Best OBS Settings for Streaming on Twitch | Best Streaming Settings OBS Tutorial/Guide
296This best OBS settings for streaming on Twitch 2023 tutorial/guide covers unique tips and tricks for achieving the best streaming settings for OBS Studio. Multiple stream output resolutions are compared (1080p / 936p / 864p and 720p to give you the best OBS Twitch settings for smooth, crisp, stable and high FPS streams. If you've experienced frames missed due to rendering lag or skipped frames due to encoding lag, the information in this video will help you troubleshoot and eliminate lag and stuttering whether you're on a low, mid or high end PC setup. I also include a ton of OBS tips and tricks along the way. Thanks for watching!
Resources:
https://obsproject.com/kb/aspect-ratio-guide
https://tipsforefficiency.com/obs-keyframe-interval/
https://obsproject.com/kb/stream-connection-troubleshooting
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/guides/broadcasting-guide/
https://streamershaven.blog/tutorials/best-resolution-for-streaming-twitch/
Credits:
FerretBomb (OG Info on OBS forums)
Kachin (for his 720p to 1080p quality @ a 6mb bitrate encoder stress testing ideas)
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Timestamps:
0:00 Before and after
0:21 Why you should always run OBS as Admin
1:05 How to connect Twitch account to OBS
1:21 Why you shouldn’t stream higher than Twitch’s recommended bitrates
3:00 Simple vs Advanced output settings
3:59 Affiliate vs Twitch Partner bitrate settings
4:58 Best audio bitrates (160 vs 320 comparison)
5:48 Important differences between Nvenc, x264 and AMD AMF
7:41 Best encoder to use for streaming (Software vs Hardware)
8:18 P5 vs P6 comparison
9:26 Best Encoder Preset to use
9:46 Best advanced output settings & information about each setting
12:14 Why you shouldn’t rescale your output resolution in output settings
12:43 Best aspect ratio to use
12:56 Tips for people who wasted money on an ultrawide monitor
13:48 1080p vs 720p @ 6mb bitrate comparison
14:45 720p @ 5mb bitrate
15:39 864p @ 6mb bitrate
15:57 1080p vs 936p @ 8mb bitrate
17:00 Downscale filter (Bicubic vs Lanczos)
17:18 Best framerate to stream at
17:49 How to make a test recording of your stream settings
18:23 My OBS recording settings
18:35 How to use the OBS Stats window to troubleshoot problems
19:37 Display capture vs Game capture
19:50 Why you should disable the preview window + hotkey setup
20:13 How to fix framerate stuttering in your streams and gameplay recordings
Bitrate, Resolution and Framerate
Encoding is all about compressing images. A smaller image requires less compression and it keeps more of the quality. While the same applies for framerate, a viewer can really notice a drop in FPS but not so much in resolution, so stream at 60 FPS
Twitch's Encoding Guide:
Encoding Performance
Encoding can be taxing on your system. x264 will utilize a lot of your CPU, resulting in lower FPS. Alternatively, GPU encoding (e.g. NVIDIA NVENC) utilizes a dedicated encoder in the GPU, allowing you to play and stream without compromising game performance. If you use x264, start with veryfast, and experiment with the other encoding presets
Encoding Quality
x264 offers a wide range of presets that change quality significantly, and presets above Faster require CPUs with 6+ cores. NVIDIA NVENC offers consistent quality based on the generation of the encoder. The updated NVIDIA Encoder (NVENC) on Turing-based NVIDIA GeForce GPUs (RTX 20-Series and GTX 1660/Ti) will typically produce superior quality than x264 Fast and on par with x264 medium. While the older generation (Pascal, Kepler) are similar with veryfast/faster quality
Nvidia's overview of the ouput settings:
Encoder: Allows you to choose between hardware / software encoding
Rate Control: This determines the rate at which frames are going to be encoded
Bitrate: Enter the bitrate appropriate for your Upload Speed
Keyframe Interval: Most streaming platforms require a setting of 2
Preset: Select Quality
Profile: Set to High. Profile determines a group of settings in the H.264 Codec. It doesn’t impact performance and gives access to a set of features that are key to streaming, so this should always be set to High
Look-ahead: This allows the encoder to dynamically select the number of B-Frames, between 0 and the number of B-Frames you specify. B-frames increase image quality, but they consume a lot of your available bitrate, so they reduce quality on high motion content. Look-ahead enables the best of both worlds. This feature is CUDA accelerated; toggle this off if your GPU utilization is high to ensure a smooth stream
Psycho Visual Tuning: This enables the Rate Distortion Optimization in the encoder, which greatly optimizes the way you use bitrate, improving image quality on movement
GPU: 0. If you have 2 GPUs in your system, you can select which one is used to encode. This is not recommended
Max B-Frames: If you uncheck the Look-ahead option, use 2 B-Frames