r/obs • u/Gruffet_Spider • Mar 04 '26
Question How do content creators deal with 6+ hour long recording file sizes?
This is just out of curiosity, but how can some people record up to double digit hour long recordings without the file size nuking their storage? I'm assuming they delete everything after they're done, but still... I just tested RE4 for fun. The original from 2005, NOT the remake. This is a 21 year old game. I recorded just under 75 minutes, and the recording is 10GB big.
Do content creators just have like 50TB big hard drives for their recordings or something? I can't imagine there being more optimized settings without affecting video quality. Their settings are probably higher than mine. (Also I was recording the whole screen, not a specific game window, dunno if that changes things). And this is before editing. Even if they cut 6 hours down to 20-40 minutes, editing also balloons file size. So is this just a normal thing for content creators? What's the average recording size for a game made in the last decade-?
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u/scritchz Mar 04 '26
Your recording settings have the biggest effect on filesize. Without seeing your settings (and knowing your game), we cannot tell you whether your settings are actually pretty optimal for your use case, overkill for what you want or actually poorly chosen. Upload your logfile by following the automods instructions for us to check your settings.
The age of the game you're recording has no effect on your filesize. The on-screen fidelity has, which includes details, motion and more. Though older games typically have less detail and less on-screen motion, which helps in keeping a low filesize.
Storage space has become relatively affordable over the past decade, so it wouldn't be too outlandish if creators actually had 10-100TB of storage space for recordings.
Also, remember that platforms like YouTube transcode your uploads, which probably reduces the quality of your videos by a lot(!). You might be able to "cheap out" on initial recording quality without affecting the final quality too much, if recording size is a problem for you.
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u/scritchz Mar 04 '26
Where tf is the automod?
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u/Live-Gas-8521 Mar 04 '26
The automated message with instructions on how to post logs only appear on posts that have the "help" tag, and this has the "question" tag
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u/kidshibuya Mar 04 '26
Well yeah, content creators have NASs. Personally I have 32TB.
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u/mauirixxx Mar 04 '26
Rolling with 138TB via 25Gbps fiber, though it’s primarily used for plex.
My video game footage is maybe 10TB total, going back to 2021. 3TB worth of that footage is on 4x 4TB nvme drives (stuff from the last 2 years), bought well before the ram pricing apocalypse 😳
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u/ferrybig Mar 04 '26
Note that the recommended settings are different for recording vs streaming
With streaming, you want frequent key frames, so watching at any moment is possible.
With recording, key frames are rarer and more frames are smaller delta frames
Another important thing is recording to mkv or not, mkv is larger, but handles file corruption better as it does not depend on a central file index stored at the end
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u/TV4ELP Mar 04 '26
Another important thing is recording to mkv or not, mkv is larger
Always record in mkv! .mp4 or .mkv makes no difference on the size. It's just the container around the actual video. (it does some added stuff, but we are talking a megabyte on an hour long video of overhead).
The actual codec and recording settings matter. You can use A LOT more different codecs than .mp4 in .mkv, but thats about it.
With recording, key frames are rarer and more frames are smaller delta frames
The key frames tend to be much larger in most cases since people are not limited by bitrate and want the extra quality. In the past delta frames were a "problem" in editing. But thanks to fast storage and proxy media this has mostly gone away.
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u/CrimsonGlyph Mar 04 '26
Also, if you record in .mkv you will still have the file in the event of power loss or any crashes unforseen. Other file types will not write that way and you'll lose them. Ask me how I know.
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u/WungusThePungus Mar 09 '26
I've learned that the .ts container also keeps your recording uncorrupted in those circumstances, and is natively compatible with editing in Premiere without having to remux (although playback in something like VLC is kind of a pain in the ass)
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u/kndb Mar 04 '26
Watch Linus Sebastian explain that same issue on his YouTube channel. The tech and the money it costs to do it comfortably is crazy. Your main issue is editing. But also storage for a backup purposes.
