Question / Help Iphone Recording with Macbook Pro

[TeoGuitarrist]

Hi guys, I'm new to the forum and I have this topic to discuss, I need to record my Iphone screen with OBS for a YouTube channel about a mobile game, I've been done many researches and tests and those are my questions so far:

- Which resolution to select in the (Base Canvas Resolution) and (Output Scaled Resolution)? I Think that Iphone8 display is 1280x720 but the problem is that I want a final video that is in 1080 for youtube. Should I "upscale" to 1080 or this will cause lag or quality loss?
- Which encoding and bit rate do u suggest for the best results? Take in count that I will play on my Iphone so the Mac will be running just OBS for the recording.
- Should I push for 60fps? Does it worth for a mobile game?
If u have other suggestions for this particular case I will really appreciate.
Basically my goal is to reach a final mp4 file (to edit and upload on YT) at 1080p with the full screen game recorded and my little cam box (graphical side is already ok) with the best quality/smoothness possibile.

Thks in advance for the reply

P.S the macbook is a 13 inch retina 2015 with 2,7c Ghz i5 and 8gb ram, graphic is Intel Iris 6100 1536MB
P.P.S for the audio I capture the Iphone sound via IShowU and quicktime and my voice is recorded separately with reaper.

Matteo

 

[Narcogen]

Upscaling will soften the image. You might compensate with a sharpen filter, but broadcasting at native resolution is nearly always best.

Don't record to MP4 directly. Record to MKV and remux.

No idea about mobile gaming, unfortunately, so I don't know if mobile games generally run at 60fps. As a general rule, I'd say go for either 720p60 or 1080p30, and if 1080p30 requires upscaling, maybe think twice about it. A 720p60 stream that a user full screens on their end is not going to look worse than a 1080p30 stream that you've upscaled on your end, all other things being equal.

Also if you're not streaming, there's no reason not to leave the upscaling to your final output phase-- record native resolution and upscale with your final render.

YouTube's suggested bitrate chart for uploaded videos is here:

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

 

[TeoGuitarrist]

Upscaling will soften the image. You might compensate with a sharpen filter, but broadcasting at native resolution is nearly always best.

Don't record to MP4 directly. Record to MKV and remux.

No idea about mobile gaming, unfortunately, so I don't know if mobile games generally run at 60fps. As a general rule, I'd say go for either 720p60 or 1080p30, and if 1080p30 requires upscaling, maybe think twice about it. A 720p60 stream that a user full screens on their end is not going to look worse than a 1080p30 stream that you've upscaled on your end, all other things being equal.

Also if you're not streaming, there's no reason not to leave the upscaling to your final output phase-- record native resolution and upscale with your final render.

YouTube's suggested bitrate chart for uploaded videos is here:

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

Thks very much, the problem is that the native res is 720 (recording the game played on Iphone8) and when I try to record at 60fps(with or without upscaling at 1080) i run into the "encoding error" and the final output is lagging. Even if I stay at 30fps but upscaling at 1080, the final output is also lagging. The only configuration that I've tried and looks fluid as output is 720 to 720 (no upscaling) and 30fps, but I'm not very excited about quality. Seems odd to me that with Iphone 8 and a 2017 macbook pro I can't record a mobile game (that doesn't use mac CPU to run) at 60fps.

 

[kinngh]

What I do for gameplay and my apps (I am an iOS / macOS developer) is I open record using combination of QuickTime and OBS.
1. Connect your device to your laptop with a cable, open QuickTime > New Movie Recording and select your iOS device. Turn up the volume in QuickTime to enable voice on your laptop.
2. Open OBS on a 1920x1080 canvas, select a new Display Capture and crop the source to your QuickTime window. I avoid window capture because it lags on my MacBook Pro (15", i7 2.6GHz, 16GB, 2GB+1.5GB). I also record on QuickTime just so I can have a native, hi-res capture available but that's optional.
3. Use an audio routing app like Loopback or Soundflower to capture audio from QuickTime to OBS.
4. Record / Stream.

Also, since you're capturing in 1920x1080, you're going to have a lot of blank space in the canvas. Use that as an opportunity to place your face cam, chat, alerts, etc or just add in a background.

 

[TeoGuitarrist]

Ok perfect, thks for the advice! I used to configure OBS using Iphone as direct media source, it works fine but the resolution is not 1080p.
Can I use your QT method without having a second monitor? Cause I know many people uses 2 monitors, one for OBS and the 2nd one to capture quicktime video and the game to record.

 

[Kasey02]

What I do for gameplay and my apps (I am an iOS / macOS developer) is I open record using combination of QuickTime and OBS.
1. Connect your device to your laptop with a cable, open QuickTime > New Movie Recording and select your iOS device. Turn up the volume in QuickTime to enable voice on your laptop.
2. Open OBS on a 1920x1080 canvas, select a new Display Capture and crop the source to your QuickTime window. I avoid window capture because it lags on my MacBook Pro (15", i7 2.6GHz, 16GB, 2GB+1.5GB). I also record on QuickTime just so I can have a native, hi-res capture available but that's optional.
3. Use an audio routing app like Loopback or Soundflower to capture audio from QuickTime to OBS.
4. Record / Stream.

Also, since you're capturing in 1920x1080, you're going to have a lot of blank space in the canvas. Use that as an opportunity to place your face cam, chat, alerts, etc or just add in a background.

Thank you from my side too. It helped me to get the combination of OBS and QuickTime.

 

[TeoGuitarrist]

The problem for me (I've tried the 1080p thing with OBS +QT), but the same configuration (bitrate, codec ecc...) that I use in 720 with Iphone as source, makes things lagging.... I get the error of codec when I start recording (even at 30 fps) Is it possible that my macbook pro isn't able to manage 1080p recording? Seems odd to me....