Technical
Downscaling
Rendering your stream at a lower resolution than your monitor (1440p screen → 1080p stream). Lanczos is the sharpest OBS filter for it.
Related terms
- Base (canvas) resolution
OBS's working resolution — usually your monitor's native size. The output resolution is what viewers get after downscaling.
- Resolution
The pixel dimensions of your stream — 1920×1080 (1080p) or 1280×720 (720p). A crisp 720p60 beats a blocky 1080p60 on low bitrate.
- Encoder
The software or hardware that compresses your video to send it online. 'x264' uses your CPU; 'NVENC' uses an NVIDIA GPU.