Which version of OBS is the most stable and has the fewest problems?

CoryL

New Member
Hello, everyone, I'm new here. I'm thinking of starting to record videos for YouTube. But I don't know what is the best way to record. I would be grateful for your advice.
 

Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
Uh, having been here for 5 years, and decades of IT experience... I'd say beware latest release (and I say this for all software releases, not just OBS Studio).
- Some older versions of OBS Studio are required for older hardware, or unsupported Operating Systems (which itself is a problem, but I'll skip that rant today)
- Beware of the major change with OBS Studio v28... impacted many plugins

best bet
- real-time video encoding is computationally demanding... so system awareness and bottleneck avoidance at different hardware layers is important... be aware of load balancing potential by using GPU to offload encoding from CPU
- avoid / limit plugins (I love Advanced Scene Switcher, avoid almost all others as I don't need them for my use case, or they are unreliable)
- beware CPU impact of certain filters/effects.
That said, don't record to recording unsafe format (ex MP4, per big warning in OBS Studio)

Beyond that... it depends. Lots of options/considerations and depends on your specific workload, hardware, bandwidth, etc. There is no single 'best way to record'
 

Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
An even more basic consideration - think of your workflow, especially because typically every time you edit a video recording, that recording gets re-encoded which is a lossy process (think old VHS tape copies, but not as quickly obvious)
- with that said, there is AVIDEMUX and I assume others than can trim videos on B-Frames without re-encoding.
- Certain sophisticated video editors can chain changes and only re-encode (or re-encode from original source, at least).. ymmv

A common consideration, especially amongst the perfectionists in the crowd, is to Record, check, re-record or edit, rinse/repeat... all of which can be VERY time consuming (which is or becomes problematic). So... a common theme is try and composite (overlays, transitions, effects, etc once during original Recording, to minimize the editing afterwards... speeding your whole workflow. Over time, as you get a sense of what you want/need, the more you can automate the better as your process should become more consistent, less re-shoots, and you can focus more on the creative/content aspect, that the layout/look, during the Recording.

Depending on the content you are planning, the other high level consideration is that humans can 'fill in the blanks' fairly well when it comes to video, but many quickly get distracted by bad audio. All of which is to say, you will likely spend far more time on the video aspect of your Recording, but make sure your Audio sounds good in its intended output form (ie mobile device, which often means needing to use Compression and other techniques). Also, just because your audio sounds good on your computer at home with speakers, etc, does not mean that after video sent to Content Delivery Network (CDN, ex YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, etc) who then HIGHLY compresses the video (and attached audio), that audio (and video) on client devices will sound the same (as good, usually not).
 
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