Lossless recording?

[blake0812]

Not sure where this goes, but i'm looking for a good recording program that is lossless and is best for recording pc games. Quality and speed is something i'm big on and I do have a pretty good computer:
i5 4570
gtx 760
8gb ram
60gb SSD
1TB HDD

I've used shadowplay but the quality is horrible and it's noticeably compressed.

Which recording software is the best to use?

 

[ThinClient]

So, there is a LOT more to it than just that.

Capture cards, codecs, hardware bus speed (SATA3), HDD write speed, encoding choices, all of it.

Watch this video and learn a little bit, then we'll talk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw6YAoai8fQ

 

[TheELF]

lossless is very hard to achieve and ,if you want it for streaming/youtube,totally pointless since it will be recoded anyway.

I have a celeron and use OBS, recording with quicksync, it has a small footprint and very good quality...but not lossless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXnSuyEIVbM

d3dgear is somewhat faster,also uses quicksync but the quality is also noticeably lower.

 

[ThinClient]

Uh.... lossless is not too terribly hard to achieve and it CERTAINLY is NOT pointless. It will have preposterously huge file sizes and depends heavily on your bus speed (how fast you can write to the HDD) and how strong your CPU is to maintain FPS while recording, but it's not pointless.

In an ideal setup, your base recording WILL be lossless. However, you're not going to upload 400GB to youtube for one video. You're going to compress it, which is where codecs and encoding settings come in to play. Even Youtube has "their own" light compression that occurs when processing uploaded videos. Technically, the compressed video that you upload is getting compressed a second time, like jpg'ing a jpg.

Are you using a fixed bit rate? Variable bit rate but with a 3MB cap? Higher? Are you recording something that's fast motion? How often do pixels have to update? Are you recording something that's absurdly high detail?

The video you posted only has a small portion of it as full motion video and even at the 720 setting the video clip posted doesn't show much detail.

All of this depends on what quality you want your finished product. If you want someone to watch a video on youtube and see exactly the same detail that you see when you're playing games... oh man... good luck.

Also, OBS is garbage for recording. It was built for streaming and CAN record but the options provided are terrible and you won't get very good quality videos because you don't have much control over the encoding. That's one of the biggest benefits of recording lossless and then encoding in a program specifically designed for encoding to a final product (like Adobe Premier or Sony Vegas): you get better quality final product.

 

[Aikouka]

Sony Vegas

Ugh, pardon my rant, but Sony Vegas annoys me with its terrible QuickSync implementation. Tell me why in the world I can encode using QuickSync in Handbrake, but Vegas refuses to do it every time? :| From what I've read, Vegas requires the software to be opened on the monitor that uses the Intel iGPU rather than just have a "monitor" be "attached" to the iGPU (I use a fake monitor).

 

[ThinClient]

Yeah, I hear several little quirks that push people away from Vegas and over to Premier. Still, Vegas has its place and IS a strong platform to accomplish these tasks. Choosing which to use comes with experience from using both according to your own setup.

 

[blake0812]

I render it after recording with Shadowplay with Sony Vegas, but I did notice that the shadowplay file is in mp4 format, should I be just uploading that instead of the rendered one?

 

[Aikouka]

I render it after recording with Shadowplay with Sony Vegas, but I did notice that the shadowplay file is in mp4 format, should I be just uploading that instead of the rendered one?

If you don't need to cut the video or anything, it should be fine. To my knowledge, ShadowPlay uses the NVIDIA GPU's NVENC block to encode directly from the frame buffer. NVENC uses h.264, which is what you're most likely using in Sony Vegas (Sony AVC). I haven't used ShadowPlay much myself, but I have heard TotalBiscuit say that he thinks ShadowPlay's bitrate is too low while recording at 1080p. Although, that might be because he does work on the videos after recording them.

 

[ThinClient]

I render it after recording with Shadowplay with Sony Vegas, but I did notice that the shadowplay file is in mp4 format, should I be just uploading that instead of the rendered one?

If it's an mp4 then it's already encoded. You're re-encoding the encoding, which gets encoded AGAIN by youtube. You're making a fax of a fax of a fax lol :awe:

Just upload the mp4