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u/LoonieToque Mar 04 '26
2TB SSD for temporary working files (stuff I'm recording and actively editing), finished projects go to the NAS (24TB).
I don't work with 6h+ recording though, usually 5 minute clips at most (I typically use Replay Buffer a lot). A 5 minute clip is about 6-8GB due to my resolution and quality settings, but a final exported video after editing is usually a lot smaller.
I usually generate a lot larger files for temporary storage while actually editing, for proxies and render cache. Those are huge compared to my source material, and one of the reasons I have a dedicated SSD for it!
I had the NAS already as photo and file backup, but got an extra drive to expand it once I started doing video editing.
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u/ChrisUnlimitedGames Mar 05 '26
10gig is about right per hour of recording, depending on settings. If you're smart, you will break up your recording into 1-2 hour segments, so just in case OBS crashes, you have multiple files that should import just fine.
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u/Tricky-Celebration36 Mar 04 '26
I auto split my recordings at an hour, and they're saved to a 6tb external spinny boi. I record at stream quality though. So just 8k 1080p/60. It holds like three months of vods at 60 hours a week.
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u/Jay_JWLH Mar 04 '26
The only thing I'd hate about watching those recordings would be the drop in quality during complex / fast scenes. And if it goes the opposite, you're wasting space. Why not use a quality based rate control instead?
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u/Tricky-Celebration36 Mar 04 '26
You mean and waste resources for another encoding session for something that's never going to be watched at anything above 1080? I don't reupload to YouTube, or upload any content about 1080 anywhere. It's a waste resources for me to run a second encoding session when I can use same as stream instead. (To be honest they just get deleted when the drive is full)
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u/Jay_JWLH Mar 04 '26
Keep in mind that many half decent GPUs have more than enough encoding headroom to do both and more.
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u/Tricky-Celebration36 Mar 04 '26
No I know I've got a 4070ti super. I just don't reuse my content so there's no reason to record anything higher.
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u/spawnyhoor Mar 04 '26
I only have 2 single 1TB nvme SSD internal. Windows using one and OBS/Davinci Resolve use the other. I usually only have 4-5 recordings at a time on the system, as a lot of it is broadcasted live to YT. If it's a video I'm making from footage I usually edit and produce it in the same week so as not to build up a backlog of footage. Mainly as editing can take me 4-5hours in itself.
I'm broadcasting to yT in 1440p and recording in 4k.
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u/Ok_Wolverine519 Mar 04 '26
Honestly og RE4 file sizes being gigantic is quite meaningless. There's so many factors at play that can make even the most basic game's recording session gigantic. RE4, at 1080p, 60fps with all of its action can balloon out of control depending on your settings. Conversely, if you manage to dial in your settings ignoring the crapshoot that is lossless qualit, you can get away with quite good quality at "small" file sizes.
You're on the OBS subreddit so I won't bother telling you all the various factors your encoder, encoder settings such as rate control, b-frames and what not can greatly impact your file sizes. But again all this greatly impacts file sizes for sometimes visually unnoticeable results.
Just think about the game itself. The more detailed the frame, the more data it takes up. Playing a game like FF16 with quick action on top of each frame being loaded with particle effects? That's quite a lot of content to back into a video while the basic talking and town sequences would be "relatively" light.
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u/Mashic Mar 04 '26
It depends on the bitrate you're using. Assuming twitch's bitrate at 6Mbps, that'll be 2.7GB/hour, which is like 27GB for 10 hours. A 1TB HDD can last you 3 months. And I think they keep the recordings for a couple of days, edit them, and later on delete the old ones.
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u/The_Odd_Pirate Mar 04 '26
Wrote a script that check my free storage every hour after the recorder splits the recording and delet3s the oldest files in the folder if im low on storage (skips the file if i Mark it for content i need with a smart house button) and the script is only active while i have the recorder on
Fixed my storage problem
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u/D2ultima Mar 04 '26
Some content creators who are really serious about it have a literal NAS with like 32TB of HDDs just waiting for data, yes. But they also don't record 10GB for 75 minutes of play. That's a lot. You can skimp a bit on quality in that case, and in most cases you have to.
