Recording Only the Selected Area of Screen | Eliminating Black Bars

gyoung314159

New Member
Here is how to get OBS to record screens pixel per pixel. This maximizes the quality of recorded videos and eliminates the black bars in the output so many complain about…

(1) Select the Window or Display you wish to capture in Sources Pane.
(2) While holding Alt, using the mouse to drag the red bounding box to the portion that the Window or Display you wish to record.
(3) You need to know the size of this window you’re going to record, but unfortunately I can’t find anywhere where OBS tells you this size in pixels. BUT OBS tells you how far away from the bounds of that Window or Display and you can get size of the full Window or Display by using Edit | Transform | Edit Transform, looking at the Size fields, then closing this window without editing. Now subtract both numbers from each axis to get the size of the Area. In my case, the size is 1920 - 72 - 682 = 1166 wide and 1080 - 277 - 143 = 660.
(4) Using Files | Settings | Video, for the Output (Scaled) Resolution, type the dimension of your Area directly into the drop down combobox… In my case, I type 1166 x 660. Then press Apply and OK.
(5) Finally, use File | Edit | Transform | Stretch to Screen.

Now when you record, each pixel of input Area is represented by exactly one pixel of output. This keeps video size to a minimum and prevent OBS from “interpreting your video” - you’ll get enough of that from your editor - we want raw, good quality source material for our editors to mess up.

I see this question asked all over the web and no good answers. This isn’t a good answer, but it’s the right answer based on how I believe OBS’s transforms work.

OBS could be massively improved for screen recorders by adding two simple things:

(1) An indication anywhere convenient showing the current size of the selection area.
(2) Some method of entering directly in the Output (Scaled) Resolution box, maybe with an implicit Stretch to Screen that would allow one button configuration to record pixel per pixel.

OBS Input Size.png
 
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