Questions about downscaling 1440p source to 720p to avoid blocking, as part of a larger (~900p) canvas

[WarMom]

Sorry if the title's kinda word salad; I'm trying to express an idea for a niche scenario that I probably misunderstand in some way or another. Here's where I'm coming from:

- As far as I know, it's recommended that your base / canvas be the same resolution as your main monitor, though this might be outdated. If I recall correctly it's just more efficient on GPU resources or something.
- I'm quite sure I've read somewhere there if the resolution of an element in your scene is a number that equally divides into its original resolution, you'll see a reduction in blocking and other artifacting; for example, 1440p gameplay source which is resized to 720p. I'm going to be playing at 1440p soon.
- I kinda like stream layouts like this that don't obsure the game itself and instead use the extra screen real estate for camera, chat, links, other information and it's what I think I'd go for (the layout isn't me; if you're curious the streamer is called Clemps).

With all that in mind I kind of had the idea to run a stream at 900p, with my 1440p game footage taking up 720p of the screen so (theoretically) it would downscale evenly, and the remainder of the screen gets used for camera, chat, other elements with minimal blocking of the game itself.

So uh...there's got to be some gaping hole in this plan, right, something absolutely crucial I've overlooked? Difficulties with having a 1080p canvas that gets scaled to a 900p output? Maybe the 'downscaling a source to half of its original input reduces blocking' is entirely incorrect, or only works if it takes up an entire 720p canvas?

See what I mean with 'niche scenario that I probably misunderstand in some way or another'? I'd love to just have this spelled out by people who are more experienced with OBS than I am.

 

[Patrick Ewalt]

I mean it sounds correct, I don't think the scaling = blocking thing is too much a factor, I've not experienced it when scaling in funky ways, just normal funky scaling problems like aliasing or weird edges on things sometimes. That being said it sounds like a good plan, really just make sure you have your encoding setup as optimally as possible to really avoid any "blocking" or bad artifacting and things on stream, should look like on screen/preview.

I almost never scale to be honest, anymore that is, I used to when I had to but I don't recall any issues. I would suggest, just go for it and try it out! :)

Maybe someone else that does a lot more canvas/output scaling can weigh in?

-Spikeypup / Patrick

 

[qhobbes]

It may look blocky when played back full screen or upscaled at all, depends on how the player/stream provider handles the 900.

 

[Deleted member 121471]

If you really want to use that sort of layout, you're better off selecting 1080p output and the smaller game capture frame at 720p, since you should be saving a fair chunk of bitrate by using what seems like a fairly static overlay over a significant part of the frame.

For those watching streams in fullscreen 1080p, they won't deal with odd video player upscaling and even the 720p game capture portion of the frame will be displayed correctly. How much of this is even meaningful depends on how pedantic they are.

However, if you ask viewers, most seem to keep chat open and Twitch uses really weird resolutions in that case, 754p or 898p in theatre mode, on a 1080p monitor, which is why I assume 900p is so popular, being so close to theatre mode resolution.

Honestly, I wouldn't worry that much about it cuz there are so many variables to cover.