Question / Help Record Video in 4k Or 1080p?

[Hellion]

Hi, forgive me if this isn't the correct section of the forum to post this...

I'm currently using OBS for recording videos that I then upload to YouTube. I've recently bought a 4k Brio webcam (the difference between this and the C290 I was using is unreal!). I'm not at all very techy and I barely understand the software I'm using or how pixel settings work with each other, but I was wondering if I should be recording in 4k (CPU usage tops out to around 50% but it's not dropping any frames), or whether it's better to record in 1080p? I have base (canvas) resolution and output (scaled) resulotion both set to 1920x1080 but my monitor is 1920x1200, should I set both canvas and scaled to 1920x1200? Would that produce a better picture? If so, what resolution should I choose for the webcam? Does it even matter?

If I record in 4k there isn't a canvas option for it, I'm guessing that's because my monitor isn't 4k? But what happens if I record in 4k and use the above canvas and scaled settings (1920x1080 or 1920x1200)? Should I have everything the same, so record in 1080 and obs settings in 1080? Or would the picture quality come out superior if set the webcam to a higher resolution than the canvas and scaled settings?

My options to set the webcam are:

1920x1080
2560x1440
3840x2160
4096x2160

But as I said I can only set OBS up to 1920x1200

What would be the best combination of these in terms of image quality for recording videos for YouTube?

BTW, the entire video image shrinks when I move up through the different pixel options (not sure why) and I have to transform the image to fill the screen and do a little bit of resizing, is that going to degrade the quality at all? It doesn't seem to.

Sorry for being a newb. I'm trying to learn all of this, haha.

 

[koala]

If you intend to produce Youtube videos, you should output a video resolution Youtube supports. That means 1920x1080, 2560x1440, or 3840x2160. Don't create videos with your monitor resolution (1920x1200), since this will create black vertical bars on Youtube.

In addition to your webcam, do your videos contain any other main source, such as a game? In this case, you should set the canvas size to the resolution of the game.
If you have your 4k webcam as only source, nobody is holding you back from setting canvas and output size to 3840x2160 and produce 4k videos. Youtube will create downscaled versions of it on its own to fit each viewer.
However, you need computing power to record this resolution and to postprocess. And it's a bit tedious to properly postprocess 4k videos while having only a 1080p monitor.

I don't recommend setting the canvas to 3840x2160 and output to some lower resolution. You will not gain a quality improvement in comparison to setting the canvas to the output resolution. It's only using up computer resources for nothing. Also set the webcam to the same resolution as your canvas (or source) size. Don't scale down within OBS, try to get the correct resolution from the device in the first place. The less rescaling is done, the better the video quality. If you have your webcam as only source, and want to use this source filling your whole video frame, set your canvas resolution the same as the output resolution and the webcam resolution also the same. This way, no rescaling will take place and the video has the best quality.