Recording production tutorials is supposed to be fun, and recording should be easily accessible and not a pain in the ass. For most people, it’s as simple as adding a display capture, configuring audio (Yes, I know, configuring audio sucks too), and hitting record; However, if you are using an ultra-wide screen or any display that does not use the standard 16:9 ratio, it can be incredibly frustrating to capture Ableton or another DAW. You’ll notice I didn’t mention 2K, 4K, or larger resolutions. That’s because you’ve got it easy; just change your native resolution on your display and move on.
Since you are working on a much higher resolution display than you’re tiny little OBS canvas, you might think it’s as easy as using ‘Window Capture,’ choosing Ableton and resizing it to fit. This is what I thought. In fact, I recorded and uploaded an entire tutorial using this method, only to find out later that none of my VSTs were captured. Why? Because VSTs are not part of the same window, of course – seems pretty obvious in retrospect.
To get Ableton to fit on our canvas while capturing the VSTs we might need, we have to use both ‘Window Capture’ and ‘Display Capture,’ at least temporarily. Let me explain.
First, we will add a window capture and choose our Ableton window. Then resize it to fit our 1080P canvas. If you think like me, you’ve probably already done this on your first attempt to get this shit working. I named my window capture scaler, so it’s easy to remember why it’s there.
Now you can add a display capture and hit OK, but instead of adding it as is, choose the option to crop to a window.
Pick your freshly resized ableton window and hit OK.
Now you can either hide or delete your window capture. I prefer to hide it since Ableton will need to be resized every time you want to record, but you can see that now your VSTs will be captured as long as they are within the bounds of your DAW.
That’s it, done, no more steps, no more screenshots to closely examine. Simple shit that took me a long time to figure out.
