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720p30, 720p60 or 1080p60: how to choose

Use 720p30 for stability and low-motion content, 720p60 for motion with limited bandwidth and 1080p60 when text, detail, upload and encoder can keep up. The best setting is the one that stays stable in your heaviest scene.

Published
Reading time
2 min read
Corneta version
0.11.0
Tested with
Corneta 0.6.0 (Windows 11), OBS Studio 32.2.1 (Windows 11)

Choose by what moves

ProfileMakes sense forMain trade-off
720p30talk, podcasts, drawing and limited setupsmore stability, less detail and smoothness
720p60fast games with tight bitrate or encodersmooth motion, less crisp text
1080p30camera, tutorials and text with little motionmore detail, less smooth motion
1080p60fast games, fine text and a setup with headroomhighest load and need for bitrate

Don't pick 1080p60 because your monitor is Full HD. The output has to survive the worst minute of your stream.

Bitrate changes the result

On Twitch, the official reference uses 3,000 kbps for 720p30, 4,500 for 720p60 and 6,000 for 1080p60. On YouTube, the current table recommends, in H.264, 8 Mbps for 720p30 and 720p60 and 17 Mbps for 1080p60, with minimums of 3, 3 and 6 Mbps. In AV1 or HEVC, the recommended values drop to 6, 6 and 12 Mbps.

With tight bitrate, more pixels can make the picture worse: the encoder splits the same amount of data across more detail and more frames. Blocky motion is a sign to lower resolution, FPS or scene complexity.

Enlarge image

Fit
Corneta Quality screen with upload, transcode and encoder estimates for each mode.

Resolution and FPS only make sense alongside the bitrate and the number of encodes your machine will open.

Resolution and FPS only make sense alongside the bitrate and the number of encodes your machine will open.Source: CornetaCorneta version: 0.11.0

In multistream, there are three paths

  1. Lowest common denominator: set OBS to a profile every platform accepts and copy the signal.
  2. One exception: copy to the compatible destinations and transcode only the one that is different.
  3. All separate: transcode each platform when per-destination quality is worth the load.

In Corneta, these paths are the modes on the Quality screen: Straight up (1), Smart (2, which copies the landscape platforms and transcodes only the vertical ones) and All out (3). Set it up for me only points OBS at Corneta, with server and key; you set resolution, FPS and bitrate in OBS itself.

Start with the first one. Only open a new encoder session when the benefit is visible.

Test without fooling yourself

  • use your heaviest scene;
  • move the camera and the game like in a real stream;
  • let the test run for ten minutes;
  • check rendering, encoding and network separately;
  • watch on a phone and on a regular connection;
  • test every platform at the same time.

A smooth local recording doesn't prove that three network outputs will stay stable. A high speed test doesn't prove that your GPU can handle transcoding either.

If the profile you picked goes over your bandwidth, work out the total in the bitrate and upload guide.