Free OBS Studio makes creating films simpler than screenshots

[Brooke]

OBS Studio ( https://obsproject.com/index ) is free.  It works for streaming, and it also allows you to create videos in the standard formats (mp4, flv, etc.).

It is so easy to use that I find it takes me less time to create a video and upload it to Youtube than it does for me to compose and take a handful of screenshots.

In the past, I created pictorials of frames of Scenarios that I play in.  But that takes a lot of time.  I find that just letting the film viewer run through a 5-minute section of action takes much less time to set up and do.

I created a couple of 1080p videos, changing only a couple of the defaults on OBS Studio, namely in the "Output" settings "recording" section, setting "recording quality" to "High quality, medium file size"; and in "Video" section, setting "Output scaled resolution" to 1920x1080.  I also set my "Scroll Lock" key to toggle recording on and off in the "Hot Keys" section under "Start Recording" and "End Recording".

So in the film viewer, select "use recorded views" and "icons" turned on, get my film to the place I want things to start, pause, press alt-tab to get my Film Viewer control window back up, press "play", press alt-tab to get the full screen only, then press "Scroll Lock" to start my recording and press "Scroll Lock" again to stop recording.  Done.

Also, it saves to disk while running AH with no frame-rate loss on AH, so you can run it while playing AH, and use Scroll Lock to toggle on when you want video recording to start.

Oh, one other thing.  If you want your mic to pick up only game vox (and not your breathing or swearing at your cat), in the "Hotkeys" portion of the settings, set your "Mic/aux" setting of "Push to talk" to F-12 and then add another one for that setting and set it to "T".  Then in your "Audio" settings, under "Mic/aux", enable "push to talk".  Then it will pick up vox only when f12 or t are pushed.

[Brooke]

Here are some examples.

[Brooke]

Also, here is how to set up OBS Studio for Aces High.  You can skip the part about setting up a Twitch account if you don't want to live stream it and just do the part about "To get OBS up and going".

If you want to try Twitch of Youtube game streaming, here is how you do it.

-------------- Create a Twitch account ----------------

Go to:
https://www.twitch.tv/

Create an account.

In the Settings for your account, go into the "Channels & Videos" tab and make sure "Automatically archive my broadcasts" is selected (so that your streams are saved on Twitch for a while).  That way, after you stream, you can keep the video of it on their site for a while, edit it, etc. if you want.  Very handy!

Open your Dashboard.  Click on "Stream Key" tab.  Click on "Show key".  Copy that stream key (as you will need to paste it below).  Click on the "live" tab.  Type a name into the title of your broadcast you are soon to start (such as "My test AH broadcast" or whatever).  Click on "Not playing" and select "Playing" instead.  Click the "update" button -- you are now ready to start streaming to Twitch with OBS.

------------- To get OBS up and going -------------------

Download OBS Studio (not the older OBS Classic):
https://obsproject.com/

Install it.

Run the 64-bit version (or 32-bit as appropriate for your system).

In File->settings->Stream, select the streaming service you want to use (such as Twitch).  Select the server closest to you.  Paste in your stream key.

In the "Scenes" box on lower left, add a scene called whatever you want.

In the "Sources" box in the middle, add a "Game capture" and name it anything you want.

Put your mouse pointer into the preview-screen section (which is probably blank currently), and right click.  Scroll down to "Transform" and select "Fit to screen".  This way, your AH session will (after OBS rescales it to 720p) be fit to the final format correctly.  (This is the only confusing part of OBS, as it allows you to put your game stream into only part of the screen if you want, and it's a little finicky on that setting.)  If you have problems later with it looking like OBS is making a video of only a portion of your AH full-screen graphics -- this is the likely cause.

------------------- Start AH --------------

Start up Aces High.

In OBS, click "start recording" or "start streaming" (whatever you want to do).

Go into your full-screen Aces High, and away you go.

----------------------------------

If you want to check streaming, go to twitch.tv and go into the Dashboard for your account.  There is a window there that shows what you are broadcasting.  Press "alt-tab" to get out of AH full screen and take a look at what is showing in that Twitch Dashboard video preview.

If you want to make a video and see if it looks OK, that's a good test, too.   By default, OBS makes flv files, which you can play with the free VLC media player available here ( https://www.videolan.org/vlc/ ).  Press the "start recording" button in OBS, and you are creating a movie file on the fly.  Go back into AH full screen, fly around a bit, then stop recording and play the video in the VLC player to see how it looks.

[Brooke]

You can also save head positions in the Film Viewer.  It will not use your settings from AH, but you can redo them inside the Film Viewer, and it will remember what you set.

Make sure you only tap the arrow keys when you are moving your head around.  If you hold down the arrow keys for any length of time, they go into a "coarse movement" mode that will make it nearly impossible to do fine movements like a head in the cockpit.

If you get into that mode, you have to press the stop button and restart your film (or screw around in some other way I forget) to get fine control back.

[Brooke]

Folks who create videos another way (perhaps FRAPS plus video editing software) can create videos with a better resolution than this OBS method.

However, the OBS method is super simple, can run easily while you are playing, and creates files (if you are doing the 1080p, high-quality, medium file size) that are about 150 MB per 5 minutes of filming (as opposed to the huge file requirements of FRAPS).

[lefty2]

I have audio but I do not have any video. Can you help.
Not sure what you meant by the following.

So in the film viewer, select "use recorded views" and "icons" turned on, get my film to the place I want things to start, pause, press alt-tab to get my Film Viewer control window back up, press "play", press alt-tab to get the full screen only, then press "Scroll Lock" to start my recording and press "Scroll Lock" again to stop recording.  Done.

"use recorded views" and "icons" I don't see either of those. I'm confused. Are you talking about the recorder or the viewer? You mean "start record" not "play" right?

[guncrasher]

those with nvidia cards can also use their free software.


semp

[lefty2]

OK got it workn

[BoilerDown]

If you're going to record to disk and not stream it to the internet, use this guide to set up OBS Studio:

https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/obs-studio-high-quality-recording-and-multiple-audio-tracks.221

[FLOOB]

Get trackir already.

[Brooke]

Get trackir already.

  

Yeah, I know what you mean.

I actually own TrackIR.  But I have two problems.  One is that, try as I might, I can't get it to give me the rear view I want or get around some of the quirks I don't like.  The other is that it makes me nauseated when I use it for much.

The second point I might get over once I get used to it, but the first point keeps me from wanting to do that.

[Brooke]

If you're going to record to disk and not stream it to the internet, use this guide to set up OBS Studio:

https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/obs-studio-high-quality-recording-and-multiple-audio-tracks.221

Thanks for posting this, by the way.