Remove OBS's limitations in video and audio encoding.

[nanyobis]

Feedback and suggestion.
Remove OBS's limitations in video and audio encoding.
Or allow fully customizable video and audio bitrate.

I don't like how when you make the video bit rate lower than 100 kb/s
that it resets back to 10 kb/s.

So I request for you to let us be able to use any bit rate we want.
We have our reasons.

The same goes for the audio encoding
where in the drop down menu you can only go as low as 32 kb/s.

Please give us fully customizable audio and video.

Or if you can't do that then at least drop down menu's
that go down that go down to 2 or 4 or 8 kb/s or so.

I am however severely disappointed
that you still can't fully customize the video and audio bitrate.

So I request that hopefully in the next update
that the video and audio bitrate is fully customizable
or doesn't use a drop menu and doesn't reset back to 100 kb/s .

Also to a lesser extent add more customizabliliy for the audio format as well.
Like 32000 Hz , 22050 Hz , 16000 Hz , 11025 Hz , 8000 Hz , etc.

I know it seems like the vocal community doesn't want this.
But please understand that the silent community may.
If you add it then everyone still has the option to use whatever they want.
If you don't add it then there's no way
or it's extremely difficult for the average person to get what they want.

Please add it. Thank you.

 

[paibox]

I'm sorry, but the average person doesn't want this. The specifications for Flash Video also do not officially support the audio bit rates you have listed, which could cause issues with sites that use transcoding (for instance to mobile devices, or different video qualities) such as Twitch.tv and YouTube.

There is absolutely no reason to attempt to stream or record with a video bit rate of even 100 Kbps, that's about 12.5 kilobytes per second, no meaningful video data could be encoded using such a bit rate.

There is no logical basis for the additional options that you request, and we will not consider adding support for these.

Perhaps you are mistaking Kbps for KBps? The bit rates listed in OBS are kilobits per second, not kilobytes. You have to understand that there's no point in recording audio at 2, 4, 8 or even 16 kilobits per second.

 

[nanyobis]

I'm sorry,

That's ok.

but the average person doesn't want this.

The average person doesn't want to have whatever they want?

The specifications for Flash Video also do not officially support the audio bit rates you have listed,

Doesn't mean you can't do it. FFsplit does it. Xsplit probably does it.
Heck even ffmle let's you choose whatever video bitrate you want.
I mean flash video also doesn't officially support OBS or FFsplit or any of our 3rd party software apps.
Doesn't mean we can't make it because we need approval with it being "official".
If that was the case we'd all be using fmle.

which could cause issues with sites that use transcoding

Good thing it's optional.

(for instance to mobile devices, or different video qualities)

You shouldn't hold PC user's back for phones.
You wouldn't hold newer PC user's back because some are still using windows 95.
If phone user's can't use a real PC then that's their loss.

such as Twitch.tv and YouTube.

You shouldn't hold all people back because of a few websites like youtube etc..
The option is still there to transcode at proper kbps if it's a problem.

There is absolutely no reason to attempt to stream or record with a video bit rate of even 100 Kbps,

Yes there is. Or even lower. People have their reasons.

that's about 12.5 kilobytes per second,

Yes, and.

tno meaningful video data could be encoded using such a bit rate.

Yes it can.

There is no logical basis for the additional options that you request,

Yes there is.

and we will not consider adding support for these.

That is why you fail.

Perhaps you are mistaking Kbps for KBps?

No.

The bit rates listed in OBS are kilobits per second, not kilobytes.

Yes.

You have to understand that there's no point in recording audio at 2, 4, 8 or even 16 kilobits per second.

You have to understand that there's no point in not letting everyone have the freedom to decide that for themselves.

I mean how does giving people more options hurt?
It's not saying everyone has to use low bitrates.
It's saying that everyone can use whatever bitrate they want.
If anything there's no reason not to let anyone fully customize the bitrate they want.
Think beyond what is common, as difficult as it may be for you to do.

I mean I can't speak for everyone because I don't know everyone.
But I think everyone should have an option to choose whatever they want.
So these aren't all of the examples in the world
but just and extremely small piece.

For example what if all my friends have really bad pc's or connections?
Do I tell them they can't watch because their connection sucks?
No. I lower it as low as possible until they can watch.
You can still make it out. It looks like a standard definition television.
You can make it work.

