Question / Help Correct Settings For 'Video Capture Device'?

[BlockAboots]

When using a capture card with OBS and in the Property settings for the Video Capture Device, is it best practice to leave the settings as 'Device Default' or change to 'Custom' and add in a set 'Resolution',' FPS' and 'Video Format' manually?

 

[koala]

It's as with every default setting in every app: best practice is keeping defaults, if the defaults result in desired behavior. Only if you want a different result, and changing a default to some other setting produces the desired result, change the default.

And if you changed some setting but it seems nothing changed from it, revert the setting back to the default before you try to change another setting. This avoids adverse effects, because every time you changed a setting, you changed the behavior of the app, even if you don't observe any change in behavior. To avoid a configuration mess, try hard to leave everything at default and only change settings you absolutely must.
Always try find the minimum amount of configuration changes to produce the desired app behavior.

 

[Radioarev]

I have saw that changing from the DEVICE DEFAULT to 1280 X 720 for example, its giving better result :)

 

[FerretBomb]

I have saw that changing from the DEVICE DEFAULT to 1280 X 720 for example, its giving better result :)

The problem is, if you put in a resolution+framerate+color mode+??? other setting combo that the device doesn't support, it just won't work. And won't tell you what's wrong. So you get to guess a bunch and try to find a combination that works, which can be super confusing for newbies (especially as few understand color sampling and how it relates to bandwidth needs with their device).

Device Default is generally safe... as it uses the device's defaults. It should never error out and fail to start up the capture device, on the Device Default setting.
Most reasonable-quality devices also auto-default to delivering whatever their source input's settings are, so should give you the best that the device can deliver, given the video source being piped into the device. Unless you have something either really cheap (with lazy firmware), or really expensive (where the user is expected to already know what they're doing, and specify exactly what they want).