Laptop 1600p trying to go to 1440p for YT videos but has black bars...

Youflatterme

New Member
Hello,

I have had this issue before but I solved it but no idea how. I am trying to play Ghost recon Breakpoint and I have my monitor set to it's native 2560x1600p. I have set that in OBS as my canvas resolution and for output, I use 2560x1440p. While in game I have it set to 1440p. In Nvidia control panel i have the resolution set to 2560x1600p wherever it asks for. I have tried to set to both FULL SCREEN and ASPECT RATIO and I still get black bars when I open up the video file. I used to have my laptop connected to my LG C2 tv and my canvas there was 3840x2160 and output was the same now (2560x1440). I just arrived in another country as well yesterday.

I'm beyond frustrated because I feel i've exhausted every option. I've googled this and have done all troubleshooting it suggests. I don't know what else to do. This is my first post on these forums because I am lost.

If more information is required please let me know. How can I get rid of these black bars?

Thank you!
 

koala

Active Member
Black bars will always appear if the aspect ratio of the video isn't the same as the aspect ratio of the screen. They are caused by screen areas containing pixels with one aspect ratio where there are none with a different aspect ratio.

A resolution of 2560x1600 is aspect ratio 16:10, which is a different aspect ratio than Youtube (16:9). So every video you see from Youtube gets small black bars top and bottom, because your aspect ratio is slightly taller than the Youtube ratio.

If you set your canvas to 2560x1600 and output 2560x1440 (aspect ratio 16:9), you squeeze your recorded video vertically, distorting it. If you watch it, you watch a video with a resolution of 2560x1440, which is a different ratio than your screen resolution (2560x1600), so you get black bars at the top and the bottom. The video will not unsqueeze, the media player don't know of this distortion.

If you upload that video to Youtube, it stays at 2560x1440, squeezed, and everybody with a monitor aspect ratio 16:9 will see it fullscreen but squeezed. But if you watch it on your 16:10 aspect ratio monitor, you will see it with black bars - your monitor is a different aspect ratio after all. You have a different viewing experience than people with a 16:9 monitor.

What you should do:
While recording with OBS, set the Windows desktop resolution to 2560x1440 and set the game to this resolution as well. Use canvas and output resolution to 2560x1440 as well. This way the whole video production chain on your side is 2560x1440 and you will get neither distortion nor black bars. You will have a small unaccessible part of the screen at the top and bottom, since there are pixels where for a 16:9 aspect ratio display there are none, but your video will look ok for all the people with a display of 16:9, which are probably 90% of all displays.

Also see:
 
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