Question / Help Dual PC Streaming, Stream Resolution and Black Bars

[Cavar]

Hey,

So, my gaming PC has a 37" monitor with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 (16:10) and I'm sending the video to a 2nd PC with an Avermedia Live Gamer HD, which then connects to a 24" monitor with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 (16:9).

OBS video settings are...

Video Adapter: AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series
Base Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Resolution Downscale: 1.50 (1280 x 720)
Filter: Bilinear
FPS: 30

My problem is that when I stream I see black bars to the right an left of the image, which I could understand if I were streaming a 16:10 resolution, but don't my settings mean I am streaming in a 16:9 resolution?

Also, I have to set my game source to "Stretch image to screen", otherwise a good portion of my game gets cut off on the right and left.

Running with this setup I'm getting a good quality stream, 0 drops and the log looks good, but the UI and text is a little hard to see compared to other streamers playing the same game.

How can I get rid of those black bars and make my stream fill more of the player window? Let me know if you need more info.

Btw, I read this post, which is why I configured OBS the way I did.

https://obsproject.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2703

 

[Jack0r]

Please explain this part:
resolution of 2560 x 1600 (16:10) and I'm sending the video to a 2nd PC with an Avermedia Live Gamer HD, which then connects to a 24" monitor with a resolution of 1920 x 1080

A Live Gamer HD cannot input 2560x1600 as far as I know, but your input is definitely 16:10 if you start with 2560x1600 which should give you small borders on top and bottom in obs (if obs is set to 16:9). So how are you even capturing the Live Gamer HD footage? You can normally add it to OBS as a video capture device.
I am just confused :D but maybe you can explain it a bit more.

 

[Cavar]

I mean my main monitor is 2560 x 1600. My video card has 2 DVI outputs. 1 goes to the 2560 x 1600 monitor, the other goes into the HDMI in on the Live Gamer, then the Live Gamer HDMI output is connected to the 2nd monitor, which has a resolution of 1920 x 1080.

The only adapter I see in OBS is the main PC video card.

Should I have installed OBS onto the 2nd PC instead? If I did, then I would assume OBS would show the capture card as the video adapter?

Btw, the HDMI out on the Live Gamer is just acting as a pass-through video signal.

Sorry, this is all new to me :)

 

[dodgepong]

Wait...you're trying to use a 2-PC setup, but you're running OBS on the gaming PC? What on earth...you can't just plug your output into a capture card and think that that will take the load off your gaming PC.

The idea of a 2-PC setup is that you run the game on one PC and OBS on the other, and capture the video output of the gaming PC with the capture card, and use that as input into OBS. Jack0r is right, the Live Gamer HD can't accept signals above 1920x1080. so you're going to have a hard time capturing 2560x1600 video with that capture card.

 

[Cavar]

Yeah, I figured I wasn't understanding something, but it was obvious after I posted earlier.

As for not capturing 2560x1600 can't I downscale to something closer to 1280x720p?

 

[dodgepong]

The problem is that, if you want to play at 2560x1600, you have to output to both your monitor and the capture card at that resolution. You'd have to either get a capture card that can support that high of a resolution (which will cost somewhere around $1500 most likely), or find a way to downscale the resolution before you send it into the capture card.

The only way I know how to downscale it (and it's kind of hacky and isn't perfect) is to run OBS on the gaming computer (in addition to the streaming computer) and instead of streaming with OBS on the gaming computer, just run OBS in preview mode, disable encoding during preview in Advanced settings, set the gaming OBS to a resolution of 1920x1080, capture the game, and enable OBS's projector mode to output the game capture to the monitor feed that will go to the capture card.

 

[Cavar]

Ok, thanks for the info.