Can anyone who knows how screenrecording should be done for Empires enlighten me? I have tried a few screen recorders but could not find a system that works well. I'm looking for free software for this (as in "free beer", not necessarily as in "free as a bird").
You could use the demo recorder or you could use Open Broadcaster which is free as in beer and free as in freedom.
OBS works beatifully, thank you. I'll be recording my games in future. As an added bonus, when I first tested this, someone else joined and we had a nice 1v1 with LVL3's vs arty, that ended prematurely when he rammed my arty into the toxic waste with his CV and went down himself as well. It quickly snowballed into a match with 37 players that lasted for hours! love this game.
Yep, good question. Aspect ratio? + maybe some downscaling? Maybe show us your settings. + codec I always used Lagarith loseless codec for recording by the way. (you can see example in my signature video) And either DxTory or MSI afterburner (free) EDIT: The source video seems to be 1920x1080 though....so it seems a bit weird. Not sure why twitch is displaying a 1920x1080 video like that. Unless the whole video with all the black space is 1920x1080. And you are downscaling what you recorded but keeping the output video 1920x1080. (just resizing it inside 1080p) Anyway, if Lawliet is offering the capture card, you might as well go for that. Or Lawliet send it to me :D EDIT2: Can you even use other codecs with OBS? Dont see such options. The quality is pretty damn bad, even though its resized into that small vid. Its skipping frames, and gets pixelated (bad bitrate?)
By the way. Here is the setup I was and keep using with DxTory and Lagarith loseless codec: http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html Video settings: https://gyazo.com/24970e2e3295390508479813157826b8 Codec settings: https://gyazo.com/3018c964929556d73401a812710753df Advanced settings for adjusting Processing threads: https://gyazo.com/0ff9d93de014ee6ee750193737bc074f You can use "directshow output" for streaming as far as I know. But that would be if you would either buy it or pirate it. Should be also possible with the free MSI Afterburner, just a bit different settings. Pretty damn good performance / quality with this one. Not sure about streaming it though. See the video in my signature for example (it was also upscaled up to 2K to allow YouTube to give it much better bitrate after its compressions, so the true video is something a bit under 1080p)
Maybe use some of the tips here for OBS: https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/streaming-to-youtube-gaming-with-obs-or-obs-mp.232/ Even though thats not for twitch but for youtube. Maybe some of that can help you figure out why it might be doing videos like the one you have on twitch. ...or just, you know...find something here, more specific to twitch: :D https://www.google.nl/search?q=obs+...XhgYAL#q=obs+gaming+streaming+settings+twitch This seems to have some detailed info about youtube/twitch max bitrate and such: https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/twitch-and-youtube-settings-guide.169/ Or official from twitch: http://help.twitch.tv/customer/portal/articles/1262922-open-broadcaster-software
Well, I sure hope that fixed it. Set my monitor resolution, rather than 1920x1024 and upscale. Also increased the bitrate, since the OBS advisor recommended that my computer can handle it. http://www.twitch.tv/tamamcglinn/
Also, @Lawliet thank you so much; it's a wonderful offer. Unfortunately for me, I'm moving to NZ in September, and I don't want more stuff to move. It should go to @Neoony.
There are still black bars around the video. Anyway, I just tryed to make the same set up on my PC, and find good settings. Not sure what is your CPU, but I can barely push it over 720p (downscale) and 2500kb/s bitrate and "x264 CPU preset" at superfast. I would either get CPU hog, or not enough upload speed. But I was only playing around with it for like an hour. Could probably do some tiny more pushing. This is the result: http://www.twitch.tv/neoony/v/33449743 Just watch longer, as it takes time for my PC to get more stable after starting the stream. Its not great, but its not terrible for such settings. ( its pretty damn bad at details its better in smaller window) (But Iam running AMD Phenom x4 965 3,70GHz... advisor advising me to "Set downscale to 480p or similar low resolution" 25FPS and superfast preset. I can do 1080p with Dxtory and Lagarith codec with no problems in other games by the way, just not streaming.) Here are the settings: Encoding: https://i.gyazo.com/95121ad523a0cbf216a6c2813cd9c3bf.png Broadcast settings: https://i.gyazo.com/cf87ab990135bd596d2377a7774d72e2.png Video: https://i.gyazo.com/096bcf9a06ad78703eba71bf0854ca3e.png Advanced: https://i.gyazo.com/d5849383b47db28d8e42a61a60994d56.png These were specifically set up to twitch with a guide found on their help articles page. And then adjusted to my CPU and performance of my PC. Most of the settings are pretty general / should fit to any CPU/PC. (except the "x264 CPU preset" setting and unless you have some of those NVIDIA NVENC or Quick sync ) I would really like to know what are you doing wrong to have those black space all around the video. Iam playing the game in 1920x1080. I use the same resolution in the OBS "Base Resolution" and then I downscale to 1.50 (1280x720) And when I create new scene, I add "Game Capture" as the Source. I put "[hl2]: Empires" as application, see following picture: https://i.gyazo.com/f2dbb29db9066b4de3db043416095577.png Maybe you play in lower resolution than you stream on twitch? Or you are not using "Game Capture" as source? Or is it intended? I guess you might play at much lower res as it seems and maybe different aspect ratio, but that still doesnt explain the black bar at the top. Maybe try setting "Stretch image to screen" when creating New Source as Game Capture. BTW: twitchs max bitrate should be 3500. (as a maximum you should ever use) BTW2: I had no idea, Bob2 is Tama XD And anyway. You could have much better performance/quality if you just recorded a video and then upload it later, compared to streaming
I use FRAPS, I tried DXtory but it did compression which caused my, in game, frame rate to go way down. FRAPS just requires a huge hard drive. Then run it through a conversion to add compression. If you have a good system then DXtory might be ideal. I have not tried OBS. My system is a development laptop, Win 7, i7 quad core 2 GHz, 64 bit with a shitty NVIDIA Quadro FX 880M video card, but good enough for Empires.
I like Action, it's not free, but really good quality and easy integration with both YouTube and Twitch. https://mirillis.com/en/