OBS Studio 29.1 will support streaming to YouTube using AV1/HEVC up to 4K 60fps

Undoubtedly, OBS Studio is an immensely popular software for recording videos or streaming live broadcasts to major platforms.

Presently, OBS Studio version 29.1 will offer support for utilizing AV1 and HEVC codecs to stream to YouTube. The distinct advantage of AV1 lies in its cost-free nature, as opposed to HEVC’s higher patent fees. AV1 is entirely free for commercial, non-commercial, and user-generated content alike. Simultaneously, AV1’s streaming efficiency can be enhanced by up to 30% at the same quality as HEVC, signifying a lower bandwidth requirement for viewing identical video quality, or alternatively, higher quality videos at the same bandwidth. Most contemporary dedicated graphics cards, such as the AMD RX 7000 series, NVIDIA’s RTX 40 series, and Intel’s ARC Alchemist, now support AV1.

According to videocardz‘s report, prior to OBS Studio version 29.1, OBS could only record videos encoded with AV1 and was incapable of live streaming. However, with the forthcoming release of OBS Studio 29.1, OBS will support streaming live broadcasts to YouTube using both AV1 and HEVC codecs. Concerning the development progress of the new OBS version, based on the update log from GitHub, this feature has already passed tests with NVIDIA’s NVENC and Intel encoders, reaching up to 4K resolution at 60 frames per second. Yet, there is no mention of AMD-related content.

At present, the development milestones for OBS Studio 29.1 have been accomplished to over 90%, and it is anticipated that the new version will soon be introduced to users.