Recording for YouTube

Maarten Baert author · 22 November 2013, 21:29

Quote: Ubuntuaddicted

since there's no output resolution and I play in fullscreen which is 1680x1050, would i use the scale option in the input screen to capture only 1280x720? I don't want to have to change my computer resolution to 1280x720 just so I can record it for 720p upload to twitch or youtube. Any help would be appreciated.

The ratio of 1680x1050 is 16/10, but 1280x720 is 16/9, so if you scale it, it will be somewhat stretched (unless you're okay with cutting off the edges). Scaling is also slow in the current version of SSR, so it's best to avoid it. However I just wrote a new scaler for SSR that's about 10 times faster, so when that's added things should be better.

You can also play in windowed mode and resize the window to 1280x720, that's what I would do :).

Maarten Baert author · 19 February 2014, 16:23

Quote: Fbrenha

i tied a lot of programs to record my league of legends games and simplescreenrecorder was the best the only problem is that i can't put my voice and the sound coming from the headphones in the video. it's the only problem i can find that as no problems can you pls help me?

Read this. The version I released today (SSR 0.2.0) also has JACK support which is even better, but harder to use. I will update the article soon.

Maarten Baert author · 13 May 2014, 17:03

Quote: D8out

Hello there :) can i do a timelapse on this ? :) if yes please tell how :D i dunno how to make it :DD

You can record at a low frame rate and then speed the video up in e.g. kdenlive, or with the ffmpeg command-line tool. That's how I do it.

Maarten Baert author · 4 September 2014, 17:28

Quote: Fimre

hi
I've just played around with SimpleScreenRecorder and proves to be a very good screen recorder however it looks like background noise of the PC is being recorded
I tried with external microphone plugged in but after several failures with no change for the better, I simply gave up on this
I would highly appreciate if you could offer me some good advice to solve this issue, something, anything I might have missed or missconfigured

Integrated microphones are often noisy, this is normal. A good USB microphone should be far less noisy. Are you saying that your external microphone is also noisy, or that you couldn't get SSR to use your external microphone?

Audacity has a noise removal effect that works quite well. In order to use it, you have to split off the audio and edit it separately, and combine it with the video again later.

Maarten Baert author · 15 September 2014, 19:18

Quote: Fimre

hi Maarten
thanks for your valuable feedback
now after some further testings it turned out that the main cause of the background noise is caused by the volume of speakers however if I turn it down to lowest level (zero) there will be no voice recording either
so I lifted the speaker level to a mid range and recording is ok but background noise remains
I also followed your Audicity noise removal advice which looks to be working
still, I dare to ask, what do you suggest for splitting my audio from the video then merge back with the filtered audio?
thanks in advance

Phil

If you have an Audacity build with FFmpeg/Libav support, you can extract the audio by simply dragging the file into Audacity. Unfortunately this was broken in Ubuntu 14.04, but I found a workaround:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2218803&page=5&p=13007925#post13007925

Alternatively you can separate the audio from the video file with ffmpeg/avconv:

ffmpeg -i inputfile.mkv -c:v copy -an video.mkv
ffmpeg -i inputfile.mkv -vn audio.wav

After modifying the audio, you can combine the two again like this:

ffmpeg -i video.mkv -i audio.wav -c:v copy -c:a libvorbis -b:a 128k outputfile.mkv

You may need to modify the extensions and codecs if you are not using the default SSR settings (MKV and Vorbis).

Maarten Baert author · 27 October 2014, 01:10

Quote: Spency_boy

I think I would love this, but I can't find the download for Linux. It is not linked where the other downloads are. Please help!

http://www.maartenbaert.be/simplescreenrecorder/#download
If your distribution is not on the list, you have to compile it from source (instructions are in the README file on GitHub).

Maarten Baert author · 14 February 2015, 17:13

Quote: Diskandar

Hi Marteen,

which one should i download to record minecraft gameplay? the openGL32 bit or the 64 bit?

I am using acer c720 chromebook and ubuntu trusty OS, with latest minecraft update 1.8

I have downloaded using this command:
sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder

and tried to use the openGL recording, it does not work?
but if i just record without openGL is working although the fps drops considerably like 50% ...from 50 fps to 20 fps.

did i download the correct version?

Thank you so much.

Danny

Minecraft uses Java, which can be either 32 or 64 bit. If you have a 64-bit system, you are probably using 64-bit java, so you need the 64-bit library. However you can also just install both:

sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder-lib simplescreenrecorder-lib:i386

Recording is CPU-intensive and can impact the performance of the game. Take a look at this article.

