Use Open Broadcaster Software to Record Video Game Footage

Open Broadcaster Software is a great platform to broadcast live streams.  It is free and open source and has a variety of options.  To top it off, it also performs very well.

Despite its name, one can use Open Broadcaster Software to record video game footage to a file and not stream or broadcast at all.  And it is actually very stable and efficient when it comes to strictly recording when compared to other recording software.

This guide assumes you have OBS installed on your computer.

THIS GUIDE WAS WRITTEN OVER 2 YEARS AGO!  OPEN BROADCASTER SOFTWARE, THE CAPTURE HARDWARE AND THE SOFTWARE FOR THE CAPTURE HARDWARE HAS CHANGED DRASTICALLY.  CONSIDER THIS GUIDE TO BE A VERY LOOSE GUIDE.    This guide was written specifically for the Logitech G9390 headset and the Avermedia Live Gamer HD.  The instructions for the portable capture cards or any capture card that is newer than the Live Gamer HD will vary so much that this guide will be entirely useless for the configuration of the streaming PC.
I do not have plans to update this guide nor provide assistance to anyone who needs help.  I do not have access to the same hardware that you do.  STOP ASKING ME TO DO TEAMVIEWER SESSIONS – I only end up making one change at a time until I guess it correctly and find a working combination.  This is something you can do on your own.  You are welcome to use our forums to ask questions and perhaps one of the 10 or so other users that have your specific capture card can answer the question.  Post a question there, I’m certain one of the hundred or so visitors to this particular page each day will go view your topic.  I’m sorry, but you’ll have to figure it out for yourself as I am currently in a Cyber Security Master’s Degree program with the US Army that has been condensed into a few months – I have no time to spend helping people for 6+ hours to fix their streaming problem that they could fix on their own time.  I don’t know any more about configuration your newer capture card than what is on this page.  – Yuka

Configuring OBS to only record

1. Open OBS, if it isn’t already and click the Settings button.
2. Once in the settings window, select Broadcast Settings from the list on the left.  (See the image below.)
3. On the right at the very top change the option Mode from Live Stream to File Output Only.  (See the image below for a reference.)
4. Set the File Path – where OBS will save the broadcast.  Be advised:  OBS does not overwrite files, it adds (#) to the end of each duplicate file, where # is a number counting up from 1.
   
5. Click Apply and then Ok and that is it.1

Configure OBS to capture footage from a game

1. First create a scene by right clicking under the section for Scenes and give the scene a name..
   
2. Under sources to the right of scenes, right click and select Add -> Game Capture and give it a name.
3. When asked to configure the Game Capture source, just click Ok.  OBS does its best to determine what the game actually is when it is time to record.  Be advised:  If OBS doesn’t detect the game, there will be a black screen recorded.  Use the Preview Stream button to get a preview of what will be recorded.  You may have to bring the game up after clicking preview stream and then return to OBS to get a good example.  If there is still a black screen, you will need to right click on the game capture source that you created under sources and click properties and then click the refresh button and find the game in the list.  This happens often between game sessions if OBS is not completely shut down.

MP4 versus FLV Video Containers

When asked where to save the video being recorded, the user has the option to select between .MP4 and .FLV file types.  In the video production world these are known as containers.

Within the container are the video and audio streams that are encoded via a codec.  OBS has the option to choose different containers but the codecs between the two different containers are exactly the same.

Video is encoded using the H264 – MPEG-4 AVC codec and audio is encoded using MPEG AAC Audio codec.

If uploading straight to YouTube or other video hosting site, either container will work.  If editing is the goal, the user should record a sample of footage in either container and attempt to edit each file type to verify if a particular container can be used or not within the editor.

Links

Download Open Broadcaster Software