OBS video quality drops when finishing recording

[Amirsol55]

I am new to using OBS and having troubles maintaining video quality after recoding is done. When I look at the preview the quality looks fine but once it's saved wow, it's shocking....there is even lag sometimes

I make videos on YouTube using OBS and connect to my iPhone 15 wireless. I use a MacBook Air 2020 with M1 chip.

I mainly react to YouTube videos and do podcasts.

Not sure if the video quality is bad because Im using an iPhone or what I need to do to improve this. Maybe its the settings I have OBS configured to, any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[AaronD]

If the preview is good, then everything up to that point is also good. All that remains after that is the encoder.

Video encoding takes a LOT of effort! The video standards are designed to make it plumb easy to decode, so those devices can be cheap and stupid and sold accordingly en masse, which moves most of the required complexity to the encoding side, which is what you're dealing with. That's why standalone GPU's often have video encoders built in, that handle that specific job in a dedicated section of silicon that does nothing else anyway, and the i-series of Intel CPU's have that too.

If you don't have a hardware video encoder, then you have to do it in software on the CPU, which puts a massive additional load on that CPU. If it can't keep up, then the output stream becomes terrible, and that's what goes to the internet and/or recording file. What's your total system load while your rig is running?

Also, even if it technically *can* keep up on paper, and maybe it even *does* at first; laptops in general, and especially the thin and light ones, don't have the cooling systems to do that indefinitely. So they overheat and throttle back, and then they can't keep up anymore. External fans and cooling pads might help *some*, but they can't do enough.
They're not meant for continuous loads at all, like media *production* is, but to load a webpage or an app quickly, and then sit and do nothing while the user looks at it and the machine slowly cools off again.

If you MUST use a laptop, look at the Mobile Workstation class of machines. They're thick and heavy, because they have an actual cooling system! *That* is what allows them to stream and record high-quality video for more than just a few minutes.

 

[Amirsol55]

If the preview is good, then everything up to that point is also good. All that remains after that is the encoder.

Video encoding takes a LOT of effort! The video standards are designed to make it plumb easy to decode, so those devices can be cheap and stupid and sold accordingly en masse, which moves most of the required complexity to the encoding side, which is what you're dealing with. That's why standalone GPU's often have video encoders built in, that handle that specific job in a dedicated section of silicon that does nothing else anyway, and the i-series of Intel CPU's have that too.

If you don't have a hardware video encoder, then you have to do it in software on the CPU, which puts a massive additional load on that CPU. If it can't keep up, then the output stream becomes terrible, and that's what goes to the internet and/or recording file. What's your total system load while your rig is running?

Also, even if it technically *can* keep up on paper, and maybe it even *does* at first; laptops in general, and especially the thin and light ones, don't have the cooling systems to do that indefinitely. So they overheat and throttle back, and then they can't keep up anymore. External fans and cooling pads might help *some*, but they can't do enough.
They're not meant for continuous loads at all, like media *production* is, but to load a webpage or an app quickly, and then sit and do nothing while the user looks at it and the machine slowly cools off again.

If you MUST use a laptop, look at the Mobile Workstation class of machines. They're thick and heavy, because they have an actual cooling system! *That* is what allows them to stream and record high-quality video for more than just a few minutes.

This makes sense in terms of it running on my MacBook Air, I had a feeling its just not powerful enough as most people use actual Mac machines.

The CPU is around 25% when running, I did test a recording and the quality didnt seem majorly bad but I just want to produce high quality videos so maybe I need to invest into something more powerful.

This is an example of just my phone by itself : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAcfIniuTH8&t=12s
This is my most recent video and it looks so laggy but I have changed the settings since and it hasn't been so bad:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uessp80FNYs&t=478s