Hello!

I’m Nexon Picker Pistime.

Today, I wanted to share something a little personal.

It’s the story of how I came down with the urge to archive every game I play.

I’ll also share the recording software and settings tips I use!

Someone with an Archiving Habit

By archiving, I mean saving the things you want to remember.

Since I run a Naver blog and also work as a Nexon Picker,

it always feels like such a waste to miss even a single gameplay moment,

so whenever I play, I keep a recording program running the whole time.

After years of doing that, the amount I’ve built up is kind of absurd—it’s over 16TB.

At a certain point, ordinary external drives just weren’t enough anymore,

so I set up a personal server—a NAS—to store and manage everything.

Of course, a NAS isn’t invincible either, and since you still need backups to keep your data safe,

the listed capacity is 32TB, but the actual usable space is only 16TB.

So while trying to record games at the best quality I could without completely wrecking storage,

I ended up learning quite a lot about recording settings.

Let me show you the recording program I use most often.

Game Recording Software I Recommend

The one I use most is OBS Studio!

A lot of people think of it as streamer broadcasting software,

but it’s also incredibly handy for high-quality recording at manageable file sizes.

Maybe because it was built for streaming, it also feels a bit lighter on system resources.

If you go into Output in the settings, that’s where you can configure recording,

and the recording format and video encoder are especially important.

For the recording format, I definitely recommend mkv.

mp4 is easier to work with when you’re editing, but if something goes wrong during recording,

there’s a nasty risk that the entire file you were recording gets wiped out.

The right video encoder depends on what kind of PC you’re using,

but since I use an AMD CPU and graphics card, H.265 (HEVC) has worked well for me.

And the real key is the encoding settings.

The option I recommend is CQP (Constant Quantization Parameter).

With CQP, the bitrate shifts dynamically depending on how complex the image on screen is,

so it’s a setup that keeps quality fairly consistent no matter what game you’re playing.

In CQP settings, the CQ level is the part that matters most,

and the lower the CQ, the better the image quality—but the file size jumps up a lot,

while the higher the CQ, the worse the image quality—but the file size drops quite a bit.

Personally, I use CQ level 27 as my compromise setting,

since the file size stays relatively low while the image quality is still pretty solid.

If you’ve got storage to spare, try going lower than that,

and you’ll probably notice the quality steadily getting better.

Of course, the file sizes also balloon right along with it.

Archiving,

Into Vivid Memory

Because of this habit of mine, even the very first day I started Mabinogi Mobile

is all preserved on video.

This was the moment I first logged into the Duncan server,

which was known as the big city server of Mabinogi Mobile.

For about a month, it always had a queue of more than 10,000 people.

(I miss it, I really do)

This was the moment I met Nao for the first time.

And this was the moment I created the Duncan Time guild.

At the time, I started it as a one-person guild.

Then, as I got more and more into the game, I started recruiting people.

This was June of last year, back when everyone was praying for the Brilliant rune.

I was having a rough time because all I had were two Steadfast ones,

but then I pulled Brilliant from a Glas Ghaibhleann random box.

The dopamine rush from that moment was so strong that, even now,

it’s still the biggest one I’ve had while playing Mabinogi Mobile.

A little sadly, nothing has topped it yet.

This was the moment I took a photo with my guild members last August!

That was when the Guild Photo Event was running.

Right now, maybe three or four people are gone,

but a lot of them are still actively enjoying the game.

This was the moment I made a Legendary Pet for the first time last December.

It was basically my fifth attempt by then, so I was really relieved it worked.

And on April 15 this year, the guild airship finally hit level 3 completion.

Honestly, since we’re a pretty casual guild, I didn’t think we’d actually pull it off,

but everyone chipped in little by little and made it happen.

So today, I shared a few of my favorite archiving tips.

Personally, I think recording everything comes with far more upsides than downsides.

That said, I’m still always looking for better ways to archive things well.