The Game Video Recording/Editing Topic (programs, settings)

[Art Blade]

welcome, fragger and cheers, mate

[Art Blade]

Editing tips for OpenShot

Two things that can make your life easier when it comes to editing a video that is composed of various clips or parts that you want to speed up.

Speeding up:

My previous statement that this slows down OS so much that you think it's crashed based on two settings:
1080p60 resolution
16x speed

I found a workaround. The solution is rather simple. Again, two things that help:

Nobody cares about 60 frames when a part is sped up. so I chose 1080p24, enough to see what's happening.
Since 16x seems to push the program to and beyond its limits, why not speed it up 2x only? Processing that is rather quick and doesn't make the program appear to have crashed.

Now I'll combine the previous with the next tip:

Create multiple projects and videos

Now that I had a 2x video exported, I deleted the base video (1x) from the project and imported the 2x speed vid and sped that one up 2x. Result: 4x. Save, rinse and repeat, every time doubling the speed. Only takes minutes and that's much easier to watch than waiting maybe half an hour while thinking it may or may not have crashed in the process.. So, just keep producing video parts and reimport them into your project.

Don't forget to reset your project to say, 1080p60 after you're done speeding things up so the rest and final video are your normal standard rather than 24 frames per second

Multiple parts that you render and reimport are apparently also a good idea if you want to add text overlays ("titles") to your video project. In my experience, OS slows down a lot when both rendering various clips AND several or even lots of titles.

Therefore I recommend rendering the actual video first, reimport it and then start adding titles. The rendering should be rather normal ("fast") and not cause the program to grind to a halt.

All in all you may take the same time doing all the above as when doing it "all in one" but that can actually cause the program to crash or you to get so uncomfortable that you cancel the project and whatnot. My tips will keep you busy and allow you to watch actual progress plus the parts you've completed won't be lost in case the program actually crashes. I find it much more rewarding to watch a part being rendered and actually see the progress bar moving constantly than having to wait for one project to complete that I can't do anything but wait and pray it doesn't crash.

Hope this helps

I just uploaded a one-minute vid (horse feeding experiment) that was produced with all the aforementioned steps (base video was over 20 minutes) if you're interested.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah depending how the editor is doing the speed up, it's probably better to do it in steps than all at once. I sometimes do a section at a time, in a separate file. For instance, if I have a part of a video that I know is going to be many short clips merged and faded together into a single clip, I'll do that as it's own video project, save and render it to a lossless (well, all video is lossy, but something that doesn't lose quality) format if the option exists, I forget the exact wording, but it's an option to just trim and save the clip(s) to a new file and do nothing else. That way in my main video file I don't have a bunch of short clips all over the place and maybe a handful of longer clips that have already been rendered, making the main video file much less complex, less prone to get corrupted and renders much faster. That's the project that will have all the titles and fancy stuff layered onto it.

[Art Blade]

regarding TEXT OVERLAYS ("titles") in OpenShot

You may have seen or used those "titles" which you pick from a collection of templates. Some of them are useless, a few of them are OK.

What is actually happening when you create those text overlays: OS uses a free program called "Inkscape vector graphics editor" which can be downloaded here: https://inkscape.org/

So you can actually import those templates into inkscape and modify them to your liking or create your own stuff. That, combined with free fonts that you can install in windows, gives you a lot more freedom creating your own videos.

I made use of all that for my horse feeding video the first time.

My problem was that a good "title" with a black background on the bottom of the screen literally overlaid my watermark that is part of any of my videos. After realising that, I did not want to use that title again (only had used it once) and that made me investigate the whole thing.

I created a modified version that leaves my watermark alone

[LowPolyOWG]

 

PowerDirector allows me to do text like that within the editor. I don't use that function a lot, but it could be useful for explaining stuff.

[Art Blade]

I edited my OBS post by adding this:

Massive Bitrate setting:
Bitrate 8192 Kbps
Max Bitrate 24576 Kbps

In the meantime I had to up those values quite a bit when trying to get smooth recordings for some games.

