Video Recording

Saw that just now, let's spread some love :)

Recording:

If you own a Geforce card, then use Shadowplay.
If Shadowplay is not an option, then there are enough alternatives.
The big names for sure are Fraps and DxTory.
I personally am a DxTory user but it had let me down in several occasions (hook conflict in pCars, rF2 doesn't render the overlay correctly, Just Cause 2 crashes because of the overlay ...)
But Fraps ... well, didn't like it 5 years ago, still don't like it. It has just too much impact on my gaming.

I don't know what you're aiming at, but if you want to record your voice too, you will want that as a seperate audio track to be able to manipulate audiolevels afterwards or edit footage and commentary seperately. DxTory records your mic on a seperate audio track, if that's not an option than using audio software like Audacity or Gold Wave is the way to go.

Editing:

I am using Sony's Movie Studio 12 Platinum.
It has pretty much everything Sony Vegas has but only costs around 30$ for version 12.
The only missing things are 3D alpha and complex masks, but those are just used for very special videos, usually not found in race coverage. Ah yes, and only 1080p support.

But there are even free alternatives to be found on the internet.

Hope i could help a little.
 
im just moving over to the PC and aim to record my races but how do I do this and edit them?
I know this may be a faf and there are easier ways to do this but i have an elgato that runs through my laptop so that my pc doesn't drop frames which is really easy to do but like @xnorb said obs is a good software for recording
 
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I would LOVE to record via external device.
Even stream though it, and dreams come true.
Encoding in OBS totally melts my old i5 even at moderate levels.

PC gaming on high detail is already taxing, adding encoding on top of that for sure is just for the enthusiasts of us :)
 
Encoding in OBS totally melts my old i5 even at moderate levels.
You might want to take a look at your OBS settings then.
I'm running R3E and OBS on a single i5 without any problems (not live-streaming though).
The stock OBS settings are very high, but you can get reasonable results by doing a little forum-digging.

Fraps is just....bad. :D
Correction, Fraps is fine if you have a few terabytes of free HDD space.
The problem is that Fraps doesn't compress or encode, so you end up with humongous file-sizes.
And even so, it still performs worse than Bandicam or OBS, at least on my PC.

As for editing, if all you need it for is e.g. YouTube, take a look at Lightworks (www.lwks.com)
Professional editing software, with a freeware option that is limited to 720p.
Just be warned, it does things completely differently than e.g. Sony Vegas and Movie Maker, so there's a bit of a learning-curve.
But once you get your head wrapped around the logic of it, it's extremely powerful.
 
im just moving over to the PC and aim to record my races but how do I do this and edit them?

Depends....what features you want?

I used to use an i5 2500k to do all that at the same time....no problems. It's all in the settings.
Of course, I use an i7 now, due to the video editing (doesn't take as long to edit and save)

I have used Adobe Encoder, Wirecast, Xsplit, and now OBS to stream with.
Depending on where you stream, some sites allow you to download your streamed session at a later date. So basically, it recorded for you and all you have to do is download and edit them.

Sometimes, I'll just record the Raceroom archive with Bandicam
Sometimes, I'll use Bandicam to do game or desktop capture depending on whether I want my cpu/gpu/fps data to appear.
Sometimes, I'll use OBS to record with (free and you can stream with it).

I have a bunch (paid & free) of software for editing. But, I just edit them to 720p with Windows movie maker. free and easy to use. The quality isn't as good as some of the videos I have seen. I think they are recording at 1080p though. I don't see the sense in that since it takes up alot of HDD space and takes forever to upload.

When you have a 2TB drive and run out of space due to all the game recordings (to keep track of teamkillers, cheaters and asshats), suddenly 1080p doesn't become that important.
 
You might want to take a look at your OBS settings then.
Encoding: 3300kb/s, CBR, CBR padding
Video: 1080p native resolution, Downscale 1:1.5 (720p), Bilinear, 60FPS
Advanced: Normal processing priority, x264 preset: superfast, Profile: main, Use CFR.

Can stream GSCE with it, but at times the OBS process explodes up to 50% CPU.
But also Just Cause 3 uses up to 80% of my CPU.
11% CPU load watching YouTube videos...
 
Im still very much a noob at this stuff but i have been using OBS to record and stream and it works great. Able to record 1080p @ 60fps and its free so cant hurt to try it.
 
If you want to upload for youtube, starting at about 2.5 to 5.5Mbps for 720p & 4.5 to 9Mbps for 1080p recordings & 60fps. I would test the various bitrates to see what provides your videos the best quality for your needs at the smallest size.
 
Wow, that's low.

I remember recording with 20 MB/s and still not being happy with the result :D
(Real rendering happens later on in Sony Movie Studio anyways)
 
Wow, that's low.

I remember recording with 20 MB/s and still not being happy with the result :D
(Real rendering happens later on in Sony Movie Studio anyways)

holy cow. if only I had that kind of connection. I only have 5mbps upload speed so I'm limited. Still, for youtube, you need to find out what they normally stream at for different qualities. 3 to 5 mbps is more than enough for HD quality streaming. I'm normally around 2.5 to 3.5 mbps when I'm streaming my gaming using OBS at 1080p and then downgraded to 720p.
Any more and youtube slashes the bit rate so it defeats the purpose of high speed internet. But again, I don't remember what the exact number is for youtube.
 
I record with 5mb/s and the quality is fine for me. Probably could be better but like i said im still new to this. I copied these settings from a youtube video about obs.
 
Coming from audio recording i stick to my old credo:
Record highest possible quality and after all editing cut down the size by compressing.

But ya, if i had an nVidia card, i'd also record with Shadowplay :D
 
A lot of the more recent AMD GPU's (list can be found here) come with a feature which is like Shadowplay, AMD's VCE which basically offloads the video encoding process onto the dedicated encoder on the GPU so the impact on the CPU (frame rate and so on when gaming) is kept to a minimum.

This is how I record all of my game play footage in 1080p @ 60fps using OBS Multiplatform which comes with built in support for the AMD encoder, a good alternative to Shadowplay for those who have one of the AMD GPU's which support this function.
 
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