Question / Help Is the preview an accurate representation of what the viewer sees?

[ashxaffliction]

I just upgraded from OBS to OBS Studio today, and so far I'm enjoying it more than the classic version. The only thing I can't seem to figure out is how accurate the preview is. Let me give an example.

Trying to stream Battlefield 1 using classic OBS just wasn't going to happen. The preview window while using the "Preview Stream" function was noticeable choppy and my CPU was basically stuck at 100% usage, rarely dropping below 95%. OBS Studio doesn't seem to have this function, and I doubt it would encode the preview if it wasn't actually streaming. I tried putting ?bandwidthtest=true to the end of my stream key, since I stream to Twitch, but I'm not sure if it actually encodes at this point or if it's only testing bandwidth between my computer and Twitch servers. Regardless, while streaming with that stream key, my CPU was still pinned, but the preview was extremely smooth, almost as much as my gameplay. I'm using roughly the same settings and this is why I'm not sure if it's accurate or not.

Is there anything wrong with my testing methodology? Does OBS Studio have any sort of plugin that would grant me the old "Preview Stream" function? Is what the preview shows actually accurate when compared to what the viewer would experience?

 

[R1CH]

The preview will never match what the viewer sees, since it is before encoding and never drops frames (network issues etc). To get an accurate preview of what viewers will see you should record with your desired settings then look at the recording.

 

[Harold]

Set your settings - output to simple mode, use the stream encoder for recording and do a test record.

And Post your OBS log too.

 

[ashxaffliction]

The preview will never match what the viewer sees, since it is before encoding and never drops frames (network issues etc). To get an accurate preview of what viewers will see you should record with your desired settings then look at the recording.

I know it's not necessarily a perfect representation of what the viewer sees, but I'm talking about things like the framerate specifically. Is the framerate I see in the preview window an accurate representation of what the viewer would see, barring any network issues?