RDR2: 20,000 + 200,000 (game video settings are ULTRA)

And now, for XCOM, I tried the 8k + 24k and got quite a bit of stutter, for a turn-based game. Also, XCOM is weird. Apparently they use some window (not windows, lol) based graphics for setup screens between missions and then change to something else when actually on a mission.

I found out because my standard game capture didn't show anything while I was setting up OBS, and it was while I was on a setup screen in the game, so I had to choose a window capture that showed my game. The actual recording then showed a still of that in-game setup screen while the audio was clearly from an ongoing mission, without capturing the graphics. So I changed to game capture while I was in-game on a mission and OBS "suddenly" showed it but the recording froze the video (not the audio) while I was in-game on a setup screen

Now I'm going to activate both a window capture and a game capture, see how that works, and thanks to the stutters of previous videos, I'll go straight to 20k+200k for the bitstream because THAT has always worked with a super-heavy graphics game set to ultra quality like my RDR2.

I'm curious now.

[Art Blade]

OK that worked, got audio and video for both setup screens and missions now. But can you believe it, one single action of a guy with a transparent shield lifting it up over his head really quickly and then slamming it down in front of him like a spear into the ground, instantly generating a red flare effect and apparently a red "force shield" around him, all that in within perhaps 2 seconds, caused the video to skip part of the slamming-down action?

I guess that the game's graphics "ultra" settings are not exactly optimised if my monster VBR of 20,000 min and 200,000 max bitrate isn't enough to completely capture some of the movements.

[Art Blade]

Did some tests with only 30fps and it's really not acceptable for me, so back to 60. Also changed min and max bitrates back and forth.

I am currently experimenting with an OBS setting below the VBR values for min and max bitrate.

Previously, I always used "max quality." Now I'm trying "max performance" to see how that goes, along with 20,000 min and bloody 250,000 max.

I set the min and max back up to high values because before I ran into a lot of skipped frames due to encoding lag and then again, it made me think about "max performance" rather than max quality.

Having said all the above, including previous posts, it shows that you really should run test recordings and tweak some of the settings if you want to make recordings of a new game. Use the profiles for such changes and name the profiles after the game they're meant for.

[LowPolyOWG]

 

[Art Blade]

 

Just checked a recording that used 1080p60. max performance, VBR 25000 min 250000 max and STILL the moment a character fires an energy weapon, it lags/stutters.

I'd say the graphics load coming from the game must be absolutely horrendous that it is able to lag out OBS at those settings. Crazy. The game, while I was playing it, felt smooth so it must have to do with OBS struggling. I don't know yet why it struggles.

[LowPolyOWG]

Sounds like unoptimization on the developer's part

[Art Blade]

yeah, having watched tons of my own test videos, it very much looks like it.

And I think I'm getting there, being able to record a (at least mostly) stutter-free video. Right now I'm trying to get the file size down but apart from that, it's already good.

[Art Blade]

having played around some more, I think I got it.

Two things caused problems recording XCOM: Chimera Squad with OBS

1) badly coded graphics

Especially particles (like when firing energy weapons and such) caused a lot of lag. Really, really bad lag.
And the simple "setup screen" where you prepare a mission ALSO caused really heavy lags.

The solution for that is
a) to really ramp up the VBR min and max bitrate (20,000 and 200,000 which is what I use for RDR2)
and b) to change the preset to "performance" (rather than max quality which I'm normally using)

2) two video sources

Those idiots use two layers for the game and OBS normally only needs to focus on one. So they use some window-based "set up" screen where you prepare a mission, then the mission continues in a normal full-screen (as a player you don't notice the difference but OBS either recorded this OR that so I had to make it record BOTH a window linked to the XCOM exe AND the normal game capture for the missions)

The solution for that is to set up two sources (window linked to the XCOM exe and a "normal" game capture) and activate both at the same time.

[Art Blade]

it's crazy. A good part of the recording works like that but STILL sometimes lags occur. I think I need to reduce the game's "ultra" settings so recording it won't cause that much trouble. CRAZY.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Sounds like they are using two graphics modes, one for menu stuff and one for the actual game play. Kind of like switching to a lower resolution for the menus then back to full for the game, like some old DOS games used to do. Weird. I'm curious how Nvidia's built in recording option would w0#k, since it's hooked directly into the driver software.