DCS VR 4K | How I Record & Edit DCS Videos 

Thank you for that! I definitely sent that 30+ hours working on figuring it all out. The most frustrating part was around the virtual audio cables. They aren’t essential but I really wanted to get it all working and it posed odd problems with DCS and Voice Attack.

Don't have the voice attack struggle and the audio was bearable for me as I was coming from music making so I had already experienced the audio struggle years past your explanation for the obs vr setting was a game changer! And that was me asking your where were were working tonight on 4ya call sign yeti99

@@YETI-99 ahh! Dang! You know what happened? I had finished a sortie in the Hornet ((JSOW attack on Beirut) and was landing in the Strike Eagle after finishing the job at Beirut when you asked me. I had just started to execute my flare landing when you asked so I was distracted and didn’t say much (sorry). Then, as I was still rolling down the runway, DCS crashed on me. So I figured I would take a break after all of that flying. Next time we should try to join up and go hit some targets. It’s funny because for the past several weeks I have been flying the Strike Eagle exclusively as I was trying to learn it. I wound up forgetting a few things in the Hornet so I spent tonight trying to reacquaint myself with it.

@@YETI-99 I'll keep an eye open for you next time! I can get overly focused on what I am doing and have a tough time hearing chatter so if I don't respond or seem to be "dismissive", just remind me or something... like "hey dumbass! This is Yeti-99 from RU-vid! You want to go blow stuff up already?" heheh!

Awesome! Let me know how things go for you! If you need a hand or clarification with something just ask!

@@StrIIker-TV thank you :)

Thank you for your appraisal of the video. I did try to include as much detail which can easily be missed by someone who knows a process extremely well.

Wow! Thank you for your enthusiastic approval. I'm glad you enjoyed it and I hope it helps you out.

Much appreciated!

Let me know if ya need a hand with the mod file. I can also share it if needed.

Glad you liked it! I find that I am still learning little aspects of capturing and editing videos. I'm still working on dialing things in with the 3.9 release.

Thank you for your kind words. I will admit that as I was putting the finishing touches on my video and 3.9 dropped, I pondered this very question. Is this still relevant with the in-game voice chat finally getting up to speed? Should I add on some kind of commentary around this? I decided to hold off and see how well the new in-game radios work. I admit though that I have not used them in part because there was apparently some potential issue where it was crashing multi-player servers. The last thing which I heard a couple days ago was that 4YA servers disabled the in-game radios for now and is strictly SRS until Eagle Dynamics fixes the issue. I would honestly welcome the new radio as the demonstration videos which I have watch about it makes it sound pretty nice even though I do give up some much loved control over the volume while editing. I guess it's not a huge issue and is something I will need to get accustomed to. I will certainly post a follow-up once we see wider adoption of the built-in radios and once I am a regular user of it (and I really am looking forward to switching). It does simplify recording the videos at that point as you simply have to record the game output! Ideally the radio volume will be loud enough to hear in game but not overwhelming for videos which people like to post.

@@StrIIker-TV It no doubt would benefit the community and your channel to have both radio sides covered. My initial thought is the ED radio side would be easier to setup as it is all in game. To be fair, this is just a guess on my part. I was looking for info on this stuff and luckily your channel got recommended by the RU-vid algorithm. I'm hopeful and look forward to a future video. Subscribed in anticipation and thanks in advance.👍

@@billcedarheath387 I am going to give the built-in radio a shot and see how well it performs and will put together a video with my findings. Ralfie did a great video on the new radio which is where I got some of my information on it.

@@StrIIker-TV I think the ED in game radio is going to be the way moving forward. It’s just going to take a while to transition everyone over due to SRS being the go to for sol long. The reality is in game means less software running and needing to be updated. Official support means no hassle with 3rd party apps for new people and even those that are used to SRS as well. The big question is the capture of in game radio while recording and maybe even tossing in discord voice in the background for those that do “squadron” based stuff.

@@billcedarheath387 I agree with all which you said. It’s definitely going to supplant SRS as the de facto voice coms in DCS and for all the reasons you stated. I will be very happy to swap over. It’s possible that it will become an annoyance in videos if it’s too loud relative to everything else (some people want or need it louder to understand what is being said) but I am not really worried over that. The virtual audio cable approach will still have uses for a while in Discord chat etc. I will still use it for external programs such as voice attack in case I don’t want the audio from it in the game or want to lower the volume.

It depends upon how you are trying to record Voice Attack output. Are you trying to record it using the virtual audio cables? If so, what are you wanting to achieve with the separate recording of Voice Attack and if so why? The only real thing which I get from Voice Attack is the background chatter from Viacom Pro and the occasional voice response to a command (if I have that defined). I chose to record this separately so that in post, I can adjust the volume of the chatter instead of working on adjusting it separately. If you just want to record it along with everything else, you can just record audio from the desktop default. This would capture DCS, Voice Attack, SRS and anything else making sounds on the desktop. The downside here is that you would also pick up Discord sounds for new messages, Windows desktop sounds errors, new device, etc). Generally this is fine (other than discord sounds but you can silence those in Discord) and I have seen may videos from DCS out there where you can hear the occasional Windows alert sound (new device or something). Let me know what your configuration is (mainly if you are separating sounds through Virtual Audio Cables or not) and I would be happy to help ya.

