Medal vs OBS replay buffer: which capture setup fits

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Documented differences at a glance

As of 8 November 2026. Medal’s column is from Medal’s own pages, and its statements about performance are claims.

Where capture overhead comes from

Recording costs performance in four ways, and the two tools differ in how much of that they leave to you.

Encoding. Every saved frame has to be compressed. Software encoding uses the CPU cores your game also wants, while NVENC, AMF and Quick Sync use a dedicated block on the GPU. Medal’s guide says it selects one of those automatically. OBS lets you choose, and Medal says OBS defaults to software encoding, so open Output settings and confirm what yours is using.

A second encode. If you stream in OBS and also record, the extra encode is what adds load. OBS’s recording guide says that for recording, anything that is not Same as stream “will take extra resources from your computer”. That guide does not cover the replay buffer in detail. Reasoning: a buffer encoded separately is a further encode, and Medal running alongside OBS is its own encode in a separate process. Medal says the two do not conflict, but publishes no figure for running both.

Compositing. OBS renders your scenes and sources before encoding, so a complex scene adds GPU work even with a hardware encoder. Medal says it has no scene composition. This matters less if you would run OBS for the stream anyway.

Memory and disk. A replay buffer has to hold the last N seconds somewhere. OBS sizes this with its memory setting. Medal says its buffer is written to disk only when you save, and that if you never save, it is discarded and uses no storage. Arithmetic for video only, at megabytes = Mbps x seconds / 8:

OBS shows its own estimate next to the setting, so use that for your exact settings. Community members said in June 2023 forum posts that the buffer is circular and capped at 75% of installed RAM. That is community-reported and may have changed, and we could not find an official OBS article on it.

What Medal claims and what to make of it

Medal says it “does not drop your frames” and uses 100 to 400MB of RAM while recording. Those statements appear on its own low-CPU guide, with no test method, game, resolution or bitrate attached. The arithmetic above shows why that matters: a 10-minute buffer at 40 Mbps is 3,000 MB of video, so the RAM figure cannot describe every configuration if the buffer is held in memory. Medal does not say what it assumes.

Medal’s instant replay page also says it is lighter on system resources than OBS, while the low-CPU guide says OBS “is light too once it is set to a hardware encoder”. Read that as a statement about setup effort, not a measured gap. The same goes for any claim that a recorder is lightweight, including from us: until it is measured on your machine, it is unsupported.

How to compare them on your own PC

A fair comparison needs one repeatable scene, matched settings and several runs of each setup.

1. Fix the scene. Use the game’s built-in benchmark if it has one, or a repeatable route. Keep resolution, graphics preset and drivers the same, and close anything you would not normally run.
2. Match capture settings as far as Medal’s settings allow: resolution, frame rate, bitrate, encoder type and buffer length.
3. Run each state three times: no recorder, OBS replay buffer only, Medal only. If you stream, add your stream setup with each one and with both together.
4. Log the numbers below for every run, then save one clip at the same moment in each state.
5. Read the gaps against the spread. If the difference between two setups is smaller than the difference between your three runs of the same setup, call it a tie.

Those OBS labels come from its source strings. Our planned version of this comparison is described in our methodology, and no result exists yet.

Medal or OBS: decision table

Choose by what you already run and what you want to happen after the clip is saved.

What each cannot do

OBS has no auto-clipping, editor or share links. The source strings confirm that a replay cannot be saved while recording is paused, that Custom Output (FFmpeg) disables the buffer, and that lossless Simple quality does too. A community reply in a 2025 forum thread says OBS writes the buffer separately from a recording, so joining them means editing afterwards.

Medal cannot stream, has no scenes or facecam composition, and is Windows only on desktop. It describes its encoder choice as automatic, with “no encoder presets to pick”, though its guide says you can change resolution, frame rate, bitrate and buffer length. Without Premium, its Premium page implies a watermark and says uploads stop at 20 minutes and 1080p. Medal’s guide says it does not inject into games or interact with anti-cheat systems, which is a vendor statement worth confirming for your game.

Running both, or moving from OBS to Medal

Many players run OBS for the stream and Medal for clips, according to Medal, which says the two do not conflict. Treat that as a claim and use the comparison above with both running.

To bring existing OBS files into Medal, its OBS comparison describes this route:

1. In Medal, go to Settings, PC Storage, then External Recorders Import Locations.
2. Click Sync an External Recorder and pick a new, empty folder.
3. Move your OBS MP4 files in. Files over 10 minutes arrive as full session recordings.
4. To upload imported clips, verify a phone number on your Medal account.

Medal imports MP4, so set OBS to MP4 or keep OBS’s recommended MKV format and turn on Automatically remux to mp4 under Advanced. OBS’s guide recommends MKV because a crash will not corrupt the whole file. You can keep OBS installed and point its save folder at the synced folder so new clips arrive automatically.

See also the Medal review, Medal alternatives, gaming clip recording software and the comparison hub.

Last checked 8 November 2026. Prices and limits change; we re-check monthly.