So now what I am trying to do is get individual outputs from Voicemeeter to expose themselves in Mirillis Action! (or other recording programs). That way I can record the voiceover mic into a separate track from the Sonar (and system) audio. Currently I can only tap one virtual output from VM in Mirillis. That has both the mic and Sonar output mixed together and they get recorded on one track in the Action! video. Action! can record these separately IF it is able to access two separate outs (one for the mic and one for the system sounds). Those two audio files then need to be stripped from the vid to be accessible as individual tracks but that's another problem I'm working on.
 
So far the two possible solutions I've concocted but have not tested yet is to see if the "Composite" function on the Virtual output bus in Voicemeeter will separate the mic input and the Sonar input into their own channels. Then it just becomes a matter of whether doing this will expose those separate channels inside Action! audio preferences.
 
I'm not so confident that will be the case.
 
The other option might be the Virtual Cable program on the VBaudio site (same guy(s) who make Voicemeeter). Perhaps if I install that and select it as a hardware output option in Voicemeeter output section THAT will expose itself to Action!
 
Then it's a matter of figuring out how to send the Mic signal to the Virtual cable and Sonar to the Main virtual outs... which may or may not work.
 
Soooo... if anyone has set something like this up before and can offer suggestions that'd be great.
 
I'm starting to think though maybe this level of routing might require their paid software (Banana).
 
Aside from that everything is working well and I've got some other wacky schemes I can try too that are much more elaborate but I would like to avoid if I can.
 
One off thing though... for some reason in my video recordings the meters in Sonar are grey instead of green. They flash green for a second if I scroll around while recording but mostly show up grey. All the other colors are fine. Weird. I tried all the video quality/speed settings and nothing helped. Not a huge deal but yanno... kind of a drag.
 
Cheers.

BeepsterSo far the two possible solutions I've concocted but have not tested yet is to see if the "Composite" function on the Virtual output bus in Voicemeeter will separate the mic input and the Sonar input into their own channels.

yes, sure, it's the best option if recording with an ASIO DAW. the USE CASE #3 in the Voicemeeter User Manual explain how to record the 3 inputs on separates stereo tracks with Reaper, but i guess it's the same principle with Sonar.
 
In Voicemeeter Banana, the Composite mode can be user defined (in the system settings dialog box). It is possible to set the Voicemeeter Input channel you want to have in the possible 8 output channels of the BUS.
 
 

vburel

BeepsterSo far the two possible solutions I've concocted but have not tested yet is to see if the "Composite" function on the Virtual output bus in Voicemeeter will separate the mic input and the Sonar input into their own channels.

yes, sure, it's the best option if recording with an ASIO DAW. the USE CASE #3 in the Voicemeeter User Manual explain how to record the 3 inputs on separates stereo tracks with Reaper, but i guess it's the same principle with Sonar.
 
In Voicemeeter Banana, the Composite mode can be user defined (in the system settings dialog box). It is possible to set the Voicemeeter Input channel you want to have in the possible 8 output channels of the BUS.
 
 

Cool. Not sure how I missed that one in the manual. Thing is Mirillis Action! so far is only showing one option for Voicemeeter in both the Mic and output options (it is also only showing one option for my Scarlett interface as well).
 
So this may be a limitation in Action! BUT I'll try the composite button to see if it somehow routes it automatically.
 
Otherwise maybe using the Virtual Cable can get the mic into the second video channel. I'm assuming the Virtual Cable will show up as another input option in Action!.
 
Thanks for your help (and the program). I'll update this thread as I progress.
 
 
Cheers.
 
Edit: and just so it's clear I'm not trying to record the output of Voicemeeter into Sonar. I am trying to record it into Mirillis Action!'s two audio tracks. I want Sonar playback and system sounds on one of the video audio tracks and my live mic input (voiceover) on the other video audio track. Action! just does not seem to allow for choosing specific channels. Just the entire sound device.
 
Maybe Banana would clear that up. Otherwise I may have to bring in another program to record the live mic like Audacity.

Hmm... yanno maybe I need to set Voicemeeter as Default Communication Device as well. Like maybe Mirrilis expects to receive the Communication Device to be the source for the dual audio track recording.
 
I'm finding this video to be helpful on understanding Voicemeeter...
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb7JtF8E85U
 
It's looong but so far quite thorough.

Okay, so I tried out a bunch of stuff to get the mic in the second audio track in Mirrilis and nothing worked. It either resulted in what I've been currently getting which is either all audio on one of the two audio tracks (while the other remained silent) or no audio at all. I think this must be a limitation of Action! and the fact it does not allow you to choose separate input channels. Just bulk devices. Disappointing.
 
I am of course able to see the multiple output channels from Voicemeeter in Sonar though so they are indeed there.
 
The only option I have not tried yet is downloading the Virtual Cable and setting it up as an extra source for Mirillis to latch onto. I cannot yet visualize how that would work so I'll just keep reading.
 
However I may just try tapping the Voicemeeter outputs in a second audio recorder (something light like Audacity). I can see this getting a little hard on the system though.

Tenacity!!
 
