Question / Help Questions regarding streaming from a smaller window

[Glockner]

Just curious what would be the best way to handle streaming a game that is running in a window smaller than my native resolution.

I don't currently have a monitor to push OBS and my chat to, so I'd like to run my game within a smaller window so I can fit these things onto my current monitor. While I could just set the game window to 720p it winds up being a little small on my 1080p monitor and I'd prefer to use something like 1600x900. I'm not sure if that's really a good idea though because if I want to downscale that to 720p it's only a half step, so I believe it would create more CPU work.

For the record this is the computer I'm streaming from:

i5-3570k
GeForce 660 Ti
8GB RAM
Samsung 840 SSD

Upload is just over 4Mbps.

Any setting suggestions until I can get a second monitor would be appreciated.

 

[Jack0r]

Well performance wise, its more work to scale more pixels, so scaling 1080p to 720p will use a bit more work than scaling 900p to 720p. So if you are fine with 1600x900, I would just give it a try.
Set OBS to 1600x900 and use the scaling options for 720p output.

 

[FerretBomb]

Actually, the downscaling impact is minimal (and I believe handled by the video card, as I was told by one of the Volunteers). And compared to the CPU savings you'll get on the encoding step (the REALLY heavy one) downscaling is DEFINITELY a good idea if CPU load is a concern.

If you are planning to get a second monitor, I would also highly recommend setting your OBS resolution to your monitor-native, stretching the source up to fill the workspace, then downscaling again to 720p. When it comes time to add that second monitor and push the chat to it, you won't have to go through and re-do ALL of your scenes that way.

Also, speaking subjectively, the end result looks better that way; I'd tried setting OBS res to a 'native' 720p and just scaling sources down in the viewport; stuff came out jaggy and kind of nasty, compared to stretching it up and letting the Lanczos filter scale it down a little more cleanly.

 

[Jack0r]

Well probably the blur you add by upscaling is not noticeable after scaling it down. Especially because its only a very slight upscale. But overall I would NEVER recommend anyone, in any situation to upscale/stretch a picture.

Of course a simple resize in the OBS window is not as good as the filtered downscale, but this is independent of you first scaling the picture or not. So unless you use 100+ scenes, I dunno if you really need to stretch your source before downscaling it.