Question / Help OBS Screen Recording Quality way worse than Quicktime's quality. Why?

[aristotelis27]

Hey everybody!

I need your help in order to find the correct settings for my OBS recordings. I want 1080p quality when I record my screen. I have tried many different settings and options, but I do not know what I am doing wrong and I can not get 1080p quality when I capture my screen. I think that the bitrate is WAY TOO HIGH (40000kbps), but still can not get great quality. How is it possible that the default screen recording feature of QuickTime is giving me perfect quality but not with OBS?

Here is how my screen recording looks when I capture with OBS:

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And this is how it looks when using QuickTime:

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My OBS settings:

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And my iMac Specs:

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Default resolution of canvas and output is 1920x1080 at 60fps.

If you still need anything related to settings, please let me know, so I can attach a screenshot.

Thank you in advance!

 

[Narcogen]

Include a log file if you have a problem: here's how

To upload a log file, go to the Help menu -> Log Files -> Upload current/last log file. The current log file is for the currently active running session. The last log file is for the last time you ran the program. We recommend always including it just in case.

obsproject.com

Open OBS. Start an output session (streaming or recording). Observe your issue. Stop the output session. Upload the Current log without quitting OBS.

1080p is almost certainly not the native resolution of your 5k iMac. Your quality reduction is a result of scaling from 5K down to 1080p.

 

[Naitsirk]

Include a log file if you have a problem: here's how

To upload a log file, go to the Help menu -> Log Files -> Upload current/last log file. The current log file is for the currently active running session. The last log file is for the last time you ran the program. We recommend always including it just in case.

obsproject.com

Open OBS. Start an output session (streaming or recording). Observe your issue. Stop the output session. Upload the Current log without quitting OBS.

1080p is almost certainly not the native resolution of your 5k iMac. Your quality reduction is a result of scaling from 5K down to 1080p.

I'm in exactly the same situation. If I do a screen recording using Quicktime it is way better quality than OBS even when OBS wizard optimises the software to my system. I realise video is supremely complex and just a simple setting can make a huge difference, but there's very little out there in the way of help to optimise for maximum screen capture quality. I use quite detailed software and I need to be able to maintain a high resolution, especially so when zooming in on sections of the software.

Any help would be hugely appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Narcogen]

QuickTime is likely using your GPU for encoding.

If you haven't set OBS to use the Apple VT Hardware Encoder in advanced settings, it will be using your CPU for encoding, which will either increase load or decrease quality compared to QuickTime, depending on your specific settings and the capability of your hardware.

OBS performs less well on the same hardware in MacOS and has fewer features. If you're not live streaming, if you're not using the compositing/switching features of OBS, you'll always get better quality and performance from QuickTime recording if all you're doing is recording for editing later in another program. OBS is not, purely speaking, a screen recorder. It's a compositor and switcher that livestreams; recording is a side effect of those capabilities. If you aren't using them, OBS is likely not the best tool to use.

If you need UI elements in your recordings, the best for OBS is to set your canvas and output resolution to be the same as your native resolution. However, many Macs do not have GPUs strong enough to run OBS in this configuration, and for those, a pure screen recorder like QuickTime Player or ScreenFlow may be more appropriate.