Or for example what if you're recording a gameboy game?
Black and white. 160x144 pixels.
Would it make sense to have it bloated and wasted space at 100kbps and 32kbps?
Or would it make more sense to record it at 32kbps and 16kbps?

Or what if you record really long videos for like 2 hours,
but the video website you want to upload it to has a limit of 64 MB ?
You can either upload it to that video website and have it preserved forever.
Or possibly have it deleted by google youtube out of nowhere for no reason.
Like they always do.

Or what if you were running out of hard drive space,
and you needed to record at a few kbps or run out of space?
And you could not just keep deleting everything indefinitely?

Or what if so-called "mobile" device crap fad has a bad connection?
Since it's wireless and doesn't just use a good wired connection?
What if they're connection gets so bad they can only receive 64 kbps or so?
It means that everything but what gives you all options fails.
If anything, this is better for "mobile" users.
Tho, they'd probably be better off with mobile pc's.
But that's a different story.

Or what if you wanted to record or broadcast videos for you?
Not for anyone else or anyone else.
But for you?

Or what if you want it because you can?
Because you can.

Everyone shouldn't conform to what other people want.
Everyone should have the freedom
and options to make their own decisions in life.
And fight for and give those options to others.

Please consider adding it.

Thank you.

 

[paibox]

Sorry, I will not consider it, perhaps someone else will.
But you have to realize that this is not about the average Internet user at all, most if not all of the points you mention are some rather extreme corner cases.

Giving people more options can hurt simply because people enable and change options having no idea what they actually do. We provide support for this software on a regular basis, and it happens more often than perhaps you would think.

 

[Bensam123]

Yeah, I'm not sure what the use of these options are. Maybe if it doesn't actually take any development time I see why not. I guess stuff like this could be used for making .gifs and audio clips, but even that is kinda iffy. AFAIK Jim has to add all the options so that's why you can't just key in a bit rate, perhaps I'm mistaken about that, but that's why it hasn't been done yet. This may be being worked on in the rewrite as well.

I don't and never have believed the BS about 'less is better' when it comes to applications like this. If you're talking about something where you push a button and broadcast then perhaps, but this is a fairly robust piece of software. People demand and want options to tweak with. I've heard this brought up a few different times on the OBS forums and I never bought into it. If people here are that worried about it there should be a basic and advanced mode. Log files can detail all these changes as well.

BTW Op was writing haikus or something. I think less arrogance and nose thumbing as well as writing actual paragraphs would go a long way towards getting what you want. You basically come off as a undesirable (which is being nice).

 

[Lain]

Being able to set a lower format is fine, but RTMP/flash does not support it beyond a lower point. 6k/s is too low for either audio or video. It wouldn't even render anything for video, and for audio it would become completely inaudible.

I do however want to fix the low bitrate issue for audio encoding. Currently it doesn't go below 128kb/s, and that is fixed in the rewrite. However, anything less than 100bitrate for video and you're not going to have visible video though. Less than 30kb/s for even mono audio would become very bad as well.

 

[ThoNohT]

I don't and never have believed the BS about 'less is better' when it comes to applications like this.

Seeing is believing I guess. Then perhaps you should see for yourself how suddenly when the "use input device for desktop audio" was added, a lot people started complaining about not getting any audio. The option is off by default, and they themselves never touched it, yet for some inexplicable reason, that option was turned on and they had simply selected the wrong audio source.

Like paibox said, we provide support for it, for some options, like this one, you just really want them included, and we put up with the fact that the simple addition of a checkbox causes dozens of new support requests because miracles start happening when we change the interface. But in some other cases, it just isn't worth it, and not having an option is actually more desirable.

 

[Bensam123]

Dude if you add it in advanced options, it limits people from doing it and even then you can add it to a log file. Stuff like that is pretty easy to diagnose if you know the symptoms for it. That's the tradeoff of making a really robust product and OBS is just that.

'We' includes me, if you're talking about people that have helped in the help forums before.

