Dxtory settings for recording... got massive lag

laskeyperse

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Oct 22, 2014
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4,510
I have been trying to find out good settings for dxtory which i can use for recording gameplay.

I had matrox, lag.
I had h264, lag.
I had lagarith, lag.

Shadowplay, 0 impact on gameplay, perfect quality and all. But i cannot separate audio channels with it, which is a huge problem.

My pc is i5-4670k oc'd, 2 x GTX770, fastest samsung SSD i could find on that fast SATA3 cable(+500mb/s write). Win7 64bit.
Game is on another ssd and record material goes to another ssd, that one i listed above.

What is that i do wrong??? I've done settings as tutorials state. Do i really have too crappy pc for recording?
 
1. What res are you playing in and outputting to?

2. Have you tried using DxTory's "Distribution Writing" feature to lower lag?

3. Why do you need to split audio streams?

The res you record games at, esp power hungry games, can make a big difference in performance, as well as the res you output to.

Distribution Writing involves designating 2 or more drives to simultaneously write the capture file, but you have to use the DxTory codec for this feature. It's not a bad codec, but writes a VERY large file. When I use it I only use it in the Low or Med mode, and only record moderate length sessions, then set it to auto delete so I don't overfill my drive. The DxTory codec also requires you to use RawCap output mode vs AVI. The RawCap files then need to be joined by the RawCapConvert tool built into DxTory, which is where the auto delete option comes in., You can set it to auto delete the RawCap file after the AVI is constructed. I also delete after each clip is recorded. The Low setting should be near equal to Shadowplay on max, but still probably larger file size.

If you only want to add background music or a commentary audio track, you can demux the game audio with something like VirtualDub, then put the game audio track in a tool like Audacity, and add a music or commentary track to it, then put the joined audio file back in. It's imperative the audio track you add is equal or shorter length though.

I would use Shadowplay in a heartbeat if I had a GPU that supports it. Main reason being the sheer convenience of being able to play and replay segments until you get footage you know you want to keep, and just click it on afterward. It avoids all the hassle of drive clutter and trial and error recording.

So, in summary, consider the above options carefully and do some tests to see what is best time and difficulty wise for you. It may at first seem like Distribution Writing is better, but when you consider the file size and time it takes to reconstruct files, demuxing and mixing audio tracks starts looking just as good if not better, esp considering you have the convenience of ShadowPlay.

What I really liked about Audacity is I could custom fine tune the tracks, such as making the background music lower volume during key dialog scenes. You could do the same with commentary, but maybe in reverse, lower game sound a bit to emphasize commentary at certain points. There's a lot you can do with audacity, even add volume fade, change pitch, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0KqsTa_HpM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uqCNjbQn54



 

laskeyperse

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Oct 22, 2014
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Well yeah i can edit soundtrack in vegas pro but i cant keep TS convo up while lowering gameaudio. I use 1920x1080 as my native res in game and i record that same res. I don't want bad quality. This all is just for having fun, there is no money transfers on any parties. But like on some occasions, there is a silent moment in game, so my mic picks up pretty much everything even from outside. So if bird is trying to woo a mate outside, it will be on video too, and i don't care if that bird gets laid or not.

Or in some other points there is hardcore action going on i would like to mute ts+mic but keep game audio and add some music or other sound effects. Trying to get it all nice and clean. With all audio it gets messy.

I thought my older ssd was bottlenecking but now it just can't do that anymore. I literally didn't find any faster writespeed. Just makes me wonder how others record without lag with a lot lower pc specs.
 
Ah, I see, then there's not much you can do on the editing end if all the audio you're talking about is part of one recorded track, aside from maybe balancing mic and game volume better BEFORE recording, which often can take a high quality mic that doesn't pic up nose (noise cancelling). Either that or shut the window, but that will likely drive heat up if you don't have AC like me, which can make performance even worse.

Performance wise though, do you have more than one drive you can use to write the game capture files to? The guide I linked you to shows how to do that.

Doesn't necessarily have to be SSD level drives either. A WD Black HDD can write at about 180Mb/s on the edge of the platter. If you have two or more drives like that you can make fairly large partitions on the edge of the platter with a partitioning tool, to assure dedicated space for capture that's moderately high speed.

I'll give you an example, with DxTory I was able to record Metro 2033 on a GTS 250 with max textures using just a mediocre speed Seagate HDD and a WD Black. There's no way I could have done that with Fraps or even with DxTory using one HDD.

(Max textures were set individually in config file to avoid the crappy blur the game adds.)

Keep in mind, this is BEFORE the optimizations of redux, and on just a GTS 250.

[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UdrcqEIayU"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UdrcqEIayU[/video]