Question / Help OBS streaming bitrate

H

huberp

New Member
Hi

I am new to OBS and have a question about how OBS deals with this scenario:
What happens to a video stream if I throttle the Output Streaming bitrate to something well below the required level as defined by Output Resolution x FPS? Does it do some automatic scaling, will there be quality issues or will the stream start to buffer?
Thanks for your feedback.

Kind regards
Phil
 
koala

koala

Active Member
Reducing bitrate means you remove more details from the video. The more you tune down the bitrate, the more blurry, pixelated and washed look the resulting video. Scaling, resolution and fps always stays the same unless you explicitly change these yourself. You can tune down bitrate till the video is just a bloody mess - technically, this isn't a problem at all, only visually.

Rules of thumb around fps, resolution and bitrate:
- halve the fps means halve the data, which has the same effect as doubling (2 times) the bitrate
- 2/3 the resolution (1920x1080 -> 1280x720) means halve the data, which has the same effect as doubling (2 times) the bitrate
- half the resolution (1920x1080 -> 960x540) means quarter the data, which has the same effect as four times the bitrate

For example, if you play your game with 1920x1080 60fps, it is recommended to stream this combination with bitrate 7000-8000. If your upload doesn't allow this much, reduce fps to 30 and you get away with bitrate 4000. If this isn't still enough, additionally reduce resolution to 1280x720 and get away with bitrate 2000-2500. The perceived quality stays the same.
 
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