Video size, frame rate and bitrate

What 720p, 1080p, 30/60 fps and kbps mean, and what to pick.

• Video size (resolution): 1280×720 ("720p") or 1920×1080 ("1080p"). Bigger is sharper but needs more upload and computer.
• Frame rate: 30 is fine for most things; 60 makes fast games smoother but needs much more.
• Bitrate: how much data a second the stream may use, in kbps. More is sharper, but it must fit in your upload speed with room to spare. Twitch's guide: 720p30 at 3000, 1080p30 at 4500, 1080p60 at 6000 (Twitch's ceiling).
• Changing the size resizes your scenes with it: everything keeps its place, and text and shaders are redrawn at the new size so they stay sharp. Scenes made before flint did this, which still fill only part of the picture, get a Resize to fit offer.
• Smooth gradients (on by default, with graphics card encoding): 8-bit video has only a few dozen shades near black, so a dark, smooth gradient (a night sky, a deep purple background) turns into stripes in every stream, OBS's included. flint converts the picture to video colour itself and adds one level of grain, too fine to see, which keeps the gradient smooth. Twitch's lower qualities are re-encoded by Twitch and may still band.

Not sure? Settings › Video & recording › Pick for me measures your upload and chooses. For phones-first platforms there are vertical sizes too.

Related guides

• Upload speed test: Measures how fast you can send, and picks settings that fit.
• Choppy, blurry or lagging stream: Too much for your connection or your computer: here's how to tell and fix it.

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