Saving, recording, clipping and encoding videos and livestreams for threads. - We have to talk about 100MB per minute videos...

Almost all threads on the forum have a need to post video clips or archive large (live) video files on a regular basis. The tools needed to do so often require a learning curve or simply knowledge of their existence. This thread will serve as a resource to point to whenever media clipping or archiving is required.
These are my personal methods I use to feed the Bossman industrial clipping complex. By no means are these the best methods out there. The methods are however curated to be as straightforward as possible for people at any skill level. Knowing how to clip and compress means that you’re not relying on others to do work for you, you can be independent and give meaningful contributions to the threads you love.

Why bother?
A good compressed and encoded video is useful for both yourself and the viewers of your clip. The right encode will play on all devices and a smaller file size means the clip will load almost guaranteed for everyone, even podcast hosts hijacking their neighborhood kebab shop Wi-Fi.
Goals: capture anything, clip with ease, reduce video filesizes, encode the right way and have fun

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Thread contents​

This thread is not one big tutorial but rather a bunch of smaller tutorials in one, click on the subject in this menu that applies to your situation!
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╠ Automatically record livestreams in acceptable quality (without OBS)
╠ Minimal effort quick and dirty screen recordings
╠ Convert large video file into upload ready clips (clipping)
╠ Re-encode a large video file into smaller filesize
╠ Saving videos from websites that don't have a "save video" option when you right click
╠ yt-dlp quickstart guide
╠ explainer: encoding and compression
╠ Q&A
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DVR-like/Watch later recordings of creators from common livestream platforms.​

Some creators only go live at weird hours or some produce a massive amount of streams, to stand a chance at capturing it all you need an automated service to look out for streams, streamrecorder is the best free solution to this problem.
Go to streamrecorder.io and set up an account. https://streamrecorder.io/register
At the top of your streamrecorder dashboard you can enter the name of the streamer you want to record.


Under the “recordings” tab you can see the livestreams which have been saved for this streamer. https://streamrecorder.io/userrecordings
To download simply go to the records tab and press the three dots next to the stream to view the download options.

Important considerations when using streamrecorder

• Streamrecorder.io has support for a majority of popular streaming livestreaming platforms, including TikTok, missing however is DLive, parti and a handful of niche stream websites.
• A free account on streamrecorder can only record in max 720p
• Streamrecorder VODs are only viewable for free for about a week after which you need to pay to access them. Remember to download streams ASAP.
• Streamrecorder can’t fetch streams which have already happened or record segments of a stream that have already happened, so set up the streamers you want to watch before the streams happen.

The days of slaving away your device to manually OBS record a livestream live are over.

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Simple screen recording (easiest method)​

Sometimes you just want to make a small recording of something without all the fuss of setting up OBS and doing a bunch of post processing. Quick and dirty is sometimes the only method that makes sense.
For this we’re going to use ShareX and configure a simple screen recording task and hotkey. https://getsharex.com/
Download and install ShareX (windows only unfortunately), if you don’t know which ShareX version to get pick “Setup” and install using defaults.

Once installed open ShareX and look for "Hotkey settings" in the menu to the left.

Click "Add", navigate to "screen record" then "start/stop screen recording". After its done click on the "None" field and press the hotkey combination you would like to use to trigger the screen recording.
Pressing the hotkey will now change your cursor into a selection tool, outline the part of the screen you want to capture and let go, recording will start after a short delay.
Recordings are saved to the default ShareX screenshot folder, on my machine this is. C:\Users\<username>\Documents\ShareX\Screenshots\<year-month>

Some tips from the pros:

• Use your browsers Picture-in-Picture (PiP) functionality to your advantage! Usually with quick and dirty ShareX clips I pop out the video/stream, make it smaller and then record that, this automatically saves on filesize. The ShareX selector tool will also snap automatically to a PiP window.
• Make a separate ShareX hotkey for opening your screenshots folder. "Add" -> "Other" -> "Open screenshots folder"
• ShareX is infinitely customizable and is way more then just a simple video recorder. It has become my default screenshotting tool after just a day of using it, take some time to explore all the possibilities like setting up hotkeys to e.g. OCR images, read QR codes, pin media to the screen etc. If you are a Sneedchat user I highly recommend taking a look at the Sneedchat + ShareX guide by @Gaunt King Ithan Rilph found here.