OpenGL recording works great with Minecraft, but don't forget that you have to start the game from within the 'OpenGL Settings' window or with the 'ssr-glinject' command. It won't work if you just start Minecraft the normal way.

Maarten Baert author · 15 August 2016, 21:54

Quote: Sketch1946

When you've got some more spare time can you compile a version for windows? :-)
Then I can introduce your program to to my wife and other family :-)

It's not that simple - SSR is not compatible with Windows, and I have no plans of making a Windows version at the moment.

Quote: Thomashansen

Hi,

I very much appreciate your program, it's really thought through. I especially like, that I can record many little sequences that end up directly in one file.

I record Minecraft in fullscreen (HD1080) and unfortunately hitting the record/pause shortcut throws Minecraft out of fullscreen, which contradicts the whole feature and comfort of it. It's just ugly to see the windowedges in the final Youtubevideo.

I use Ubuntu 16.04, don't know if you need further information about my system.

I would very much appreciate a solution to this problem,

thanks in advance
Thomas

It doesn't do that for me. Could you try changing the hotkey to some other key to see if that makes a difference?

You could also use OpenGL recording. This ensures that you will only ever record Minecraft, and the quality is better too (no screen tearing).

Maarten Baert author · 12 October 2016, 21:55

Quote: Hofstetr

Maarten,

I'm trying to record at resolution 720p but the simplescreenrecorder dialogue is too big and I cannot click on the Continue button at the bottom. I'm RHEL 7.2 and cannot manage to figure out how to shrink the dialogue or scroll the window. Have you encountered this?

Sorry, SSR doesn't have support for resolutions that low at the moment. Are you able to set up SSR at a higher resolution, and then start the recording with the hotkey instead?

Maarten Baert author · 4 February 2017, 20:53

Quote: Harishpathangay

hi,
how to make sure that i am recording from external mic and not internal mic?

thanks,
harish pathangay

That depends completely on your hardware. Try running 'alsamixer' in a terminal, there is probably a switch you can toggle.

Maarten Baert author · 4 May 2018, 11:08

Quote: Ahmadraniri

Sir... I Recently use this software until I upgrade my Ubuntu into 18.04 version, the problem is I can't see the "continue" button, I try to maximize the window but still can't find...

Try installing the latest version of SSR from the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:maarten-baert/simplescreenrecorder
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder

This one includes scroll bars.

Maarten Baert author · 26 March 2020, 22:47

Quote: Oh-kay-pee

I've been recording some educational videos for my students during this period of school closures. I like how simple SSR is to use. I want to improve my quality.

I record in SSR, upload to Youtube, and share the links. Sometimes I edit the videos in kdenlive, it just depends on if I have to do anything post-production.

The latest comments are years old so I wanted to ask a few questions to see if things are still the same.

I read that we should use either 720p 1280 X 720 or 1080p 1920 X 1080.

Does that mean our window size or our monitor resolution?

My monitor resolution is 1920 x 1080 so if I put it in full screen, will that get me the best quality?

Does a blurry screen result from putting my window size for Firefox to 1280 x 720 but my resolution is 1080p? I don't understand.

Also, some of the settings I have questions about.

I choose the Youtube setting from the Profile area, but what does that do? Does this somehow optimize the recording for YT?

What should I choose as the container? I've done it with MKV and MP4. When I've used MKV, I put it into kdenlive to edit, then exported it MP4. When I do MP4, I get an MP4 and I can upload directly into YT.

What's the difference in using these containers?

I used to get the error message about Flipping, and I have NVIDIA, but whether I turn it on or off in OpenGL settings, I am not getting the message anymore.

Does that mean this issue was fixed? I have a new custom built desktop and want to take advantage of hardware acceleration so I want the setting to be right for when I'm editing video elsewhere.

Assuming your monitor resolution is 1920x1080, and you are presenting in full screen, you will get the best quality if you let SSR record the entire screen with the resolution set to 1920x1080. But note that as a result of the higher-than-normal internet usage due to the Corona pandemic, Youtube has temporarily reduced the default video quality in order to reduce the overall network load. So you may not be seeing the full quality of your video unless you manually set the video player to 1080p when you view the video.

The Youtube setting will pick settings that are reasonable for uploading to Youtube with decent quality. Youtube will re-encode videos anyway so you won't see much improvement if you try to further increase the quality in SSR.

