Record local at settings your stream will never match
The stream is a compromise made for your uplink. Your hard drive has no uplink, so stop making it live with the compromise.
Most people tick Record and leave every setting on the streaming defaults.
You just saved a copy of the worst version of your show.
The two jobs are not the same
A stream is capped by upload. It runs constant bitrate so the buffer stays predictable. It keeps keyframes close together so a viewer can join.
A recording has none of those problems. Disk is cheap. Nobody is joining halfway. The only job is to keep as much picture as possible for whatever you do next.
Record with a quality target, not a bitrate target. Constant quality gives calm scenes small files and busy scenes the bits they need. Constant bitrate starves the busy scenes, which are the ones you will clip.
Format before bitrate
Do not record straight to MP4. An MP4 needs a footer written at the end. Lose power or crash and the file is unplayable.
Record to MKV, or use the fragmented MP4 option. Both survive a crash. Remux to MP4 afterwards. Remuxing repackages the same video without touching it, and it takes seconds.
A second encoder, if you have one
OBS can run the recording on a different encoder from the stream. Stream on the GPU and record on the CPU, or the reverse.
Watch for the ceiling. One encode block doing both jobs will fall behind, and that shows up as skipped frames on the stream. You will notice it there first, not in the file.
What to set
- Container: MKV or fragmented MP4.
- Rate control: CQP or CRF, not CBR.
- Resolution: full canvas. Do not downscale the recording to match the stream.
- Audio tracks: separate tracks per source. Mic on one, game on another, music on a third. One mixed track means a copyright claim takes the whole video down.
That last one costs nothing at record time and saves the video later. Split tracks are the difference between muting a song and losing the upload.
Sources
The Rig Wire reports on streaming technology from public documentation, source repositories and vendor releases. We did not bench-test what is described here. When we have tested something, we say so.