My son is trying (as I post this) a self-styled "casual strats any%" of SMO. i.e., he's pretty fast, knows a good handful of skips, but knows he's not pro-level or competetive so he's just doing it as fast as HE can. I love his initiative.

Pretty sure he'll make sub 4hr no problem, worth putting on the leaderboard for a first attempt! He happens to be recording it with a capture card. It'll have uninterrupted video and game audio (no other audio or video). Is that valid? I see in the SMO rules that "RTA timing is used" and "the timer cannot be paused at any point". We didn't put a timer on-screen at all for the recording. But it is going to be a single, unedited recording. The timing in the video will be 100% accurate to his run. Is that submittable?

Most games don't require having an on screen timer. Runs are manually retimed by moderators by checking the start and end frames of a video. RTA timing just means that the run is timed in real-time, instead of using an in game timer or time without loads.

The rules for super mario odyssey do not say anything about requiring an on screen timer, so I would submit the run.

I wish your son good luck with his future super mario odyssey speedruns!

That's what I was figuring, thanks for confirming!

He finished sub-2.5 hours. He's so proud!