For Those Using nVidia's ShadowPlay - Variable Frame Rate

Report · Jul 30, 2016

This is specifically aimed at the folks (mostly gamers) that are using nVidia's ShadowPlay to record their footage. By now you hopefully realize that ShadowPlay can only produce variable frame rate h.264 files. At this point, Premiere Pro stumbles with VFR files and you end up with a potentially out-of-sync final product where the sound and video don't line up. The fix for this has been transcoding into a CFR (constant frame rate) h.264 file before ingesting it into Premiere. Very time consuming.

I've recently given OBS Studio a try to record the same gameplay footage (as well as stream to YouTube Live). OBS uses the same h.264 hardware encoder found on the nVidia cards, but interestingly: it seems to produce files that are CFR. I've run a few of the output files through MediaInfo and all of them have come back as CFR. Further, they work in Premiere without any transcoding; everything's in sync.

So if you're not completely married to nVidia's ShadowPlay to record your footage, give OBS Studio a try. It's vastly more configurable than ShadowPlay as nVidia tried to make it a bit too easy to use (IMHO). Studio is completely free as it's mainly based off of the most excellent ffmpeg libraries (like Handbrake is). And, to make sure I'm clear: I have absolutely nothing to do with the project, I'm just a (new) happy user.

Report · Aug 18, 2016

Hi Jasonvp,

Thank you so much for sharing this valuable information.

Regards,

Kulpreet Singh

Report · Oct 29, 2016

Hey Jason, thanks for this. Very helpful.

Report · Mar 17, 2017

Thanks Jason.
constant

I'm using nvidia's share (or ShadowPlay) for recording but I have a big problem with the frame-rate.

When I recorded a gameplay, have to re-render it with the handbrake to make the frame-rate constant.

But I have the same problem with OBS. What settings are you using?

Thanks.

Report · Jun 05, 2017

There's another problem with the video.

In my case, I didn't have an issue with audio sync problem, but there was some black bar when I render or made an output.