Rolling replay buffer on a Pi 5 - is constant software encoding actually the smart move?

Mine has been plugged in since spring and I never turned it off. I checked the wall meter out of curiosity and it draws about as much as a phone charger left overnight, which is nothing compared to the TV it sits behind. The whole point of the thing for me is that the button is ready before I know I need it. If I have to boot up and wait for the capture to settle, the moment is allready gone. That happened twice when I ran it on demand and that was enough for me.

On length, I landed around 90 seconds and that feels right. Long enough for the buildup in most games, short enough that I can scrub thru the clip in one pass. When something needs more context I just hit save twice and stitch the clips, which is rare.

One thing I will say is that the fan noise matters more than the power bill. Mine idles warm enough that I can hear it in a quiet room, so I put it on a little stand and pointed it away from the couch. If your setup hums along fine 24/7, I would say leave it on. The convenience is the entire product.

I went the wake-it-up-when-I-sit-down route and honestly the boot time killed my doubts. My Pi 5 with an NVMe hat comes up in under twenty seconds, and by the time I've picked a game and loaded a save the capture is already rolling. Playing maybe six or eight hours a week versus leaving it running all night just made sense once I actually thought about it. My desk setup used to have a similar always-on recorder and I noticed the little fan kicking in at random hours, which got annoying fast.

On buffer length I landed at 60 seconds after trying 90 and hating it. The problem with a long buffer isn't scrolling through junk, it's that the save moment sneaks up on you and half the time you're clipping footage from before you even started playing well. Shorter forced me to hit save quicker, and quick saves turned out to be better clips anyway.

One middle-ground trick that worked for me: a smart plug with a schedule so the Pi wakes itself an hour before I usually play. Costs pennies, and I get the always-on convenience without the always-on draw. Might be worth trying if boot-up lag is the thing holding you back.

I totally agree with the person who argued for leaving the device on all the time. The peace of mind of knowing the capture is ready is worth the small power draw. I found that when I used my Pi 5, optimizing the buffer process by using a specific low-latency camera input really helped prevent any frame skips or stuttering during the recording. That made the capture reliable every single time I hit the save button.

I landed on the always-on setup, but it was purely based on a frustration I had with signal stability. When I first started prototyping this, I had constant concerns about intermittent drops during recording. The real difference for me came when I switched to a specific high-quality shielded HDMI cable. It solved all the random artifact issues I was seeing, which made the whole system feel reliable even while idling.

I'm curious if anyone has noticed how much ambient temperture affects the signal integrity, especally if the Pi is tucked away in an enclosed area. If thermal throttling starts creeping in, does that change how you view the buffer stability?

The biggest practical issue for me wasn't the power draw or the boot time, but where the footage lands. My old SD card capacity filled up way too fast when buffering high quality signal. I ended up ditching the card for a dedicated external USB SSD. Using the Pi's faster ports for the recording storage made managing the rolling buffer much smoother. It just made the whole process more robust and reliable for long sessions.