I do not recommend using MP4 in SSR because if your recording is interrupted for any reason, the MP4 file will become corrupted and you will have to restart from the beginning. WIth MKV you don't have this problem, you can always open the file and read it up to the point where it crashed. But you can export to MP4 from kdenlive if you want, since there's no risk of losing data in that case.

Regarding the NVidia message, if you are not seeing any glitches or flashes in your recordings then it's probably not an issue. In any case, if the dialog doesn't appear it's probably because you selected 'yes, always' or 'no, never'. To change it, open ~/.ssr/settings.conf and find the following line:

nvidia_disable_flipping=yes

Set it to 'ask' instead of 'yes' or 'no' and you will get the dialog again.

Maarten Baert author · 27 March 2020, 15:35

Quote: Oh-kay-pee

Quote: Maarten Baert

Quote: Oh-kay-pee

I've been recording some educational videos for my students during this period of school closures. I like how simple SSR is to use. I want to improve my quality.

I record in SSR, upload to Youtube, and share the links. Sometimes I edit the videos in kdenlive, it just depends on if I have to do anything post-production.

The latest comments are years old so I wanted to ask a few questions to see if things are still the same.

I read that we should use either 720p 1280 X 720 or 1080p 1920 X 1080.

Does that mean our window size or our monitor resolution?

My monitor resolution is 1920 x 1080 so if I put it in full screen, will that get me the best quality?

Does a blurry screen result from putting my window size for Firefox to 1280 x 720 but my resolution is 1080p? I don't understand.

Also, some of the settings I have questions about.

I choose the Youtube setting from the Profile area, but what does that do? Does this somehow optimize the recording for YT?

What should I choose as the container? I've done it with MKV and MP4. When I've used MKV, I put it into kdenlive to edit, then exported it MP4. When I do MP4, I get an MP4 and I can upload directly into YT.

What's the difference in using these containers?

I used to get the error message about Flipping, and I have NVIDIA, but whether I turn it on or off in OpenGL settings, I am not getting the message anymore.

Does that mean this issue was fixed? I have a new custom built desktop and want to take advantage of hardware acceleration so I want the setting to be right for when I'm editing video elsewhere.

Assuming your monitor resolution is 1920x1080, and you are presenting in full screen, you will get the best quality if you let SSR record the entire screen with the resolution set to 1920x1080. But note that as a result of the higher-than-normal internet usage due to the Corona pandemic, Youtube has temporarily reduced the default video quality in order to reduce the overall network load. So you may not be seeing the full quality of your video unless you manually set the video player to 1080p when you view the video.

The Youtube setting will pick settings that are reasonable for uploading to Youtube with decent quality. Youtube will re-encode videos anyway so you won't see much improvement if you try to further increase the quality in SSR.

I do not recommend using MP4 in SSR because if your recording is interrupted for any reason, the MP4 file will become corrupted and you will have to restart from the beginning. WIth MKV you don't have this problem, you can always open the file and read it up to the point where it crashed. But you can export to MP4 from kdenlive if you want, since there's no risk of losing data in that case.

Regarding the NVidia message, if you are not seeing any glitches or flashes in your recordings then it's probably not an issue. In any case, if the dialog doesn't appear it's probably because you selected 'yes, always' or 'no, never'. To change it, open ~/.ssr/settings.conf and find the following line:

nvidia_disable_flipping=yes

Set it to 'ask' instead of 'yes' or 'no' and you will get the dialog again.

Thanks for the reply. I fixed the NVIDIA issue.

If I understand correctly, I should record in full screen, my monitor is 1080p. Should I scale it or not?

I guess for videos that I don't need to do any editing on, I was hoping to use MP4 so I don't have to import it into kdenlive just to export it as an MP4, but I understand why now.

Do I use the Youtube container or no? Are you saying it will or won't be useful for Youtube uploads?

You don't need to scale it.
Youtube will accept MKV as well, there is no need to convert it to MP4.
I would recommend using the Youtube preset if you want to upload to youtube. If you want to improve the quality you could lower the 'constant rate factor' from 23 to 20, but it won't make a huge difference since youtube re-encodes the video anyway.

Maarten Baert author · 30 March 2020, 00:25

Quote: Fred

Geachte Maarten,
Where can I offer you a drink?
Your job's good and I totally want to donate!
Is it possible via Paypal?
Thanks!
Frédéric

I'm glad you appreciate my work. I don't take donations though, but thanks for the offer :).