Question / Help How do I record in a different resolution than my stream?

[RAZR31]

i7 6700k OC to 4.6 GHz
Windows 10 Pro (All updates as of 1/4/2017)
GTX 980ti with manual OC
32 GB of 3000 MGhz RAM
OBS Studio 64-bit
I game at 1440p on my main monitor but use OBS's game capture mode, not monitor capture

How do I record in a different resolution than my stream? I've noticed that there are two separate places within the settings to select if you want to rescale your base input: Settings>Output>Streaming Tab>Rescale Output, and Settings>Video>Output (Scaled) Resolution.

I record all of my streams (Twitch) but I would like my recordings to remain at their native 1440p and not the 720p that I send to the Twitch servers. But no matter what I do I can't seem to get a recording at 1440p unless I was to also stream at 1440p, which is not going to happen.


UPDATE: UPDATE: UPDATE: UPDATE:
I figured it out! For those who want to know how to do this I will explain and post pictures. They are attached below as well.

Under Settings>Video, set your Base Resolution to whatever your source is in or what you want it to be, then set your Output Resolution to the same thing as your Base. Select your prefered Downscale Filter and FPS.

Then go to Settings>Output>Streaming Tab. Make sure you have 'Advanced' selected in the dropdown Output Mode menu at the top of the window and not 'Standard'. Now select your prefered encoder and then select 'Rescale Output' and choose what resolution will be sent to the streaming service. Then set the rest of the options you need for your streaming setup.

Finally, go to Settings>Output>Recording Tab. In the dropdown menu for Encoder, DO NOT select '(Use stream encoder)'. Select another option. I chose NVENC H.264 simply because nothing breaks when I use it so I don't want to risk it and try something else. Once you do that, you should now have another 'Rescale Output' dropdown menu like you did when you were on the Streaming tab. Select your prefered resolution to record in, set your bitrate, and change any other settings that you need to. (I changed my bitrate and left everything else alone).

This setup will allow you to Stream and Record at two different resolutions. I'm not exactly sure how much of a strain this will put on your CPU but it works.

If you have anything to add or find something better, please comment down below.

 

[Fish Gaming]

Thank you so much for this!!! I do have one issue that maybe you have figured out already. Most charts I see that show what you can stream to show that I should drop my frames to 30 but if I want my recordings to be at 60 frames is there a way to do this? If not from your time recording is there a noticeable difference between 30 and 60 frames in terms of quality that you can see?

 

[R1CH]

You can avoid one of the rescales by downscaling to the highest resolution you want to stream / record at in the Video tab.

 

[Fish Gaming]

So you're saying I could downscale the overall resolution to keep from down scaling the frames?

 

[koala]

The OP is dealing with 3 resolutions:

- 2560x1440, the display resolution he is playing his game
- 1920x1080, the recording
- 1280x720, the stream

To get the recording and stream resolution, he entered the desired resolutions in the respective encoder configuration. This way, OBS scales the video to the desired resolutions. This is ok, this works. But rescaling with both encoders is very resource intensive. There is another rescaling setting in Settings->Video->Output resolution that takes place on the GPU and is free if it comes to system resource usage that should be used.

So, to use system resources optimal, adjust the settings slightly:

- keep Settings->Video->Base (canvas) resolution at 2560x1440
- set Settings->Video->Output resolution to 1920x1080. This rescaling takes place on the GPU and uses no system resources.
- don't set an explicit output resolution in your recording settings. This way, the output resolution from above is inherited. This uses no system resources.
- keep setting an output resolution of 1280x720 in your streaming settings. This will rescale the 1920x1080 from the output to the stream 1280x720.

This way, you're rescaling only one time with the CPU instead of two times. Additionally, much less video data has to be copied from the GPU frame buffers.
Less CPU and overall system resource demand. The quality is the same.