Here is how the ShareX recording process looks like in action, or at least how I go about it.
Capturing a section of your screen example:


Capturing an entire feed using Picture-in-Picture example:

ShareX produces "upload ready" compressed mp4s which can go straight to a thread all in the span of seconds, that's the main reason why the quick and dirty recordings remain in my rotation.

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Cutting down a large video file into smaller bits (clipping)​

I always aim for clips that load fast and look decent (not archival quality but 'good enough'), in practice this means small filesizes and file formats that play on anything. My rule of thumb for videos is 5 MB per minute of content or less.

To start download Avidemux. Don’t be alarmed by the ancient appearance of the website, despite its looks Avidemux is very capable. It can clip and compress video without being a massive heavyweight video editor (it starts in an instant and that's why I like it)
Direct download from fosshub: https://www.fosshub.com/Avidemux.html

I assume you already have a large video file ready you want to cut down. Open Avidemux and drag drop your video file inside the application. Even loading hours of content should be relatively quick. You will be met with this screen.

Start by placing markers in the video where you want to clip from. Use the timeline to scrub the video to find where you want to clip. Press on the start marker (A) button to set the start now scrub to the end where you want to clip and press on the end button


If you don't place a start marker Avidemux will render everything up untill the end marker, vice versa with not placing an end marker. Placing no marker will result in the entire video being rendered.

Setting the encode and compression level​

On the side of your screen change the video output codec to Mpeg4 AVC x264


Click configure under x264

A screen should appear. The "Rate control" slider is the most important slider when it comes to reducing final video filesize, do not skip this. "Constant Rate Factor" or CRF is a level of quality the encoder will try to retain during the rendering process. Higher CRF means lower quality video but also a lower filesize, lower CRF higher quality, higher filesize. Here are some guidelines on how to approach CRF for regular clips.

• Stay between 20 - 30 CRF, lower then 20 has negliable effects on quality for 99% of cases. Higher then 30 CRF looks like dogshit with minimal impact on the final filesize.
• For clips where visuals dont really matter (static background or not a lot of moving going on) go for >25 CRF (I usually do 27)
• For clips where visuals do matter shoot for <25 CRF. The visual difference between 20 and 21 CRF is extremely minor but the impact on filesize is. Better to stay near 25 CRF then think that 20 CRF means perfect quality.
• Just set it to 25 if you don't care

Set your CRF on the slider and click on ok at the bottom of the window.

For audio, usually you can ignore these settings. However if you are importing video from "exotic" formats (or Avidemux starts complaining about compatibility issues between the audio/video track) I recommend setting the audio to AAC (lav)


Now set the output format to mp4


The side of your Avidemux screen should look like this now.

Setting the resolution and cropping​

Now its time for the finishing touches.
The final parameter which greatly increases filesize is resolution. For most bossman clips I go with either 480p or 720p, these resolutions are ancient yes but the clips on the forum don't need to be in archival quality imo. Saving archival quality video is more a tak for off site services like preservetube or established filehosts. I think treating the KiwiFarms like dropbox is a fools errand but what do I know. A 15 minute video in 480p will load in an instant even on stolen WiFi signals from the local kebab shop.

To set your resulution click on the "filters" button under video output

Under transform choose swsResize

Doubleclick swsResize to open up the options menu

After clicking ok you should see something like this under active filters now


Cropping
Another thing you can do is crop the video. Cropping is nice in post production if you e.g. want to only capture a webcam frame or zoom in on something. Cropping the video also means a lower resolution so lower filesize! (Note: I would not recommend a heavy crop + a further resize filter unless the cropped image is still very large)
Again under transform, choose crop and in the settings move the top left and bottom right hands to your desired screen portion.

