OBS Studio is great for streaming, but I also use it for recording just about everything,
too.
Thankfully, the interface for recording settings is pretty similar to streaming settings – but
there’s some specific tweaks we can make to get better quality or higher performance.
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I’m EposVox, here to make tech easier and more fun, and welcome back to my OBS Studio
tutorial course.
I have many, many more videos on the software in the playlist linked in the description.
Check that before asking questions, and check the introduction video to learn how this course
works, if you get confused.
To get the most out of your recording settings in OBS Studio, make sure your Output Settings
tab is set to “Advanced” mode, not “Simple” mode.
This way you can optimize settings for your specific computer.
Make sure you’re on the “Recording” tab, too, of course.
If you’re working on a recording-only profile, then it doesn’t matter what the “Streaming”
tab settings are, as you should never click “Start Streaming.”
With recording settings, choosing a bitrate is probably the hardest part.
The “bitrate” is the rate of data for the video file.
Up to a certain ceiling, more bitrate equals higher quality video footage.
At the same time, more bitrate also equals bigger file sizes and often the need for a
dedicated recording drive.
Let’s walk through the settings in this menu.
For “Type,” you just wanna leave that on “Standard.”
In other videos in the course, I will show you how you can use the “Custom” type
to record some cool formats, but for now let’s leave that on Standard.
Recording path is where your video recordings will be saved to.
If you struggle to find your video file after recording, come back and check to see where
this is set – your video will be there.
As I’ve mentioned before, you’ll get the best performance results if you can record
to a secondary hard drive or solid state drive in your PC.
This is typically only something you’ll have in desktops.
If you don’t know what that means, no big deal.
You can make do with the drive already in your computer.
I have a video linked in the description about the reasons you might want to consider recording
to a secondary drive – check that out for more information.
Choose your recording destination and then decide if you want a file name with spaces
or without.
This is something you only need for specific, oddball systems – and you’d know it if
you need it.
Otherwise, it’s down to user preference.
Next, we have the recording format.
For most people, you will want to choose MP4 or MKV.
MP4 is the most widely-compatible format to use, but there’s a big glaring issue with
the format – If your OBS crashes, computer crashes, or recording gets interrupted for
any reason when recording to MP4, the file will become corrupt and unrecoverable.
Period.
Thankfully, you can set it to record to MKV format – which doesn’t corrupt if the
recording crashes – and then when done recording go to File – Remux Recordings.
Select your MKV recorded file, set an output destination, and hit “Remux” and it will
convert to MP4 for you, audio tracks in tact.
This is pretty neat.
It’s an extra step, but makes sure that you never lose a recording due to file corruption.
Used to, people would recommend recording to FLV for this same reason – but FLV cannot
save multiple audio tracks, an awesome feature we discussed in a previous video in the course.
So if you want to maintain more than one audio track, MP4 or MKV is generally the way to
go.
On Mac, MOV might be more compatible, though.
Speaking of multiple audio tracks, below recording format selection, you have the option to select
which audio tracks you want to record.
I usually record all of them and ditch the ones I don’t need in editing.
For more information on how to properly set this up, check out the “Multiple Audio Tracks”
video in the Course Playlist.
It’s a handy feature.
Next up can be a big decision for some – choosing the encoder.
This is something that advanced users can take advantage of to really improve their
performance and quality, but most average users will want to leave on “x264.”
If the profile you’re setting up is also a streaming profile and you just want an exact
copy of your stream, you can select “Use Stream Encoder” and be done.
It automatically knows what to record and you’re good to go.
But if you want to record a higher quality copy that what was streamed, or this is a
dedicated recording profile not meant for streaming, it’s not that easy.
As I mentioned before, most users will want to leave this on “x264.”
This is the main, built-in video encoder for OBS Studio and works great.
If you’re running a desktop computer or a very high-end laptop with a dedicated graphics
card, then you may be able to take advantage of GPU hardware encoding.
See, graphics cards have always had dedicated video encoding engines, but they haven’t
been made available for us users until recently.
Now, newer AMD and Nvidia graphics cards come with their own encoding engines that we can
use in programs like OBS Studio for lag-free video recording!
In the encoder box, if you have a supported graphics card, you’ll see either “NVENC
H.264” for Nvidia graphics cards or “AMD Video Coding Engine H.264 Encoder” for AMD
graphics cards.
Choosing this will allow you to record high-quality recordings, without impacting your computer’s
performance.
This just utilizes the extra performance headroom on your graphics card, without using up your
CPU or anything.
I use it to get lag-free 4k 60FPS recordings all the time and it can benefit you, too.
You can use it for streaming, as well, if your PC struggles a lot with the streaming
process, but typically x264 looks better at lower bitrates – such as when streaming
– whereas Nvenc and AMD’s VCE look better at higher bitrates for recording.
If you want to record to a lower resolution than the resolutions set in your “Video”
settings tab, you can check “rescale output” and change the resolution there.
Typically if you want this to affect recording settings, you would change this in the “Video”
settings tab.
Leave “Custom Muxer Settings” blank unless you already have a specific reason for using
it.
You have a couple options with “Rate Control.”
For streaming, using CBR is typically recommended, but recording is more flexible, depending
on your system.
