[SOLVED] Screen recording software for Intel i5-7300U/ HD 620 iGPU ?

[Bitzsec]

Hello there everyone,

I'm looking for a FREE software record screen (teaching courses online) with almost no impact on performance or battery life.

So far I tried xbox game bar (best performance but there is a problem with cursor when writing)

I need an alternative for my very low end laptop which has an Intel i5-7300U/ HD 620 iGPU.

 

[Aeacus]

How about OBS Studio?
Link: https://obsproject.com/

I'm using it to record my gameplay or other vital stuff. Great tool that also offers screen overlays (e.g KB).

Before that, i used Bandicam (with free edition, max 10mins vids only + has watermark).

Small article comparing the two: https://filmora.wondershare.com/screen-recorder/obs-vs-bandicam.html

with almost no impact on performance or battery life.

That's tall order, especially since screen capture, inherently is quite taxing task for PC to do.

 

[Bitzsec]

Both OBS and Bandicam makes my laptop laggy and 70-90% CPU usage while recording, Xbox Game Bar makes it 20-40% which runs way more cooler.

 

[Aeacus]

Here are several lightweight screen recorders that you can try out,
article: https://listoffreeware.com/best-free-lightweight-screen-recorder-software-windows/

 

[Bitzsec]

Guess what, I tried OBS and I'm really shocked that it's very smooth and high quality. can't figure out how!

 

[Aeacus]

I tried OBS and I'm really shocked that it's very smooth and high quality

So, you were assuming the "laggy and 70-90% CPU usage" when i suggested OBS for you?

 

[Bitzsec]

So, you were assuming the "laggy and 70-90% CPU usage" when i suggested OBS for you?

Nah, my friend owns a laptop with exact same specs as me, he tried to run OBS and he got such CPU usage, also I forgot to mention that I tried the portable version found on portableapps.com, I dont know if this is whats makes it runs smoothly.

 

[Aeacus]

my friend owns a laptop with exact same specs as me

Even when you have two identical pieces of hardware, they will behave differently.

As far as your friend goes, he may have loads of bloatware/malware, hogging system resources. So, unless your friend has the exact same file system (and files) on their laptop as you have (essentially cloned the entire OS), then both laptops can't be compared. Also, for all you know, he might have had some high CPU usage tasks running (e.g game), at the time he was testing out OBS.

Portable versions of software usually work without any installation needed and often are optimized for weaker/slower hardware. So, it could make a difference too.

 

[Bitzsec]

Even when you have two identical pieces of hardware, they will behave differently.

As far as your friend goes, he may have loads of bloatware/malware, hogging system resources. So, unless your friend has the exact same file system (and files) on their laptop as you have (essentially cloned the entire OS), then both laptops can't be compared. Also, for all you know, he might have had some high CPU usage tasks running (e.g game), at the time he was testing out OBS.

Could bloatware affect CPU usage that much? And cam it affecg CPU usage only during use, it idles at 1-5%

He was testing it with the same teaching program OpenBoard as me

 

[Aeacus]

Could bloatware affect CPU usage that much?

Yes, it can. And same goes to many Anti-Virus programs as well, especially Win Defender, which keeps the active monitoring going at all times.

And cam it affecg CPU usage only during use, it idles at 1-5%

Without knowing what programs you have running, it's hard to say if bloatware/malware utilizes itself only when you use your PC. It is possible though, especially for malware, to mask it's operation during PC use, not to arise suspicion.

 

[Bitzsec]

Your explanations are very logical, this can be the reason for the difference between my laptop and my friend's, I will check it later, anyways thank you for all of your replies, especially that first reply when you auggested OBS although I tried it with no hope, yoy made me curious to try it on my laptop, thanks for that!

 

[Tugrul_512bit]

OBS supports GPU encoder. If you enable that, you get much less energy requirement and more CPU cycles for your own tasks. I'm using it on my junk FX8150 2.1GHz and it records very well at 60 FPS even when using CUDA stuff at the same time.

 

[Bitzsec]

OBS supports GPU encoder. If you enable that, you get much less energy requirement and more CPU cycles for your own tasks. I'm using it on my junk FX8150 2.1GHz and it records very well at 60 FPS even when using CUDA stuff at the same time.

So if I enable GPU encoder, this means less CPU usage although I have intel HD 620 graphics?

 

[Aeacus]

this means less CPU usage

No. On the contrary, HD 620 is weak integrated GPU, inside the CPU, and you most likely get worse performance out of it. While CPU will be still utilized.

This works only if you have dedicated GPU, e.g Nvidia GTX/RTX series, which Tugrul_512bit has, since their GPU has CUDA cores (only Nvidia dedicated GPUs have CUDA cores. Radeon GPUs have Stream Processors instead). HD 620 does not have, nor support CUDA cores.

 

[Bitzsec]

Oh I see, what about encoder type, which one should I be using? I mean the QuickSync, H 264 etc

 

[Aeacus]

Well, you can try out different ones and see which suits you the most.
Further reading: https://restream.io/blog/hardware-encoding-vs-software-encoding/

 

[Tugrul_512bit]

https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...neration-intel-core-processors-and-newer.html

In above link, it says HD620 has hardware pipelines for HEVC encoding in 10bits or 8bits. Maybe, it has an option for this in OBS.

Also the following says it has 384 GFLOPS peak performance:

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/hd-graphics-620.c2911

On paper, this much GFLOPS should be equivalent to a very old 8-core CPU.

If a video encoder uses even half of the GFLOPS, it's still not too bad, maybe ok for 30 FPS recording with 1080p. Some OpenCL-accelerated encoder should be able to do this. Didn't test on Intel. But my 192-CUDA-core GPUs (K420) can encode at acceptable rates for low resolutions but certainly having a dedicated encoding hardware in GPU is much better. Some high end GPUs even do tens of encodings concurrently at high resolution.

 

[Bitzsec]

Thank you for all of this info, I'm glad you bothered to post thoss links ♥️

 

[Tugrul_512bit]

Thank you for all of this info, I'm glad you bothered to post thoss links ♥

You're welcome.