Close out of the filter manager. The filters wont be visible on the video you see on the main screen but they will be there once rendered.

Once you're happy about everything press the "save video" button on the top left , give it a place and filename and watch Avidemux render it out

If everything went well then you have just made your first clip!
You can save your Avidemux settings as defaults so you don't have to change them every time. While the video is still open in Avidemux you can always place your start and end markers again to make more clips etc.

Here is how the whole process looks like in motion in case you need a video tutorial


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Converting large sized video​

Converting large video uses almost the same process as outlined in the clipping section of the tutorial. For this I aslo use Avidemux.
To start set all the same parameters as ourlined in the encoding and compression section (click here to jump)
I recommend x264 and a CRF of 25+

Then decide if you want to lower the resolution. Resolution greatly impacts video size. (click here to jump)
I recommend 480p for extremely long videos. imo KF shouldn't be treated as a large file filehost.

Re-encoding large videos takes time and takes up a lot of computer resources, close some browser tabs.

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General media capture for Xitter, Reddit, etc (YouTube is a special case)​

The most useful web based tool currently out there is cobalt.tools. Copy a link to the page with the media on it and watch it do its thing. You can even do an audio only or mute download if you so wish. Media downloaded trough cobalt is generally forum upload ready. If you want to make adjustments to your clip or compress the filesize then click here.
At the time of writing these services are supported by Cobalt.

YouTube
The main cobalt.tools website has been experiencing trouble with downloading YouTube videos due to the popularity of the service. However cobalt.tools is an open source project meaning people are creating their own instances of the same tool. If you find yourself running into issues with the main cobalt instance please consult this website to find a more niche cobalt instance that isn’t ratelimited. https://instances.cobalt.best/
However, I highly recommended that if you want to get serious about downloading and saving YouTube videos there is no other way then to get your hands dirty using yt-dlp, a quickstart guide can be found below.

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yt-dlp quickstart guide (downloading youtube videos)​

To become a video ripping master yt-dlp is the go to tool. Its less intimidating then it seems. To make your life easier I'll show you how to set up yt-dlp trough python, this is not the only way to get going with yt-dlp but it's my preferred way as updating trough pip is easy.
First, get an installer for python here: https://www.python.org/downloads/
Launch the installer and wait
To save yourself a headache it is crucial to tick this checkbox, don’t skip this, it is disabled by default. Checking this ensures we can use python form the terminal later without having to configure environment variables.

After installing open up a command prompt. (“CMD” in windows search or windowskey + R then type “cmd.exe”).
Ensure python is installed and accessible trough the terminal by putting in the command python -V. If everything has installed correctly it should print “Python 3.xx.xx” to the screen.

With python installed and the command prompt window open execute the following command pip install yt-dlp. This will download yt-dlp and all supporting software packages needed, installing this all can take a minute. After installing you can close out the command prompt.

You are now ready to download videos with yt-dlp using your command prompt. Its important to remember that without providing a filepath yt-dlp videos will be downloaded to the location the command prompt is currently open, e.g. if you command prompt says “C:\Users\Admin\Downloads > ...” then it will download videos to that folder. Change directories with the “cd” command.

Tip from the pro’s. You can automatically open the command prompt in a folder by typing “cmd” in the windows explorer search bar whilst the folder is open.


Some basic yt-dlp command examples which I use

• The most basic yt-dlp download command is yt-dlp <url>
• To download only the audio from a video as mp3 use yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 <url>
• To download only a specific section of a video use yt-dlp --download-sections "*xx:xx-xx:xx" <url> change the xx:xx to the start and end timestamps in the video. eg. --download-sections "*01:10-02:32" will download the section of the video between 1:10 and 2:32. Expand to xx:xx:xxin case the video runtime is in the hours
  • combine --download-sections with --force-keyframes-at-cuts in case you get weird artifacts in your yt-dlp sectioned clip. (new command example yt-dlp --download-sections "*01:10-02:32" --force-keyframes-at-cuts <url>)
• In case YouTube or another platform starts giving you error 403 you can try the following. Log into the wesbite where you're trying to download a video from and append --cookies-from-browser chrome/firefox to the command. e.g. yt-dlp --cookies-from-browser chrome <url>
  • This will use the cookies associated with your account, if you abuse downloads you might encounter ratelimits on your account, be smart.

