GDSR Studio

Record Geometry Dash like you're in OBS - without ever leaving the game.

I got tired of alt-tabbing into OBS every time I wanted to record a decent clip for YouTube. Black screen, broken audio, lag - the usual. So I built GDSR Studio: a full recording studio rendered directly inside GD using Dear ImGui.

No OBS. No stream keys. No Game Capture wizard nonsense. Just hit F8 and you've got an OBS-style panel right inside the game - preview window, audio mixer, encoder settings, and a big fat record button.

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What it does

• Live preview - see exactly what's being recorded, right in the studio panel
• Video recording - H.264 (software x264 or hardware NVENC / AMF / QSV) or MJPEG
• Three audio tracks - every recording gets three separate tracks in the MP4: game, mic, and game + mic mixed. Edit them independently, mute the mic, re-balance the voice - no re-recording
• Audio mixer - separate channels for desktop and mic, with gain, mute, and peak meters
• Performance presets - Potato / Low / Balanced / Quality
• Smooth while recording - frame capture runs on a dedicated thread via D3D11 staging textures, and the preview is decimated and kept off the capture swap, so the game's framerate stays steady instead of swinging
• Borrow FPS - when the encoder falls behind, the game itself slows down just enough so every recorded frame is a real frame (no dropped/duplicated frames). Essential on weaker machines.
• 15 languages - English, Русский, Español, Português, Deutsch, 简体中文, Français, 日本語, 한국어, Italiano, Polski, Türkçe, Tiếng Việt, Bahasa Indonesia, Українська
• Dark/light theme, dockable panels, F11 for fullscreen
• Recommended: 720p at 60 fps - the sweet spot for YouTube-ready recordings without hammering your GPU

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Installation

You need Geode for Geometry Dash 2.2081 on Windows.

1. Download reviusion.gdsr-studio.geode from the Releases page
2. Drop it into %LOCALAPPDATA%\GeometryDash\geode\mods\
3. Launch GD - the mod loads automatically

Press F8 to open the studio.

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How to use

1. Hit F8 → the studio window opens
2. Go to Settings → pick your output folder, FPS, quality, encoder
3. Click Start Recording - the UI hides itself to free up resources
4. Press F8 mid-recording to check the live preview
5. Hit Stop Recording → file saves to %USERPROFILE%\Videos\GDSR_timestamp.mp4

Hotkeys:

Key	Action
F8	Toggle studio
F11	Fullscreen

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Performance & hardware

Frame capture happens entirely off GD's render thread:

Game renders a frame
  → issueCopy()         - render thread: fast D3D11 CopyResource
    → mapSlot()         - worker thread: Map + memcpy (heavy, but off-render)
      → submitFrame()   - encoder thread: pipe to ffmpeg

"Borrow FPS from game" (on by default) - when the pipeline can't keep up, GD's render thread blocks briefly so every recorded frame stays real. On low-end hardware this is the difference between smooth recording and a slideshow.

Recommended baseline: 720p @ 60 fps - hits the YouTube sweet spot, looks clean, and runs fine on anything with a dedicated GPU from the last decade. If your machine struggles, try the presets below.

If you're on a toaster:

Setting	Value
FPS	30
Resolution	1280×720
Encoder	x264 (CPU)
Quality	28-35
Preset	Low or Potato

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Building from source

Requirements:

• Windows 10/11
• Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools
• CMake 3.21+
• Geode SDK (GEODE_SDK env variable set)
• ffmpeg.exe placed in resources/ (download here)

Clone with submodules:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/Reviusion/GDSR-Studio.git
cd GDSR-Studio

Build:

cmake -B build
cmake --build build --config RelWithDebInfo

The built .geode package auto-installs into your running GD instance.

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Project layout

src/
├── capture/
│   ├── AngleD3D11Backend   - reads ANGLE/GLES framebuffer via D3D11 staging textures
│   ├── AudioCapture        - WASAPI loopback + mic → 48kHz stereo WAV
│   ├── CaptureScheduler    - orchestrates the dedicated capture thread
│   ├── OpenGLBlockingBackend - fallback glReadPixels for native desktop GL
│   └── Recorder            - ffmpeg pipe + video/audio mux to mp4
├── imgui_hook/
│   └── ImGuiManager        - swapBuffers hook, preview texture, ImGui render loop
└── ui/
    ├── Localization        - 15-language string table
    ├── StudioState         - shared settings / state
    └── StudioUI            - ImGui panel layout
third_party/
└── imgui                   - Dear ImGui (docking branch, git submodule)
resources/
└── ffmpeg.exe              - not included in the repo, grab it yourself

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Troubleshooting

Problem	Likely cause
Preview is black	First frame while pipeline primes - wait a second or two. If it stays black, check the Geode log for GDSR: errors
mux: ffmpeg code 1	Rare, on 20+ min recordings with slow HDDs. Mux timeout scales with video length - retry usually works
No audio in recording	Check the mixer - desktop audio is on by default. Verify your device in Settings → Audio
Game stutters while recording	Expected on weak hardware. Turn on Borrow FPS, lower recFps and resolution

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License

Source code - personal / educational use. Don't redistribute modified versions under the same name.

ffmpeg.exe is bundled under LGPL 2.1 - not included in this repository.