Edit #1 | May, 10th, 2015: I've updated my second post with newer information I've acquired the last few days and I also changed parts of this first one.Edit #2 | May, 14th, 2015: I've updated the second post with more information regarding my problem.Edit #3 | August, 12th, 2015: Fixed a few typos and updated the setup. Also added another post with updated information. Still looking for help!I've recently noticed that whenever I record a video for a long time, meaning an hour or longer, the audio and video tracks become desynchronized, but only gradually.
For example I have recorded a Battlefield 4 video for 1 hours and 27 minutes in 60fps at 720p. At the beginning I have around a 3-4 frame delay between firing a weapon and when you hear the gunsound.
Near the end of the video (at around 1 hour and 20 minutes) a fired weapon has a frame delay of around 22.
I've done multiple test recordings in a few games, however due to time requirements for such long recordings I was only able to do them in Battlefield 4 and Half-Life 2 for now. Both recordings show these problems.
I was also able to check the frame delay on a two year old Call of Duty: World at War video, I've also recorded with Dxtory at the time. This one also has a similiar delay like that, that is 3-4 frames delay at the beginning and around 22 frames at the end (here around 48 minutes).
I'm somewhat sceptical that games take around 3-4 frames until they play the gunsounds of their weapons and it would make evven less sense that gunsounds are more delayed the longer I play.
So it must have something to do with my recording setup.
The following settings were used for the recording of the Battlefield 4 video:
http://i.imgur.com/WCLaWDd.jpgSimiliar settings were used for the World at War video, too. However the World at War video had standard advanced settings for the codec.
The video for Half-Life 2 was recorded with the Lagarith codec at the following settings:
http://i.imgur.com/1IwLze1.pngNow as I said, all of these recordings did show this delay.
I've also done several short test recording with several different settings, that is different fps, different harddrives, different codec settings and I also tried both "Enabled Synchronous Surface Lock" & "Wait for Available Buffer" from the advanced tab in Dxtory, however the outcome was always a 3-4 frame delay.
My test game was a short demo in Half-Life 2, so there was minimal performance loss by the game.
I've also tried disabling my anti-virus software for these recording but that didn't change anything.
I have also done one test recording with the Dxtory codec, but this doesn't allow me to record at 60fps, even at 720p (file fps are around 45). The frame delay still was the 3-4 frames anyway.
I also did two additional tests in Battlefield 4 and Resident Evil 6. Both of these I played on a local game (test range for Battlefield 4 and offline singleplayer for Resident Evil 6). These only showed a delay of about 1 frame at 60fps.
Now the harddrives I'm using normally is a Western Digital Black 2TB that is connected via SATA3 and shows a write speed of about 140 MB/sec, based on the Dxtory benchmark, writing a 2GB file.
A few of these test recording I did on two other drives I have available, another WD Black 2 TB (connected with SATA2, around the same write speed) and a WD Black 1TB which runs the OS and other programs (write speed of around 90 MB/sec).
Now all of these drives showed no frame drops during recording and the files themselves have a fixed framerate of either 60 or 30fps, depending of the recording settings in Dxtory of course.
I have also gone through several different recordings I have done through Shadowplay (a few nearly a year old, others a few days) with varying lenghts (ranging from a few seconds to several hours) and
none of them show ANY kind of frame delay, nether at the beginning nor at the end some of them have the delay and others do not. I had a three hour long recording of Watch Dogs with a delay of nearly half a minute in the third hour, while a recent recording of Max Payne 3 of nearly two hours has no delay.
So I don't really know what to do anymore. Of course I could try and only do recordings for a certain amount of time, but this will certainly limit my workflow and it's not really something I want to do. And even then I would still have a small delay that wouldn't be very noticeable, but certainly would annoy myself.
I could go and purchase another harddrive and do a RAID0 setup, but would that even help? Isn't 140MB/sec enough for 720p/60fps?
Or is that just how harddrives work with such long write sessions? The 1 hour and 27 minute long Battlefield 4 footage is around 160 GB.
Would using a codec like x264 help? Its not really something I want to use, unless I would really have to, since editing x264 videos is rather annoying in comparison to lossless files with the software I use.
I know these are quite a few questions, but as I said, I'm not sure what to do as I've tried quite a things already. Dxtory is a great recording software and so far I haven't found an alternative.
Any help would be really appreciated!
Here is my current PC setup:
Mainboard: Asus Sabertooth Z77
CPU: Intel Core i7 3770K (3,5 Ghz), 4 cores, 8 threads (Hyperthreading ON)
GPU: GeForce GTX 680 Phantom 2GB VRAM (Factory overclocked by Gainward)
RAM: 16GB DDR3 1600Mhz by Corsair (Vengeance Series)
Soundcard: Asus Xonar Essence STX
Harddrives:
1TB WD Black (Windows & Programs)
1TB Samsung harddrives (Games, will be switched out to another 1TB WB Black hopefully soon)
2TB WD Black (Backups and work files for videos and other projects)
2TB WD Black (Dedicated recording harddrive for Dxtory and Shadowplay)
