[SOLVED] Choppy and laggy final videos from all the game recording software I've tried. What could be the problem??

[jayhayjay]

Hey guys. Pretty much what the title says.

I haven't had success with the game recording software I've tried so far. All of them either lag during recording or the final video they output is choppy and laggy, skipping frames and slowing down at points. And I mainly encounter this problem when I record older games (10+ year old games) which I would expect to work fine since they don't stress my PC at all.

I've tried Bandicam, OBS Studio, Fraps and Shadowplay. Tweaked their settings a bit (resolution, output quality, framerate, codec (x264 & NVENC). Nothing worked. Bandicam only gave me a couple of good videos at some point but no more luck other than that. And with Bandicam a couple of games I've tried actually crash while recording. Some people suggested I record to a different HDD or a USB drive. Tried that with no sucess either.

What could be the problem? Thanks in advance! I can most certainly provide more details if necessary.

my rig:
i5 4690k cpu,
gtx 970 gpu,
16 gigs ram,
1 caviar black (for games and apps) and 1 caviar green HDD

 

[TerryLaze]

Windows handles software by looking at their priority settings, if you play a game in the foreground anything in the background (the recording) will be neglected to give your foreground thing the best possible performance.
Solution one you reduce FPS in the games to give the system more headroom so it can pay more attention to the recording.
Solution two you find the recording .exe in task manager and put it to real-time so the stream gets better priority than the game, only do this with nvenc since x264 uses a lot of CPU and will probably lock up your system.
Solution three find a second monitor cable and stick it into your mobo not your 970 this should enable the iGPU of the 4690k, now you can try the qsv encoder in OBS it doesn't use your 970 and only very little of your CPU so it should do a better job.

 

[jayhayjay]

Windows handles software by looking at their priority settings, if you play a game in the foreground anything in the background (the recording) will be neglected to give your foreground thing the best possible performance.
Solution one you reduce FPS in the games to give the system more headroom so it can pay more attention to the recording.
Solution two you find the recording .exe in task manager and put it to real-time so the stream gets better priority than the game, only do this with nvenc since x264 uses a lot of CPU and will probably lock up your system.
Solution three find a second monitor cable and stick it into your mobo not your 970 this should enable the iGPU of the 4690k, now you can try the qsv encoder in OBS it doesn't use your 970 and only very little of your CPU so it should do a better job.

Thanks for the reply.

I've tried the real time suggestion but it didn't work. Also, I can understand reducing fps in newer and heavier games but what about older ones which, like I said, don't stress my system.

Hitman Blood Money, for instance. I've been trying to record this game but always end up with bad results. I've tried with different settings and with Vsync off but nothing.

 

[Unolocogringo]

Are you playing the game from and recording to the same hard drive ?

 

[jayhayjay]

Are you playing the game from and recording to the same hard drive ?

The game is installed on my caviar black but I've tried recording both to the caviar green and my caviar black. No difference.

 

[Unolocogringo]

How old is your OS install?
Is it a windows 7-8 upgrade to 10?

 

[jayhayjay]

How old is your OS install?
Is it a windows 7-8 upgrade to 10?

Windows 7 64-bit

 

[Unolocogringo]

We have more options available.
Set core affinity to run your games on core "0" zero and core "1" if it can use 2 threads. Most older games used one.
Now set your recording software to use cores 2 "two" and 3" three".
Core 1 "one" can be assigned to recording if the game uses a single core.
Quick article to explain how.

Windows 7: Set a Program's Affinity for Better Performance

Whether you want to sqeak out some extra performance on your multi-core processor or run older programs flawlessly, in Windows 7 you can set programs to run on certain cores in your processor - speeding up your computers performance.

www.tech-recipes.com

 

[jayhayjay]

We have more options available.
Set core affinity to run your games on core "0" zero and core "1" if it can use 2 threads. Most older games used one.
Now set your recording software to use cores 2 "two" and 3" three".
Core 1 "one" can be assigned to recording if the game uses a single core.
Quick article to explain how.

Windows 7: Set a Program's Affinity for Better Performance

Whether you want to sqeak out some extra performance on your multi-core processor or run older programs flawlessly, in Windows 7 you can set programs to run on certain cores in your processor - speeding up your computers performance.

www.tech-recipes.com

Thanks for the suggestion but nope, this doesn't work either.

 

[Unolocogringo]

When was your last windows install?
Windows over time creates a larger and larger Registry.
After many driver updates ,windows updates,program/game installs and uninstalls etc.... General computer usage.
The registry resides on the hard drive gets bigger and bigger as all those programs and updates leave behind lots of entries when removed or updated.

If you have a spare drive unhook your existing drives cables and install windows on it. Install all drivers for the motherboard, video card .install preferred recording software.
Do the Direct X online update. and shut down.
Connect you game drive and start windows.
A lot of older games will start by finding their .EXE file and double clicking it.