 

[Shifter]

I recorded some Borderlands 2 with 100kbps and 32kbps audio in mono.You can check it out on my dropbox. My conclusion is the following: Why should quality be able to get worse than this. I'm aware though that I use the veryfast preset, but watching this will never be enjoyable and the sound is dreadful. (This is 1080p recorded with downscaling. To see the resolution change to listview in dropbox) https://www.dropbox.com/sh/f8dt63ml93mqn2w/wUtzNQqwA2

 

[Jack0r]

The specifications for Flash Video also do not officially support the audio bit rates you have listed,

Doesn't mean you can't do it. FFsplit does it. Xsplit probably does it.
Heck even ffmle let's you choose whatever video bitrate you want.
I mean flash video also doesn't officially support OBS or FFsplit or any of our 3rd party software apps.
Doesn't mean we can't make it because we need approval with it being "official".
If that was the case we'd all be using fmle.

So you are saying, we have rules, but we can break them, so lets just break them because we can?

which could cause issues with sites that use transcoding

Good thing it's optional.

Good thing users tend to use optional functions without knowing anything about the result and then asking us for support. If you want to keep track of all the incoming posts and help these users, feel free to volunteer.

(for instance to mobile devices, or different video qualities)

You shouldn't hold PC user's back for phones.
You wouldn't hold newer PC user's back because some are still using windows 95.
If phone user's can't use a real PC then that's their loss.

We are not holding them back, as you mentioned they can use whatever software they want on a PC. If they dont care for mobile viewers (or watchable streams at all) they can install FMLE and get streaming.

such as Twitch.tv and YouTube.

You shouldn't hold all people back because of a few websites like youtube etc..
The option is still there to transcode at proper kbps if it's a problem.

Currently probably 99% of websites use the flashplayer, that has mentioned restrictions. The next step is html5 video which also has clear limits to what it can play or not play.

There is absolutely no reason to attempt to stream or record with a video bit rate of even 100 Kbps,

Yes there is. Or even lower. People have their reasons.

People have their reasons to kill other people, People have reasons to throw A-Bombs, people have their reasons to smoke cigarettes every day and kill themselves. Does not mean we have to help them do it. Killing the video quality is something you can do in your spare time with fmle, or you can of course add it yourself to OBS. But asking so dramatically that someone includes it seems a bit funny.

that's about 12.5 kilobytes per second,

Yes, and.

Thats not even enough to save a jpg picture at a decent size. 12.5 is probably the average size of a one page word document.

no meaningful video data could be encoded using such a bit rate.

Yes it can.

Example video please.

There is no logical basis for the additional options that you request,

Yes there is.

Logical examples please, so far you only said, because we can.

and we will not consider adding support for these.

That is why you fail.

More drama please. Its an open source project, contribute yourself.

Perhaps you are mistaking Kbps for KBps?

No.

Good.

The bit rates listed in OBS are kilobits per second, not kilobytes.

Yes.

You have to understand that there's no point in recording audio at 2, 4, 8 or even 16 kilobits per second.

You have to understand that there's no point in not letting everyone have the freedom to decide that for themselves.

You have to understand that there is a valid point in restricting people to useful settings. I mean you could add an option into OBS to turn off both the video and audio-stream. So it would save an empty mp4 file with nothingness. People would test the option, and not only a few of them. Then start a forum post: my video file has no video or audio.

I mean how does giving people more options hurt?

It hurts the people by stealing their time in a big amount. (Chat support, forum support and all the users that say, obs is shit, because they configured it incorrectly and are not willing to listen)

It's not saying everyone has to use low bitrates.
It's saying that everyone can use whatever bitrate they want.
If anything there's no reason not to let anyone fully customize the bitrate they want.
Think beyond what is common, as difficult as it may be for you to do.

You seem to now be starting a philosophic discussion about to be or not be or something.

I mean I can't speak for everyone because I don't know everyone.
But I think everyone should have an option to choose whatever they want.
So these aren't all of the examples in the world
but just and extremely small piece.

For example what if all my friends have really bad pc's or connections?
Do I tell them they can't watch because their connection sucks?
No. I lower it as low as possible until they can watch.
You can still make it out. It looks like a standard definition television.
You can make it work.

