THIS is why your livestreams are pixelated... OBS Tutorial

For many streamers, it can be infuriating to deal with "pixelated" or "blurry" streams. The issue may only pop up whilst moving, or it could be a consistent issue you deal with. It can be especially frustrating when everything seems fine in your OBS preview window, but in the VOD, the stream is grainy and unwatchable.

Today, I'll be going over a common reason why your livestreams are pixelated: your bitrate. This video will demonstrate how to adjust your OBS bitrate settings, along with tips on how to determine what OBS encoder to use for your specific setup.

Twitch's Recommended Livestreaming Encoder Settings:

[BiggerBadderBeaver]

Hope you found this video useful! I realized shortly after posting that I misspeak at times and say kiloBYTES instead of kiloBITS -- just pretend I always say kilobits so I don't have to re-record this video :)

[Brintop]

Can we hype this guy? He was the most descriptive and I've watched several of these tutorials. Good job sir 👌

[candiclown]

I just wanted to come back and say that I followed the advice in your video and it turned EVERYTHING around. I actually have good picture and stream quality now, where before it was occasionally blurry, and I really appreciate the help this video gave.

[mars]

This was actually really helpful. I was expecting to be confused, but this was super straightforward. Thank you.

[Xoilen]

I don't understand what's going on, I am streaming at 8000 bitrate 1080p, no dropped frames, cpu and gpu are sitting around 30-50% usage yet when I move at all my stream becomes super pixelated.

[JordanSR]

Underrated youtuber bro... keep up the professional explanations! soothing voice too

[saintaracelle]

bitrate good but still have this problem

[KA-jkrs]

Thank you. After a week of trying to figure out my issue, you’ve given me the best feedback yet!

[doggowantssauce]

Last year I started streaming with a low end pc (a laptop, to be precise) for both gaming and streaming. Most of these tips I learned on the run, experimenting with OBS and system settings.

[Yoshi-pwyo]

so im using amd idk if that matters but im using 6000 bitrate i know i can handle it i have 60 upload speed and it still looks so blurry ive watched maybe 10 videos nothing worked what can i

[TheTarktician]

Question for you. So when I use the rescale option it squishes my output feed so the viewer on twitch gets a squished view of my gameplay. However when I disable the rescale option it looks good and like normal. I am gaming on a 1440p ultrawide monitor and am outputting 1080p to twitch. However it’s not giving me the option for 1920x1080 but instead 2580x1080 is this due to the ultrawide monitor so it’s keep the same aspect ratio??

[Saiiyne]

Very helpful and probably the best tutorial I have found, thanks.

[VasiliasPlayz]

Hey does using Ultra Low Latency effect the quality of my stream because I have already done everything you told in the video but my streams still look grainy.

[MichaelWrandoms]

If you want to drastically improve on your visuals, just don’t stream 1080p60. It’s that simple. 1080p is 2.5 times the pixels per second of 720p. And 60FPS is always 2 times the pixels per second, compared to 30 fps. If YouTubers upload content in 4K in 60 fps to YouTube, they choose 50000 Kbit/s (50 Mbit/s) or more. I personally would go for about 60Mbit/s at that case. Luckily I don’t deal with 4K and stick with 1080p60. So 15Mbit/s is Just fine. And surprise, 15 MBit/s is 2.5 times 6000 Kbit/s.

Choose 720p60 for 6000 Kbit/s of Bitrate at a key frame every 2 seconds. Set all your cameras and capture cards to Rec.709 and make sure the framerate of all the content captured is the same as well. Not always, the computer display or games console can run a round 60FPS, but actually 59.94FPS. That’s the NTSC standard for „60FPS“, by the way, and windows often enough states a refresh rate like 59.94 or 59.97 as 60FPS. And don’t bother with Full color range, since many capture cards are actually locked into limited color range anyways, even if they fake supporting full range. Just make sure the PC, camera or console behind the capture card does output limited color range as well, so colors don’t look too dark or washed out. Done. This will give you astonishingly good image quality.

1080p60 below at the very least 12500 just looks bad. And even if you could stream like that, who wants to watch a stream like that on their smartphone, especially if you are on a data volume limited „flatrate“? Heck even if you have a real flatrate like that. Receiving a 12.5 Mbit/s live stream can be quite a problem on LTE/4G or 5G.

[snthyt]

such a helpful tutorial. you even went as far as showing examples, and telling us what the settings that need tweaked do. you earned my sub, much respect for you.

[AuroraAnomalia]

very helpful and informative, thank you so much!

[suavecu]

Any thoughts on why my camera stays pixelated, but not my game?

[joplazaful]

Thank you so much! This was easy to follow and understand and my recordings/streams look so much better now :D

[yoStricken]

to preface, I have a 3070ti and an 8 core ryzen processor. I turned the settings to 6000 bitrate, lanczos scaling, 1080p 60fps, and did everything else every single one of these videos says. yet my streams and recordings are still grainy and blurry as hell, especially any time I move. I really don't understand why :(

[dragonflaw]

Hi there, when I set the Encoder Preset to "Quality" is when my stream looks way better, but that overloads my OBS and makes my stream freeze a lot. Could I get rid of the freezes without setting the preset to Balanced? Thanks for the video!