Question / Help A possible dumb question!

[Crabby654]

So I noticed I've seen a lot of streams with options like, 360p,720p,720p+,1080p. I know that in order to have viewers change the resolution you need to be a partner on twitch but what is 720p+?

I have tried to look all over the place but I can't find any info on it.

- Is 720p+ and 720p the same?

- If not, how to do I go about using the 720p+ because in my eyes it looks almost as good as 1080p but better than 720p, maybe I am just insane.

 

[Haliinen]

The difference between 720p and 720p+ is that 720p is using less bandwidth, 720p+ uses the exact same settings the streamer has set in the encoder or something like that, same resolution, just a higher bitrate between the two.

 

[Crabby654]

Ahh alrighty thank you that makes much more sense to me now. So I take it there is no way to force OBS to do 720p+?

I'm debating between 720p and 1080p, my computer/bandwidth can handle both I am just not sure which to use at the moment. Had 10 people watching me play darksouls the other night and 1 person complained of lag.

 

[Haliinen]

What do you mean? Are you a twitch partner? If not, then the viewer is forced to watch your stream with the settings you have specified in the encoder no matter what. If you want to watch 720p but you're really short on bandwidth, well not that short if you're looking to view something in 720p but for a reason it starts to lag in 720p+ then go to 720p to see if the lag is gone. 720p is more than enough for streaming, I don't see why people want to stream in 1080p unless you're dabbling on the desktop only. Not to mention, outputting the stream in 1080p requires twice the CPU power from 720p, same with upping the fps from 30 to 60. Play around, maybe give a hint in the title that viewers with a poor connection may stay away from your stream.

 

[R1CH]

The difference between 720p and 720p+ is that 720p is using less bandwidth, 720p+ uses the exact same settings the streamer has set in the encoder or something like that, same resolution, just a higher bitrate between the two.

Actually the opposite is usually true, since the original stream can be encoded with high quality settings. The twitch transcodes want to run as fast as possible, so they usually sacrifice bitrate for quality. For example, our intro video during TSL 3 was 3mbps at 1080p but ballooned up to ~5mbps on the 720p twitch transcode. I believe they use CRF only for rate control, unless this has changed recently.

This whole topic only applies to partners though, if you aren't a partner your viewers always get the original quality stream that you are uploading. The + just indicates it's the original quality stream from the uploader and not a transcode.