Best OBS Recording Settings for Mac in 2026 (Perfect Quality)

[00:02] take your gameplay recording qualities from looking blurry and hazy to crystal clear using OBS Studio, thus improving the viewing experience for your first thing that I've done is open a completely blank project canvas here in

[00:18] OBS Studio. And what I'm going to do first is go to my settings, and then we're going to go to video. And then within here, you're going to set your base and output canvas resolutions to 1920 by 1080. That is the standard high

[00:32] definition resolution that is still used widely today. The other thing you're going to want to change here is your common FPS value. Instead of that being set to 30, ideally you're going to want to have this at 60, especially if you

[00:45] play fast-paced motion games such as Call of Duty, Marvel Rivals, Fortnite. You're going to want to have that in 60 FPS over 30 as you can see more frames smoother. Now that we've set that, I'm going to go ahead and select okay. And

[00:59] gameplay source. So, if I was just playing off of the computer, I would just do a Mac OS screen capture source. But in my case, I am using a capture card, so I'm going to select this source right here. And when I do that, we can

[01:13] name it whatever we like. Then select the device drop-down and choose your capture card. In my case, it's the AVerMedia Live Gamer Ultra S. So, I'm going to go ahead and select that. And then for the input format, I'm going to

[01:26] bunch of options for this particular capture card, but I'm going to look for the 1920 by 1080 option in V12 format, which I see right here. Once I select the input format, we can take a look at the frame rate section. We can keep it

[01:41] at simple FPS values. And then for that value, we want to set it to 60. So, that way our capture card source matches up with the canvas that we've set in OBS. select okay. The other thing we're going to want to do real quick just because

[01:57] we're using a capture card on a Mac, is go back to our sources and add an audio device drop down, we're going to find the capture card source. That way, we get our audio to flow through from our gaming device to the capture card to the

[02:10] computer, so that it's picked up right here. Now, next, in order to set up that nice recording quality, we're going to want to go back to our settings, go to the output tab, and then for the output mode, you're first going to see it in

[02:22] simple mode, but we're going to want to switch out of that and go to advanced. From there, we can jump to the recording tab, and within here, the type we can keep that at standard. Recording path, that should be wherever you want to save

[02:35] your gameplay recording files on your computer. Recording format, by default, it'll be in hybrid MOV, which isn't too bad, especially for Mac computers, but universally recognized. So, we're going to go with the hybrid MP4 format, and

[02:50] what's good about the hybrid option is that it essentially sets up a container to where you get the benefits of the crash protection features of MKV while still having the compatibility of MP4. For the video encoder, we're not going

[03:05] to keep that at use stream encoder, but we're going to want to set this to Apple VTH EVC hardware encoder. And this is excellent for those of you who are on silicon-based Macs, so M1, M2, M3, M4,

[03:20] M5, and all the rest of the silicon Macs in the future. This is what you're going to want to use because it has the best quality to file size ratio, and it's compatible with your standard video editing software such as Final Cut Pro.

[03:34] And the cherry on top here is that this video encoder takes minimal resources to run, so you won't be experiencing any significant performance impacts. You encoder, audio track, rescaling the output, custom muxer settings, and even

[03:47] automatic file splitting. Those are not required for this setup, but what is required are the encoder settings. First starting off with the rate control, rate, you're going to want to change it to CRF, which stands for constant rate

[04:01] factor, which this uses whatever bit rate is needed to maintain visual quality. So, on Mac, you're going to see a scale from 0 to 100, with 100 being the most lossless quality, but with that comes the largest file sizes. The

[04:15] opposite is true if you have this at 0, meaning you'll have lower quality and smaller file sizes. So, recording gameplay in 1080p60 on a silicon Mac, you're going to want to set this up to a minimum of 50 and as high as 60 if you

[04:29] are being file size cognizant. If space is not an issue on your computer, then I would set this as high as 70 to 80 to have the best quality possible. No need to limit the bit rate keyframe interval, you'll want to set that to two. Profile,

[04:44] high if you have that as an option, and uncheck use B-frames so that you can better maintain the image quality during fast-paced gaming moments. Go ahead and select okay, and now let's give these settings a little bit of a test.

[05:02] Power me up. Now I see the That is the trick. ARMED [screaming] AND DANGEROUS. PERFECT.

[05:16] have a winner. >> [screaming] >> [screaming] >> Your fate is sealed. Finish them all.

[05:31] the gameplay recording quality? Let me know in the comments section below. If configuration that I was using to do my recordings, I am using an M1 Max MacBook Pro. I've been using it for the past few years now, and it has been an absolute

[05:46] powerhouse. I'm not even considering updating to a newer silicon Mac because what's the freaking point? This thing just continues to rip. Also, I wanted to share that I just partnered with the new affiliate by the name of MacPaw and they

[05:58] have an excellent service called CleanMyMac. I've been using it myself personally ever since I've owned a Mac to help manage my space and even look for viruses, malware. It really does a good job of monitoring the overall

[06:10] would like to check it out, I'll put my affiliate link in the description below. till the very end. Like, subscribe to the channel if you're new around here. the channel if you're new around here. I'll see you on the next one. Peace.