It occurred to me that one of the hurdles we have may be the "DAW in the equation," since YouTube is literally flooded with screen cap videos from the gaming community... and I would bet most of them are using no DAW, and a USB microphone.
 
I am pretty sure videos (when baked) typically have only one video track and audio track, although editing programs allow more tracks for fades/manipulations, etc. The thing you were seeing is your editor may default to baking "Track 1" unless told otherwise, so if Track 1 is empty, Track 2 is unseen.
 
With the gaming community, I also doubt most of these kids are this tenacious, so might be worth poking around there to see what they use. The advantage of a DAW is you can record a video, then edit that audio track after the fact (most of these kids do not edit anything AFAICT), and most video editors have a "razor" and "fade" tool for both audio/video. With a real interface, you can let the video program capture "Windows" stuff, and run SONAR on all other audio tracks. This also would ease syncing issues, as you can align SONAR's capture to the "video audio" and scrap the screen cap audio in the final assembly.
 
I have never used "Mirrilis Action" and never seen it recommended, so looking at other options might save you grief. Craig mentioned one but cannot recall the name offhand, and he has way more video under his belt than I.
 
I also tend to worry for the "next stage" (editing the video), since that one can get even more grueling. Adobe must make a load of money from "training" crap, because Premiere Pro doesn't default to anything that works, but has every friggin' codec under the sun in it! Just a "simple export" in that program is painful until you google/youtube settings to use.
 
You might benefit from starting another thread asking "What is the most efficient method you use for screen capture videos?"

I actually got it all sorted (in my other thread... just too brainfried to fully update here with steps) BUT the impression I am getting is that when other people make these vids they don't use ASIO. So that allows two hardware devices to run at the same time.
 
Like all the vids I see talk about having the soundcard dealing with the system/game/program sounds and then they have a USB mic or external soundcard for the voiceover.
 
With WDM or MME that seems to be okay. Obviously I want to use ASIO for Sonar because it turns into a pile of poop otherwise (but with Win10 that may have changed with the audio improvements... I am of course still on 7 and all my projects are in ASIO and switching driver modes just broke EVERYTHING).
 
What Mirillis seems to be expecting is two interfaces. It doesn't expose individual ins/outs for hardware or virtual i/o. All it shows is the device and I guess just snags the first output. So a soundcard and a USB mic could be selected seperately in the two options (for mic and sys sounds). Running through the same device, even with Voicemeeter, just doeasn't work and everything gets jammed into one track no matter what.
 
The solution I've cooked up is to simply record the "composite" outputs from Voicemeeter into Reaper. VM with Composite enabled on the virtual output bus outputs the hardware inputs (VM 1 and 2) and the Virtual Input on their own stereo channels AND another stereo channel that outputs everything as usual.
 
In Reaper I just set up a couple of tracks to accept the feeds from the mic bus and the virtual bus and bingo bango... I get the system sounds separate from the mic sound. I could also set up another two tracks and snag the MAIN bus (with everything) and the other hardware input channel (which I am not currently using but I could do something like hook a guitar up to it through my Scarlett or something).
 
In Mirillis Action! I just let it record the first Voicemeeter bus (the main that crams everything together). I can use that as kind of a "bed track" to line up the tracks from Reaper to when I get to the editing stage.
 
Really wacky stuff but it's workin'.
 
Tenacity indeed.
 
lulzity!!!
 
Cheers, dude.
 
PS: The reason I went with Mirillis Action! is because it apparently has the lowest resource consumption with the best screencast quality. It's only $30 too.
 
Everything else (including Hypercam which is what Craig said he uses) has something or other wrong with it (Hypercam is now apparently a malware farm... ugh). None support ASIO (or so I've been gleaning).
 
The BEST of the best though and the one the Baker's apparently use is Camtasia... but that's $300 so that's out of my price range. It however also does editing and a bunch of other crap. Might even support ASIO.

Okay... I updated the OP with this but I have made all sorts of discoveries and progress. All pretty cool. For now I just updated about the sale on Action! which I totally lucked out on by fluke. Here's the edit I made to the OP (I'll update the thread later on with some of my discoveries once I can sort it all out in my pea brain)...
 
=================================
 
Edit November 28 2015 regarding Mirillis sale: Well that was a spot of luck (a bit of a rarity in my world but I guess this was meant to be). This whole time I had been working with the demo version of Mirillis Action! to make absolutely sure it would do what I wanted to. I figured out that it would in the past couple days and just went to make it final. Lo and behold they JUST put it on sale. Normal price is $30 USD and they dropped it to $20 USD. Wicked! So my slothful, paranoid, OCD behavior saved me a few bucks.
 
The ONLY real problem the program exhibits seems to be that my Sonar level meters show up gray in the vids (instead of bright green). You can still totally see the meters pumping away but they just show up gray. This does not seem to be the case when recording other audio programs so it could just be the way Sonar renders the color of the meters. Still weird but not a huge deal for me.
 
I've been able to get my audio stuff going, the vid quality is good and it's not raping my system resources (Action! is meant for recording intense game stuff and supposedly has the least system resource consumption of all the screen recorders which I why I chose it for recording my audio stuff).
 
So thought I'd update with that for those who have been watching/interested in the program.