Video recording tools
Software
The first question is what you want to record:
- video devices (webcam, video capture devices, or such)
- specific monitor (or program)
...because a lot of tools choose just one, and things that can do both are usually more work to learn.
Win10: "Windows Camera" in the Microsoft store, called just "Camera" once installed
- video-device recorder
- yet basically no settings beyond resolution
- ...this one-click recording is feature for quick recording, and a bug when you want control.
Xbox game bar
- screen recorder
- comes with windows, but probably not installed on your work PCs
OBS
- screen/videodevice/other
- flexible, but needs some initial learning and setup because of it
- made for streaming, but also quite useful for recording (from various sources)
- may be more fragile when you touch the collection of devices you've configured in it
OBS notes
Diagnosing slow starts
Start by looking at your logs, in:
%appdata%\obs-studio\logs\
Look for any large jumps in the timestamps.
Audio
By default, audio goes only to the stream.
This primarily because
- if monitoring desktop audio, that would just be feedback
- if monitoring most things, it would probably go to what you are probably capturing as desktop audio. Which would double that input.
While you're setting up, though, you may want to set the levels.
You can do this in Advanced Audio Properties.
Consider using the Compressor filter on audio. It makes clipping much less likely at louder levels (meaning shouts aren't as annoying), (it also can help bring in quieter sounds, though this matters much less to streaming than e.g. to instrument recording)
GPU encoding
If you have plenty of CPU to spare, CPU encoding gives you a little more quality.
https://blog.mobcrush.com/boost-your-stream-quality-choose-the-right-encoder-243fb685d3b8
nVidia means you can use NVENC.
NVENC is basically dedicated silicon, meaning it will not affect game performance.
- H.264 (AVC) and H.265 (HEVC)
AMD's equivalent is
- UVD Unified Video Decoder
- VCE (2011..2018, H.264) and VCN (2018..now, H264+H265)
- AMF, Advanced Media Framework[1], helps unify UVD, VCE, and VCN programming (verify)
Intel's iGPU equivalent is Quicksync
In general,
- CPU encoders do slightly better quality at the same bitrate
- GPU offloading leaves more CPU for everything
- NVENC seems to outperform VCE and quicksync
- in terms of latency, which you may not hugely care about
https://github.com/obsproject/obs-amd-encoder/wiki/hardware-support
https://obsproject.com/wiki/General-Performance-and-Encoding-Issues
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