[prahladyeri]

If only OBS was somewhat lighter, I'd have used it. You need an Intel i5 or Ryzen 1300x processor for a "minimum requirements", imagine what would it take for a decent performance!

Instead, I use another app called ShareX [1] which is much lighter on the OS and processor. It may not have all the features but you can easily create a screencast or recording session with ease.

[1]: https://github.com/ShareX/ShareX

[piperswe]

The Ryzen 3 1300X is a low-end, nearly 6-year-old CPU. The Core i5 2500K is a mid-range, _12-year-old_ CPU. It's a perfectly reasonable minimum requirement.

[andybak]

I use ShareX and I use OBS - there doesn't seem to be a huge overlap in functionality?

ShareX - screen capture and screen recording.

OBS - streaming (and lots of related functionality).

I'm guessing you were using OBS for screen recording - but that's not really close to it's core feature set.

[ehsankia]

A lot of people use OBS for screen recording. I do think ShareX is extremely limited unless you want to record something super simple.

OBS' ability to compose a whole scene, dozens of different capture methods, overlays, full audio mixer, transitions, etc. It's the perfect place to record any sort of desktop-based video. It's far far more than just "screen recording".

[Shorel]

I don't see anything wrong with using OBS for screen recording.

I use it for streaming as well, but having it installed, I also use it for recording when I need it. Also for video capture from the webcam.

OBS can do no wrong to me.

[andybak]

Yeah - I guess I hadn't really considered it for that task. I've only used for live stuff personally and I hadn't made the connection with screen recording per se.

[hsudhduhsh]

i use obs exclusively for your sharex use case.

[imtringued]

I use the gnome screenshot widget.

[jeroenhd]

I find OBS not to be that heavy as long as your GPU does all the work. A modern i3 would probably do fine if it has QuickSync enabled and not too many extra filters and inputs at the same time.

ShareX doesn't live stream as far as I know? Let alone offer WebRTC?

[predictabl3]

Sean recently posted a link to an ffmpeg fork where this work is being done too. Gstreamer already has a WHIP module that flew under my radar. So there should be plenty of good options soon.

[paulryanrogers]

Windows only. Still, good to have alternatives. OBS is nice in that learning it means you can use it on 3 of the biggest platforms, even if performance isn't top notch.

[lucideer]

I haven't used ShareX so I may be missing something here, but the website seems to indicate it's a screen capture utility. Does it do more?

OBS is not a screen capture utility.

[CharlesW]

> OBS is not a screen capture utility.

I've been looking for a way to record my screen and webcam as separate files and so far OBS¹ seems like it might be the only tool that can do that. Is that not a good use for OBS?

¹ https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/source-record.1285/)

[circuit10]

I guess they mean not just a screen capture utility

[lucideer]

Sorry I should've been clearer: it can certainly be used to capture your screen. It's just an extremely ancillary subfeature.

[gsich]

It is.

[lucideer]

It can do screen capture. That doesn't make it a screen capture utility. In the same way as Visual Studio is not a note-taking app, blender3d is not a video editor and Excel is not an IDE.

[nyanpasu64]

Sadly people recommend OBS for regular screen capture on Wayland, after X11-based capture apps like SimpleScreenRecorder no longer work on Wayland. And OBS isn't very good at screen recording, and even cropping the recording by dragging a specific region, then shrinking the output file size to this region, cannot be done easily (alt-dragging the bounding box followed by "Resize output (source size)" picks the uncropped source size, and the "Crop/Pad" filter doesn't allow dragging a screen region).

In fact the issue was closed without understanding what the reporter was asking: https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/issues/8822

[Shorel]

OBS doesn't work for me on Wayland either.

I log in into X11 when I use OBS on Ubuntu.

[chmod775]

It will work under wayland if you have xdg-desktop-portal/xdg-desktop-portal-wlr set up.

If you've got that set up up correctly, screen sharing will also work in Firefox (for instance on discord).

As far as I understand it, xdg-desktop-portal is a DE/WM agnostic protocol that enables applications to easily capture a screen - the user just has to run the right backend for their environment. I think it does other stuff too, but screen recording is probably the main use case.

I'm using Manjaro Sway Edition where that was configured out of the box.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Desktop_Portal

[gsich]

OBS is the screen capture tool. Unless you define screen capture somewhat differently? Nearly everyone on Twitch (or other streaming sites) is using it.

[haunter]

Use the GPU encoder not x264. x264 is very CPU heavy, even on veryfast.

[mikece]

As fast as processors are these days I don't see this as a valid complaint (especially with how inexpensive machines powered by the Apple M1 are these days).

[pwython]

I've been using OBS since it first came out (11 years ago?) on just a 2012 MacBook. Never had a single issue.

[DJBunnies]

Post your specs you dinosaur

[prmoustache]

obs works well for me on a decade old machine.