Thank you! Yeah I realized as I was making the video that some of this may fade off at some point as Eagle Dynamics sorts out their in game comms stuff. As for Open Kneeboard.. If I recall correctly, did you get an Aero? Anyway, I am running Varjo Foveated Rendering (not Quad Views Foveated) because I am one of the unlucky people who have issues with the Quad Views version not getting fed eye tracking quite often when starting DCS. The Varjo Foveated cannot work with the OpenXR plugin for OBS from Jabbah therefore I can't capture any XR stuff in OBS. Regarding the format, I did see the concern with MKV vs MP4 and decided that if my recording craps out (to date, it has never happened) it's no big deal if I lose a recording. I shoot video every time I fly and have a pile of it which I don't use. I also re-shoot a lot when I am flying solo if I make a mistake or something didn't go the way I wanted for framing some shot. (I'm picky). So a missed video is not a problem at all. As for recording to H.265, yes the file is smaller but you still need to convert it or leave it to RU-vid to convert it. I have a lot of storage and am not worried about space so that's probably why I am happy with H.264. I did try H.265 briefly but then decided that I wanted to give RU-vid exactly what they wanted in order to avoid potential degradation of my video when I upload it or when my system has to re-encode it from my video editing software. It's crazy when you think about how many ways there are to do this all! I tried to keep that in mind when I made this video because I know that what I do and why will not match up with other people. I just wanted to give people a push in the right direction with this stuff so that they can discover what their system can handle and what they prefer. Your videos look great and so you obviously are doing what works well for you! Keep up the great work!

@@StrIIker-TV yes I got an Aero, but am waiting for it again since the first two I received had dead pixels. So I am using the G2 at the moment. My videos take quite some time processing at RU-vid, will see if this is because of H.265. I did not test impact on my frametimes while recording H264 vs H265. Will also see if there is a performance difference there. I don't understand your issue with QVFR and not getting the OpenKneeboard to appear in Varjo Foveated Rendering. Let's chat some more when I get my headset back, so I can check things on my end and maybe help you sort it out. I really miss it when I don't have my kneeboard visible in the recording. I don''t remember if I mentioned this before but your tutorial format is very nice and your videos are a real asset to the community. Walking through everything the way you do is really helpful.

@@Ready.A-10CYikes, that sucks! Getting your long anticipated headset only to have to return it! Thankfully Varjo has (in my experience) been a great company with respect to customer service. My 4k videos at 60FPS generally take about 4 hrs to render to 4k for an average of 40 minutes of video. I got used to uploading and then checking at some point later in the day. It felt like every time I looked, it was taking even longer.. A watched pot never boils I guess..

@@Ready.A-10CHi! I don’t know how I missed this comment. Thank you for your very kind words regarding my tutorials. Regarding the Varjo, there is a bug for some headsets when using Quad Views Foveated Rendering where the headset does not pass eye tracking to the QVFR layer. As a result it renders in lower resolution and looks horrible and difficult to read. It works once every 4 or so restarts of DCS. Varjo Foveated Rendering works all the time but it apparently doesn’t work with the XR plugin for OBS. I will have to double check that again. Mbucchia said it doesn’t work as I recall. Hopefully your headset doesn’t have this issue as I know you like to get that kneeboard in your great videos. Keep them coming!

Hi! Thank you for asking. The open kneeboard plugin for OBS will not work when I use Varjo Foveated Rendering software. It just displays a black screen if I recall correctly. If I use the similar software (also from mbucchia ) called quad views foveated, it would work. The quad views foveated can work on the Aero VR headset but it is problematic in that it takes several restarts of DCS to work (generally 3-5 restarts). For some reason, and mbucchia could not figure out why, the eye tracking data is not passed to the headset from DCS and so there is no tracking and the displayed image in the headset is much lower in resolution with jagged edges and blurry text etc. I really do wish I could get it all to work together but that will have to wait until I replace my headset. I may pick up the somnium space headset some day if it turns out to be a great headset with reasonable customer support but for now, my Aero is hanging in there (it’s at end of life from Varjo and is completely unsupported by December 2025)

I did cover this in the video. I added a chapter mark in response to your question for others to find. Go to 7:40 in the video (time stamp link: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0QzupWjvXfA.htmlsi=vvgn4n6poehzwHrH&t=459) and I explain it there. Basically, you need to go to the sound settings for Windows and tell it to listen to Cable A (for SRS everyone). Have a look and let me know if you need further clarification and I will be happy to help further. It was a big headache figuring this part out for sure!

@@StrIIker-TV Great, thanks, I just scrolled thru VA part, because I don't use it.

Start or stop recording is set in OBS itself. I have a few ways to do this. I created a voice attack command set "start recording" and "stop recording" which I can execute from within DCS via voice command. When I speak the command, Voice Attack executes the correct key presses. I also have this set on my Stream Deck as a button to start/stop recording. Lastly, sometimes I just pop out of the game in VR (view desktop in the Varjo) which then shows me my dekstop and gives me mouse control there. I will just click the "Start Recording" button in OBS and then pop back into the sim. There's noting IN DCS which you can configure for this, it's all external.

Are you referring to the OBS capture window? I assume that you can see the game window from DCS? I’ve seen this before and I think I had to exit DCS and OBS and then restarted and recreated the capture source in OBS. It should not be black (obviously) once you select the window from the list of active windows.