Question / Help 720p Not as Sharp as 1080p

[Ranmza]

Hello fellow streamers, I'm having a "problem" with OBS when I stream at 720p.

For some reason, OBS isn't downscaling very well. For some reason OBS have some problems with some strong colors like red, purple-ish and pink-ish when it get downscale everything look pixalated.

I play my games at 1600x900 with my 1080p monitor and stream at 720p.

Here you guys can see what happen. Just put the video at 3:20, look at the red text and at the hearts, it's all pixalated:

http://www.twitch.tv/ranmzaplay/v/32812508

Now, if I stream at 1080p this doens't happen. Please ignore the droppedframes, my PC can't stream at 1080p:

http://www.twitch.tv/ranmzaplay/v/32813019

Everything is sharper.

I find it weird because some great streamers stream at 720p and this do not happen.

 

[Tymorafarr]

Downscaling quality isn't as good as the actual output resolution. If you want to stream with better quality at 720p, run your video games at 720p.

 

[Ranmza]

Downscaling quality isn't as good as the actual output resolution. If you want to stream with better quality at 720p, run your video games at 720p.

So it's better for me to run and stream at 720p instead of downscaling?

I'll make some tests.

 

[Ranmza]

So, yeah, no good. Playing at 720p and streaming at 720p the "problem" is still there for some reason.

 

[sam686]

The problem is one or more of: low bitrate, high frame rate, high motion, too much grass and trees, bright sun light reflection. 720p video does look somewhat better when looking away from bright sun light reflection.

A log file might be useful to show us possible problems.

Edit: one thing to add:
Video is compressed with reduced chroma/color resolution. 1280x720 only have a chroma of 640x360, making red text and red hearts look bad. Depending on game, there might have an option to change text color to white.

 

[Ranmza]

The problem is one or more of: low bitrate, high frame rate, high motion, too much grass and trees, bright sun light reflection. 720p video does look somewhat better when looking away from bright sun light reflection.

A log file might be useful to show us possible problems.

Edit: one thing to add:
Video is compressed with reduced chroma/color resolution. 1280x720 only have a chroma of 640x360, making red text and red hearts look bad. Depending on game, there might have an option to change text color to white.

Yeah, I'm watching Lirik right now playing The Forest and the HP Bar ingame has the same problem, all pixelated. It's definitely the chroma stuff.

 

[Cryonic]

I watch Lirik right now killing stuff at bitrates spiking aroung 4900, looks like he is using 4500kbps bitrate. And everything looks fine, at least what you can expect from 720p