Standard television uses a video resolution of 768x576 on Pal standard. So more than 480p which will need more than 300-500 kbps to look good on the slightest amount of motion. To watch an online stream you need a constant ability do download at a certain speed. If you are talking about old modem dial up connections I am not sure how this is even valid anymore in our time. I have an african friend that has such a connection, because of the costs he wouldnt even remotely think about watching a stream. I once send him a jpg picture in a mail and it was too big for him to download. How does it even make sense to send him a bad gif animation with audio then that would totally kill his connection even on the lowest amount of settings?

Or for example what if you're recording a gameboy game?
Black and white. 160x144 pixels.
Would it make sense to have it bloated and wasted space at 100kbps and 32kbps?
Or would it make more sense to record it at 32kbps and 16kbps?

I just set obs to 160x144, 48kbps audio (so at least the sound is "ok") and 100 bitrate: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1672581/2014-03-27-2322-30.mp4

Or what if you record really long videos for like 2 hours,
but the video website you want to upload it to has a limit of 64 MB ?
You can either upload it to that video website and have it preserved forever.
Or possibly have it deleted by google youtube out of nowhere for no reason.
Like they always do.

In this case I would recommend anyone to reencode the video over night using the slow preset out of an original file with more bitrate. Live encoding is stressfull but thankfully we have a lot of ways to get around that. And if you have problems obeying the rules of youtube or google, its normal that they will delete your videos, not sure how this is even related to the topic.

Or what if you were running out of hard drive space,
and you needed to record at a few kbps or run out of space?
And you could not just keep deleting everything indefinitely?

Are we back in the 80s with 64kb RAM and each kb costs 100$?

Or what if so-called "mobile" device crap fad has a bad connection?
Since it's wireless and doesn't just use a good wired connection?
What if they're connection gets so bad they can only receive 64 kbps or so?
It means that everything but what gives you all options fails.
If anything, this is better for "mobile" users.
Tho, they'd probably be better off with mobile pc's.
But that's a different story.

You earlier said we are holding back pc users for mobile, now you say we should add it for mobile? ...

Or what if you wanted to record or broadcast videos for you?
Not for anyone else or anyone else.
But for you?

Again you are free to use any software that supports the functions you want, and you are free to add functionality to OBS by yourself.

Or what if you want it because you can?
Because you can.

Everyone shouldn't conform to what other people want.
Everyone should have the freedom
and options to make their own decisions in life.
And fight for and give those options to others.

Please consider adding it.

Everyone should have the freedom to add stuff to software he finds useful and thinks will work good for the users. As mentioned several times, you can add it. So instead of writing this whole post you could have started to learn programming and would have done something far more useful.

Thank you.

Thank you too!

Dude if you add it in advanced options, it limits people from doing it and even then you can add it to a log file.

We already make these trade offs every day. I cannot give you exact numbers but we have had at least 100 people clicking the "Use Input device for desktop audio" option for NO REASON, and AFTER it was moved to the advanced settings.

 

[ThoNohT]

'We' includes me, if you're talking about people that have helped in the help forums before.

In addition to jack0r's answer, with 'we' I was pointing more at people who have helped on the irc channel, which is where this became even more obvious than on the forums. Plus we see everything that happens on the forums passing by as well.

 

[VooDoo]

You know, I came in here thinking it would be something beneficial being described...instead its asking for the same thing as "Can I have half a penny?" Why are we limited to 1c as the smallest amount we can make a transaction w/ ??? I guess I could see using smaller bitrate for a miserably small resolution that you are streaming into someone elses stream like just a webcam and ur voice???

However if you've ever used Xsplit Free edition and heard the audio quality do you really want to sound like 1998 VoiP services when trying to communicate?

If your internet or pc is actually that bad that it would require such bitrates you probably should stop investing your time in video games, i.e your internet/pc are less powerful than the average persons CELLPHONE.

Now I'd say unless you have an ACTUAL reason and can show anyone what that reason is, you should give up this horrible argument. There is no time anyone streaming any game ever would want their video and audio to look and sound like that period. Theres enough people who won't even watch 480p streams to just laugh your entire idea away, to be quite honest their is NO reason to ever transmit such a shatty quality anything to anyone...its like you purposely color out of the lines then show it off like you did it correctly.

p.s. you said many times "We have our reasons" but havent posted a single REASON, like Im getting the feeling you have some illegal plans of some sort, or some plans to do something malicious.