how to record the game?

[king of nowhere]

for the first time ever, i want to take a video recording of my gaming.

now, for a long time, whenever i opened any steam game i would see a popup window saying something like "record what you've done" or "share what you've done with your friends" or something similar. and i never cared about it, but i assume from such a message that there is an in-built way to record the game.

except now that window does not pop up anymore.

can anyone explain me how to take video recordings of my games? thanks.

also related: kerbalx has the option to upload videos with your crafts. to do so, do you have to have those videos uploaded on youtube, or is there another way?

[steuben]

I've used OBS to record. There are several other options available as well.

There are several options for uploading video. Youtube is the dominant one however. 

[Streetwind]

For me, it's OBS ("Open Broadcaster Software") to record, then Handbrake to compress into a smaller filesize. Both are free software, so you do not need to buy anything.

Try to avoid scaling. For example, set your game resolution to 1080p, tell OBS to record in 1080p, and use one of the 1080p profiles that Handbrake offers. If at any point you mismatch resolutions, it will still work, but there is a decent chance that you lose quality. For example, recording with OBS at 720p to save filesize and then converting to 1080p again in Handbrake. That just means you threw away information in the first step, then told the computer to guesstimate that information back in in the second step. And it won't even save much filesize since Handbrake can cut down 1080p recording sizes by 80%-90% anyway.

It will probably take you a number of tries to get something you're satisfied with. Don't get discouraged, keep it simple, and when in doubt, google for OBS guides. Good luck

[Superfluous J]

In addition to the fantastic advice from the others, If you want to edit the video at all I recommend another free program, Shotcut.

[Tonka Crash]

For short videos I use the built in Windows 10 Game Bar and upload to YouTube..  

[Gargamel]

2 hours ago, Tonka Crash said:

For short videos I use the built in Windows 10 Game Bar and upload to YouTube..  

That's exactly what I did for the first time, last night.  It's pretty simple, and if you're not getting into anything fancy and just want to record a bit of footage, it's your easiest solution without having to install anything else. 

[Guest]

I use the built in Game Bar too

It's pretty easy to use. I have preferences to leave the mic off most times.

Generally how well your computer is build will determine how well the game bar loads. It takes a few minutes for me when I just start my computer but a few seconds if I already had it on for a couple of minutes.

I will just use the WIN+G buttons to record and not start it via the icon

The recordings alone take way too much space! So I usually use an editor

[king of nowhere]

i discovered how to use the game bar. i recognize now it was it that was sending the messages in the past. and i'm trying to figure out some functions from shotcut

thanks to everyone

if it's not too much bother, can someone give me some directions for shotcut too? I would like to take a bit of my original footage and accelerate it, but i don't know if it's possible.

I have a rover with an "armor" made of landing struts on top and on the sides, and i want to show that it crashes at high speed and doesn't break, so i took a video where i accelerate and capsize a few times in a row. i would like to speed up the parts where the rover accelerates, as they are boring. i would cut them entirely, but i don't want to give the impression that i crashed 20 times and only selected to show the few times where i remained whole. i want to show the unbroken footage to show that the system is reliable, that i can do it several times in a row, but without half a minute of the rover just picking up speed. hence speeding up the boring parts of the video.

also, i would like to write some comments on the video

Edited July 20, 2020 by king of nowhere

[steuben]

Now you are into heavier domains of video editing and not just recording.

I've used Adobe products in the past for such things. But, there are numerous software of varying degrees of cost and usability out there to do such things.

As for Shortcut specifically, you might have some luck with the tutorials on the website https://shotcut.org/ and the forums... fora.. forex... the online place where people post to communicate electronically as the successor technology to BBS.

[king of nowhere]

oh, looks like it's more complicated stuff. I won't do it then. one thing is wanting to post my best vehicle on kerbalx with a good presentation, but learning advanced video editing is taking it too far

[steuben]

Not as advanced as it used to be. Nor quite as daunting.

My first video ever ran though about seven different tools to get what I wanted. Now it is down to three. (Two for image processing, (one of which is a specialized tool), and one for video) The speed change and text overlays are pretty basic edits, about half a step over splicing video together. It was the third video I crafted that I broke down and bought a teach yourself Adobe book. Though your local library should have a couple. Don't worry to much about the version the basics will be the same even if some of the available tools will be different.

Give it run. Take your time and try. The worst that'll happen is you waste a few hours learning how not to do it.

[king of nowhere]

i looked around a bit, and i found both options.

[HansAcker]

On 7/18/2020 at 6:09 PM, Tonka Crash said:

For short videos I use the built in Windows 10 Game Bar and upload to YouTube

I used that one at first. Works well enough, is easy to use and produces acceptable quality and file sizes.

I didn't like that it uses the game's refresh rate and can't capture at a lower rate. My display runs at 75Hz but I'd like to record at 60 or maybe 50fps max (the game framerate varies anyway). In a more complex setup, I now capture with OBS in "h264 lossless" using the GPU encoder (very large files), edit the video if necessary and then encode the whole thing at 5x speed with ffmpeg/x264. I don't fly spectacular crafts or exciting missions, watching them at 5x makes the clips a little less boring

I don't do much editing, either (when I do, I use OpenShot). I just want to keep records of a few designs and maneuvers to remind me what worked in the past

On 7/18/2020 at 5:09 PM, Streetwind said:

Try to avoid scaling. For example, set your game resolution to 1080p, tell OBS to record in 1080p, and use one of the 1080p profiles that Handbrake offers. If at any point you mismatch resolutions, it will still work, but there is a decent chance that you lose quality.

That can be a bummer indeed. I run KSP at 2560x1440, let OBS scale down the picture to 1920x1080 and by the time Youtube encodes it again at x720, the quality suffers a lot with blurred HUD texts and surface textures. I don't want to play at 1080, so maybe I'll just capture and encode at 2k resolution.

Spoiler

 

 

Edited July 24, 2020 by HansAcker