OBS Settings Guide for Beginners

Where to find OBS settings

Open OBS and click Settings in the lower right. Most of the settings you need are in three tabs: Output, Video, and Audio. Set Output Mode to Advanced — it exposes the full encoder options.

Video settings

Go to Settings → Video.

Base (Canvas) Resolution

Set this to your monitor's native resolution. If you have a 1080p monitor, set it to 1920×1080. This is what OBS “sees” before it scales for output.

Output (Scaled) Resolution

This is what actually gets streamed. Common choices:

Common FPS values

Use 60 FPS if your PC and internet can handle it. Use 30 FPS if you're on a budget PC or limited upload. Twitch and YouTube both support 60fps, but 30fps streams are completely acceptable — many top streamers use 30fps with high bitrate for better image quality.

Encoder settings

Go to Settings → Output → Streaming tab.

Which encoder should you use?

NVENC recommended settings

• Rate Control: CBR
• Bitrate: See the bitrate section below
• Keyframe Interval: 2 seconds
• Preset: P5 (Quality) or P6 (Slower = better quality at same bitrate)
• Profile: high
• Look-ahead: On
• Psycho Visual Tuning: On

x264 recommended settings

• Rate Control: CBR
• Preset: veryfast or superfast (faster = less CPU usage, lower quality)
• Profile: high
• Keyframe Interval: 2 seconds

Bitrate

Bitrate is the amount of data per second sent to the streaming platform. Higher bitrate = sharper image, but requires more upload bandwidth and can cause dropped frames if your connection can't keep up.

Audio settings

Go to Settings → Audio.

• Sample Rate: 48kHz (matches most platforms' requirements)
• Channels: Stereo
• Desktop Audio: Set to your default sound output (what you hear in headphones)
• Mic/Auxiliary Audio: Set to your microphone

Mic filters you should add

Right-click your Mic source in the Audio Mixer and click Filters. Add these in order:

1. Noise Suppression (RNNoise or Speex) — removes background hum and ambient noise
2. Noise Gate — silences mic when you're not speaking (set threshold to just above your room noise floor)
3. Compressor — evens out volume so quiet speech and loud reactions are closer in level
4. Gain — boost if your mic is too quiet after the above filters

Scene setup

Click the + button under Scenes to create a new scene. For a basic gaming stream, create three scenes:

1. Starting Soon — a static image or video loop with “Starting soon” text. Use this while you set up before going live.
2. Gaming — Game Capture source + optional webcam + mic.
3. BRB / Break — an image for when you step away.

Test before you go live

Run OBS for 10 minutes before your first stream and check the bottom status bar:

• Dropped Frames: 0% — if this goes above 0, lower your bitrate or switch encoders
• CPU: under 80% — if OBS is maxing your CPU, switch to a faster x264 preset or use hardware encoding
• Encoding overload warnings — these appear in the bottom right; fix by lowering preset or resolution