In my experience, you’d get the best performance results by using CBR or VBR.
VBR stands for “Variable Bit Rate” and allows the data rate to change based on the
amount of action in the scene.
This can improve quality, but can cause hiccups in the recording if your CPU can’t keep
up.
CBR stands for “Constant Bit Rate” and means that it always records the same amount
of data no matter what happens in the scene.
This can mean smoother performance, but sometimes degraded quality during higher-action scenes.
Another commonly-used option is “CRF” or “Constant Rate Factor.”
This means that the encoder tries to maintain the same level of quality (set by you).
This leads to higher-quality end recordings, depending on the CRF value you set, but can
create much larger file sizes and higher performance impact.
CRF 23 to 20 provides a good balance of image quality to file size and performance, though
a CRF of 18 can provide much higher image quality if your PC can handle it.
The numbers are counter-intuitive: The lower the CRF value, the better the quality provided.
If you’re using a hardware encoder like Nvenc, I highly recommend just going with
VBR.
Let’s knock out a couple other settings before we touch on bitrate.
Keyframe Interval should be set to 2 – this is required for YouTube and Twitch while streaming,
and helps keep things compatible overall.
If your CPU is struggling with the encoding process, you can raise the “CPU Usage Preset”
higher, which will use less CPU resources and the recording process will be smoother.
This will reduce image quality, however.
Leave the other settings as-is.
CPU Usage Preset isn’t anything to worry about with Nvenc or AMD VCE since they run
on the graphics card instead of using the CPU.
Now we can tackle the almighty bitrate.
With streaming, the main limitation for what bitrate you can set is your internet upload
speed.
With recording, it’s a little different.
You have to consider what kind of hard drive you’re using, the maximum supported bitrate
of whatever devices you’re recording from, and so on.
It sounds more complicated than it is, though.
For easy reference – these are the recommended upload bitrates for YouTube videos.
For 1080p, YouTube recommends between 8 and 12 megabits per second, depending on your
frame rate.
For 4K, that number goes up to 35 to 68 megabits per second.
However, keep in mind that this is the recommended bitrate that you upload your final files at
– generally you want to record higher than you render at.
You can always compress your video more in editing and rendering, but you can’t add
more quality back into a video.
One last factor to consider is how long you plan on recording.
See, my normal recording profile for videos involves recording at massive bitrates – 200
or more megabits per second – but when I started live streaming, I couldn’t use my
overkill bitrates anymore, as my multiple-hour-long live streams were generating files that were
hundreds of gigabytes.
Kinda hard to maintain that on a 3x weekly schedule if you want to maintain the VODs.
So my stream recording profile is set to 30 megabits per second.
This maintains a good balance of quality to file size for my stream VODs – and is about
the maximum bitrate supported by the original Elgato Game Capture HD, so the file sizes
are competitive enough for just cutting out quick stream highlights and is still way better
quality than the original stream was.
The big thing I typically urge you to think about is the save location for your recordings.
As I mentioned before, recording to a secondary hard drive or SSD will give you the best results.
If you’re only able to record to your primary hard drive, your C:\ drive, then you may not
be able to record high bit rates.
Your main hard drive – especially if it’s a laptop hard drive – is already bogged
down loading your operating system, running games, programs, and so on.
High bitrate recording can choke in this kind of bottleneck.
The argument against this is that the maximum write speeds of just about any modern hard
drive can sustain recordings.
This is true, but hard drives are mechanical, and the read/write heads can’t move quick
enough to both read a bunch of data at once in one part of the drive and write to another
part of the drive.
Lower bitrates should do fine, however.
Also, if your computer has USB 3.0 or better ports and you have a USB 3.0 hard drive, you
can likely record directly to that instead.
Do some testing before committing to a full recording session and see what works for you.
As far as my personal recommendation goes, for 720p or lower, I recommend recording around
8 to 10 megabits per second, higher if you’re doing any major editing.
For 1080p recording, I recommend 25 megabits to 40 megabits per second.
For 1440p or higher, I definitely recommend recording at 45 megabits per second or higher.
For 4K, you’ll wanna go 50 megabits per second or higher, but I recommend 100 megabits
per second or more if your computer can handle it.
At that point you absolutely should be using Nvenc or AMD VCE encoding instead of x264.
If you’re doing a strictly recording profile, your audio bitrates should all be set to 320
kbps.
Having top audio quality is important, and there’s no reason to record at a lower bitrate.
Again, the ultimate rule with changing any settings is to perform multiple lengthy recording
tests before starting a real recording session.
You want to make absolutely certain that your settings are solid and reliable before committing
to a proper session.
Recording settings can seem intimidating or scary, but they don’t have to be.
It’s about trial and error to find your sweet spot settings, and taking your time
and performing tests as you go.
I hope this episode of my OBS Studio tutorial course has been helpful for you.
If it was, drop-kick that like button and subscribe for awesome tech videos.
If you like game streaming, come follow me on Twitch and drop a message in chat.
Until next time, I’m EposVox, Happy Streaming!
Thanks for watching this episode of my OBS Studio tutorial course.
More videos like this and a full master class are linked in the playlist in the video description.
Click to learn more.
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