As you can see yt-dlp is all about chaining different parameters together to create a download command that fits your purpose. For the entire range of download options refer to the documentation or ask an LLM to write you a specific yt-dlp download command (been there tbh).
Also remember that yt-dlp works on a lot of different websites, not just YouTube. See a video on a weird webpage and want to download it? Throw it in yt-dlp and see what happens.

YouTube and yt-dlp are in a constant cat and mouse game, be sure to update yt-dlp often. To do this open a command prompt anywhere and type pip install --upgrade yt-dlp

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explainer: encoding and compression​

Encoding
Re-encoding your video ensures your video is playable for everyone looking at it. Some common video files produced by e.g. smartphones don’t play nice with all web browsers. The reason this problem still persists with modern webbrowsers is due to the proprietary nature of some video codex, most infamous being HVEC (x265). Chrome (Google) pays for the x265 license FireFox (Mozilla) doesn’t. If a video is encoded in a way which your browser can’t handle it will look something like this.

Therefore highly recommend (re)encode every video you want to upload to x264 in a mp4 container, this encode is almost universally playable across every Internet browser in use. The Avidemux guide follows these settings.
x264 mp4 isn’t infallible and there are other codecs out there like AV1 which are both open source and being adopted at a rapid pace for web browsers.

Compression
The main goal of compression is to decrease video filesize. Smaller filesize means a faster upload but more importantly a faster download. Not every Internet connection is made equal. If you’re using a highly unstable Starlink network to grab a 15 second 100mb video you’re in for a frustrating time. Video compression can be done in a multitude of ways. Here are the ones I use often sorted by impact on filesize.

• Codec specific compression/CRF. Most codeds will have their own compression settings. For x264 this is the Constant Rate Factor (CRF). How CRF is outside the scope of this tutorial but the gist of it is that a higher CRF number results in a slightly worse looking video at a significantly lower filesize. You can play around with the settings but I recommend staying between 25 and 30 for forum video uploads.
• Reducing video resolution. In Avidemux this is done with a swsResize filter. How much resolution you need is a question you can only answer yourself. I tend to go with 480p for random stream clips as I don’t expect then to be played in full screen. Never exceed / try to upscale the resolution of the original video, this almost always looks bad.

A mistake I made early on was thinking the frames per second count had outsized impact on video filesize. The reality is that the fps of a video has very little impact on filesize (at least with x264). Complex compression algorithms already compensate a lot for fps. If your video is less then ~60 fps don’t bother changing it.

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Q&A​

I will update this section if needed later

Why not AV1?
AV1 is a more modern codec then x264 and in a lot of ways its more efficient. However a massive dealbreaker for me is the lack of hardware exclleration for AV1 encodes, this means that rendering AV1 clips takes significantly more time then x264. For now x264 mp4 is certified 'good enough'

Need help?
Got questions?
Want a place to test upload a video before you post to a thread?
Please do below!

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Special thanks
@Gaunt King Ithan Rilph, for making the awsome Bossman graphic at the top of the thread
@Flaming Dumpster, for introducing me to Avidemux and bullying me into clipping better. If you ever want to make a fully custom livestream grabber using streamlink then shoot this guy a message.
@Kees H, the best to ever do it

Reserved

if you are not a gui nigger and can use ffmpeg like a white man, it is this simple


note: -c copy cuts on i-frames, get rid of that if you need more precise timing

combine this with yt-dlp and you can two-step any youtube video into whatever you want