How to capture slow motion footage in Guild Wars 2

This is a basic guide on how to create slow motion footage in Guild Wars 2 (or any other game) using Open Broadcaster Software (free) and Adobe Premiere (subscription) or DaVinci Resolve (free).


 

Guild Wars 2

There are only two requirements for Guild Wars 2:
  1. Make sure V-Sync is turned off. Otherwise the FPS will be capped to whatever your monitor can display.
  2. The game has to run at 100+ FPS at all times when capturing. Any drops below 90 will ruin your shot and will cause frame drops (frozen images in your slowed down footage)
Because Guild Wars 2 is notorious for having frame rates all over the place here's a few tips to keep it steady:
  1. Find a location at the edge of a map (there's less to draw beyond the edge of the world)
  2. Change the settings for other players to a bare minimum (unless you're capturing other players)
  3. Turn down shadows and reflections
  4. Try to avoid d3d9.dll injection files (like reshade and gw2hook) and do your color correction in post

Capture your video using Open Broadcaster Software

First step is to make sure OBS is set to 90 FPS:
  1. Select File - Settings - Video
  2. Change Common FPS Values to Integer FPS Value
  3. Input 90
  4. Make sure your output is set to the desired resolution

Capture settings

  1. Go to the output tab
  2. Set output mode to advanced 
  3. Select the recording tab
  4. Change type to standard
  5. Set an output path, this needs to be a fast (SSD) hard drive with sufficient storage
  6. Set recording format to mp4
  7. Set the encoder to either NVIDIA NVENC H.264 (new) or x264 depending on your system (see below)

NVENC (Nvidia cards only)

This is the recommended encoder if you have an Nvida card, it encodes the video directly on your GPU so it takes almost no CPU power and is less prone to frame drops:
  1. Set rate control to CBR (constant bitrate) or ABR
  2. Change your bitrate to somewhere between 25000 and 60000 Kbps. Higher values will give you better looking videos but also produce larger files and require more from your GPU, CPU and hard drive.
  3. Set the preset to performance
  4. Turn off psycho visual tuning


x264 (Other)

This is the default encoder available for all systems and encodes the video on your CPU. Because Guild Wars 2 is a CPU heavy game it's more prone to frame drops and requires a lot more of your system.


  1. Set rate control to CBR (constant bitrate) or ABR
  2. Change your bitrate to somewhere between 25000 and 60000 Kbps. Higher values will give you better looking videos but also produce larger files and require more from your CPU and hard drive.
  3. Set the CPU usage preset to fast or ultrafast

Troubleshooting

 


If your system is getting overloaded the encoder will drop frames and your footage will be useless. You can try to turn down some settings in order to prevent the encoder from overloading:
  • Use a lower bit rate
  • Use a faster hard drive (SSD)
  • Use high performance instead of performance for NVENC
  • Use ultrafast instead of fast for x.264
  • Lower your resolution
  • Find a less CPU intensive spot in Guild Wars 2

It's also useful to keep an eye out on the FPS and CPU counter in the bottom right corner. If it drops below 90 it means you're dropping frames as well.

Turning your captured footage into slow motion video

In order to create slow motion footage out of your captured footage I'm going to use the following method:
  • Import your 90 FPS footage into the editor of your choice
  • Tell the software to interpret the footage as 30 FPS (this will slow it down to 1/3th of the original speed)
  • Place the footage on a 60 FPS timeline
  • Smooth things out using optical flow to fill in the missing frames

Premiere Pro 

  • Add the file to your project bin
  • Right click the file and select Modify -  Interpret Footage...
  • Select Assume This Frame Rate
  • Input 30 and press OK

  • Create a new 60 FPS timeline and add your footage
  • If the clip mismatch warning screen pops up select Keep existing settings
  • Right click your footage in the timeline
  • Select Time Interpolation - Optical Flow
  • Select Sequence - Render Selection from the menu and you should have an ultra smooth slow motion video!

 DaVinci Resolve


  • Add the file to your project bin
  • Right click the file and select Clip Attributes...
  • Set Video Frame Rate to 30 and press OK

  • Create a new 60 FPS timeline and add your footage to it
  • Select your footage in the timeline and press the Inspector button in the top right corner
  • Double click Retime and Scaling
  • Set Retime Process to Optical Flow
  • Set Motion Estimation to Enhanced Better
  • You should now have ultra smooth slow motion video!

Tips and tricks 

  • Try to experiment with the Interpet Footage speed for example 15 FPS will give you 1/6th of the original speed and 45 will make it run at 1/2.
  • You can always capture at higher settings if your system can handle it for even smoother videos!
  • Optical flow does not work well on fast moving objects and flashing lights. Try to use the Frame Blending settings for these (will smooth out the frame rate but will be blurry)
  • Only capture what you need. These files get very very large pretty quickly with these settings.
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