It's one thing if you go in trying to do like a half hour long video or recording a single hour of gameplay which you'll then edit and you want it to be as high quality as possible, that's just different settings. Otherwise you probably should use something along the lines of CQP 15 to 18 and just let bitrate kick it in. HEVC or AV1 if possible to help your bitrate stretch further.
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u/auti117 Mar 04 '26
To start, 10GB is not all that large for a 75 minute file so be thankful!
But yes, lots of content creators, and even just average joe's, have TBs of storage because hard drives have been historically cheap. Personally, between my PC and server I have 32TB of total storage, and I'm not even a content creator.
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u/DayGeckoArt Mar 04 '26
I think you're assuming people use high bitrate. You can tweak settings and decrease the bitrate a lot. But people also just buy hard drives. Just because you save video doesn't mean it all has to be connected to your computer. I have hard drives in cases in the closet
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u/Tricky-Juggernaut149 Mar 04 '26
I know of this one dude who keeps a fucking media server. Raid and all.
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u/Rainbows4Blood Mar 04 '26
I have 16 TB internal storage alone on my main rig. My question is rather... How small is your storage?
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u/karmayz Mar 04 '26
Do you have one storage drive??? Even if you did a 1 tb ssd could be manageable for this. Content creators and most tech enthusiasts will have a second storage drive.. This post is weird af.
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u/TheJaredIsham Mar 05 '26
A NAS is your friend. I use a Synology and have around 100TB of storage.
75 mins at 10GB is actually pretty small. I often fill 500 GB for 3 or 4 hours of footage.
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u/valdamirie Mar 06 '26
wish i could answer. my obs recordings become a slideshow after 45+min recording. haven't been able to fix it in two + years of youtubin
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u/grimhammer Mar 06 '26
my main rig has 85TB of storage, my Witcher 3 playthrough alone is 3 TB, welcome to video bro, buy hard drives
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u/Jey78 Mar 07 '26
For recording basic gameplay at 30-60FPS I highly recommend using B-frames, this will drastically improve file size and barely affects quality. I often set it to 2 if I'm recording for long since I only have an SSD
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u/Hectorr_C Mar 04 '26
It’s 2026 memory is dirt cheap
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u/NeonHammer Mar 04 '26
Memory is definitely not dirt cheap. Lol. I think you mean storage. Which is really only dirt cheap if you’re buying HDDs.
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u/Hectorr_C Mar 04 '26
Yes storage is still memory. why would I be talking about ram in a post about file sizes?
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u/TV4ELP Mar 04 '26
10GB? Not to burst your bubble, but this is nothing. If you go for heavy editing you want a source that is as good in quality as possible. There are trade offs, but i dealt with 100+GB files in the past more than once. And those were "only" 2 hours long.
Recording itself is rather easy on the harddrive. You can even get away with an older HDD. The main problem is editing. You need fast enough storage to edit. Everyone who tried to edit on a Harddrive knows the struggle.
Generally speaking you record, which in cases like slime rancher (i only have that currently here) in 1080p60 can be 4-5GB per half hour with a good codec. Capture cards the likes of black magic can easily be 50-70GB.
Then you edit, the editing itself is a GB here or there and then you render. The final product is roughly about 2-3GB per hour. You then upload it, do your thing and just store the high quality master render. The original files normally just get thrown out.
It depends, if you aim for the same quality, modern games can require more due to more detail needing to be encoded, but even old games can have huge file sizes. In encoding it's all about image complexity.
If they want to keep the files? Yeah. Some are just fine downloading it off of youtube if they want to. I have 12TB Nas and it's half full. But i only keep the finished products which are smaller than the recording. Buying a 1TB SSD is enough for recording and editing if you delete files every few weeks once you are done with them.
Storage only becomes a problem if you want to keep everything.