Twitch Video Quality Encoding/Bitrate

Broadcasting Guidelines

Read the info below to help you choose the Encoding, Bitrate, Resolution, and Framerate settings that provide the right balance for the game you're playing, your internet speed, and your computer's hardware. Remember: it's always better to have a stable stream than to push for a higher video quality that might cause you to drop frames or test the limits of your internet connection.

Encoding

Encoding Performance
Encoding can be taxing on your system. x264 will utilize a lot of your CPU, resulting in lower FPS. Alternatively, GPU encoding (e.g. NVIDIA NVENC) utilizes a dedicated encoder in the GPU, allowing you to play and stream without compromising game performance . If you want to use x264, start with veryfast preset, and experiment with them until you find your sweet spot.

Encoding Quality
x264 offers a wide range of presets that change quality significantly, and presets above Faster require CPUs with 6+ cores. NVIDIA NVENC offers consistent quality based on the generation of the encoder. The updated NVIDIA Encoder (NVENC) on Turing-based NVIDIA GeForce GPUs (RTX 20-Series and GTX 1660/Ti) will typically produce superior quality than x264 Fast and on par with x264 medium. While the older generation (Pascal, Kepler) are similar with veryfast/faster quality.

Internet Speed (bitrate)

Your ingest bitrate is the amount of data you send to Twitch when you stream. A higher bitrate takes up more of your available internet bandwidth. Increasing your bitrate can improve your video quality, but only up to a certain point-- our recommended bitrate settings have been tested to optimize video quality without wasting bandwidth.

Video Quality

Resolution refers to the size of a video on a screen, and frame rate refers to how often animation frames are sent to Twitch. Full HD resolution is typically 1080p, 60 frames per second (fps). Streaming at a higher resolution like 1080p requires a higher bitrate, and a higher frame rate takes more encoding power. If you have the bandwidth and encoding power to stream at 1080p, 60 fps, great! If not, try one of the recommended settings below to optimize your video quality and stability.

1080p 60fps

Resolution: 1920x1080

Bitrate: 6000 kbps

Rate Control: CBR

Framerate: 60 or 50 fps

Keyframe Interval: 2 seconds

Preset: Quality

B-frames: 2

1080p 30fps

Resolution: 1920x1080

Bitrate: 4500 kbps

Rate Control: CBR

Framerate: 25 or 30 fps

Keyframe Interval: 2 seconds

Preset: Quality

B-frames: 2

720p 60fps

Resolution: 1280x720

Bitrate: 4500 kbps

Rate Control: CBR

Framerate: 60 or 50 fps

Keyframe Interval: 2 seconds

Preset: Quality

B-frames: 2

720p 30fps

Resolution: 1280x720

Bitrate: 3000 kbps

Rate Control: CBR

Framerate: 25 or 30 fps

Keyframe Interval: 2 seconds

Preset: Quality

B-frames: 2

1080p 60fps

Resolution: 1920x1080

Bitrate: 6000 kbps

Rate Control: CBR

Framerate: 60 or 50 fps

Keyframe Interval: 2 seconds

Preset: veryfast <-> medium

Profile: Main/High

1080p 30fps

Resolution: 1980x1080

Bitrate: 4500 kbps

Rate Control: CBR

Framerate: 25 or 30 fps

Keyframe Interval: 2 seconds

Preset: veryfast <-> medium

Profile: Main/High

720p 60fps

Resolution: 1280x720

Bitrate: 4500 kbps

Rate Control: CBR

Framerate: 60 or 50 fps

Keyframe Interval: 2 seconds

Preset: veryfast <-> medium

Profile: Main/High

720p 30fps

Resolution: 1280x720

Bitrate: 3000 kbps

Rate Control: CBR

Framerate: 25 or 30 fps

Keyframe Interval: 2 seconds

Preset: veryfast <-> medium