good gameplay capture program with low impact on PC performance?

[Black]

hi!

i wanna start record my fights in ff14 and i want good program for dat

i did try OPS good but it seem my PC can't handle it i feel little slow when i play and i can't seem to have record go smooth on 1440p its mostly my GPU card 680 got only 1.5g ram will have to change soon

thanks in advance

[Cream Soda]

I'm interested in this as well. I've tried OBS to record smash bros from a capture card and I can't get even close to the quality of the default software with OBS. Gets choppy/drops frames even though I'm not playing the game itself on my computer at all. (where as the default software records perfectly).

The only reason I'm seeking a different program is because of the lack of features. I can't add audio from my computer itself or myself via webcam on the stock program. Just directly recording the game and audio from my headset itself

[Darus Grey]

OBS and Xsplit.

Honestly, there is nothing lower impact. You can make either program lower impact by doing things like lowering the resolution, and doing things like making sure you're recording to a different HDD/SSD than your OS and whatever the game may be running off of.

But the true is, at the end of the day recording/broadcasting is very resource intensive, so if your PC is struggling... $$$ is basically the only solution.


As CS mentions, some of the "capture card specific" utilities get around this(like aver media's and blackmagics "default" recorders), but they're very very focused programs targeted at one device. They can use optimizations that general purpose software can't.
The sacrifice is features.

There's workarounds, but it's all $$$. So if you're on a budget, pretty SOL most the time.

[Kalmado]

OBS and Xsplit.

Honestly, there is nothing lower impact. You can make either program lower impact by doing things like lowering the resolution, and doing things like making sure you're recording to a different HDD/SSD than your OS and whatever the game may be running off of.

But the true is, at the end of the day recording/broadcasting is very resource intensive, so if your PC is struggling... $$$ is basically the only solution.


As CS mentions, some of the "capture card specific" utilities get around this(like aver media's and blackmagics "default" recorders), but they're very very focused programs targeted at one device. They can use optimizations that general purpose software can't.
The sacrifice is features.

There's workarounds, but it's all $$$. So if you're on a budget, pretty SOL most the time.

After looking into game recording myself, the above was what I read on most sites. The majority of the time it's your hardware that impacts performance. I have only tried recording a few times using OBS, but it's been fine for me. I'm running an I5-3570k, SSD for boot, 3tb 7200rpm hdd for storage, 8gb ram, and a GTX 770 2GB.

[camdyn]

have you tried nvidia's shadowplay? its built in to the geforce experience panel. just throwing that out there as i dont use any recording programs/

[Darus Grey]

have you tried nvidia's shadowplay? its built in to the geforce experience panel. just throwing that out there as i dont use any recording programs/

I forgot about shadowplay, shadowplay is pretty low in terms of resources. Granted, the bottle-neck for most recording tends to be Hard Drive write speed, not typically CPU or GPU.

So if you have a compatible card, give SP a try. The big downside, this is only for games played on your PC, it's not a capture card in the sense that you can record from consoles and shit.

[Cream Soda]

When I get quality like this w/ the built in software, I just find it hard to justify reduction in quality/resolution just for the sake of having my face in the video (though I also wanted to do cool shit like use my Shulk soundboard to randomly throw Xenoblade quotes into the match, but oh well)

Chrome for 60fps

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

[The Blackrose]

The reason this happens is because most capture cards produced these days have their own built in encoder. This encoder usually only works with the packaged software, provided that you are using it to record/stream. The limitation is obvious - you can't add additional sources (eg. overlays, cameras, etc) unless the card or packaged software has the ability. For example, most cards can only produce game audio unless there's a mic in for allowing commentary/mixers/whatever have you.

When you use XSplit or OBS, your PC is the encoder, not the capture card. The capture card is treated as an independent capture source, and it does not make sense to double encode. This is an operation that is primarily dependent on CPU, although both OBS and XSplit have started looking to utilize the GPU as well.

[Cream Soda]

Thankfully, I can use the mic w/ it

[SephYuyX]

Fraps records lossless so there shouldnt be any hindrance there at all; youll have to deal with it afterwards though.

[Cream Soda]

Any way to set up Fraps w/ capture card for use? Forgot about that program completely