spent alot of time trying to figure out best quality in OBS and following works for me on RX 560:

let OBS detect best settings
go to File/Settings/Output/Recording/Advanced. Set mp4, x264.

Rate control: VBR
Bitrate: 20000 Kbps (15 or 10 was bad quality - strange to me when much nicer image quality movie 1080p x264 has only 2000kbps :unsure:)
CRF: 20 (higher number means lower bitrate/file size and so worse quality)
CPU Usage Preset: ultrafast (other modes had too high impact on my CPU likely)
Profile: none
Tune: none (zerolatency tune was interesting in CBR rate control mode)

I tried to convert that huge 20MB/s video into VP9, but the quality was decreased to unacceptable level.
Click to expand...

Why are you not trying Radeon ReLive like myself and other posters have mentioned several times on this thread. That way you can be sure to take advantage of your GPU's hardware acceleration. You will likely get much better quality by going that route.
 
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