Using Logitech Brio In 4K In OBS On A 2019 Intel MacBook Pro

I do a fair amount of recording for my YouTube channel on a MacBook Pro, circa 2019. It has the Intel chip. Nothing I found online worked exactly for me when I used OBS, so here are the settings that worked for me, in case they are useful for someone else.

First, put the cable that came with the camera aside and get a high speed USB-C to USB-C cable. This was my first mistake. USB-C to USB-A adapters were getting in the way and either slowing down my video or making the camera flicker. When I spent $15 on a new cable, everything started working well. I use a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 cable rated up to 20 Gbps.

Second, make a “4k” profile and a “4k” scene in OBS. Go to Settings->Video and make both the base and output resolutions to 3840×2160 at 24 frames per second. I record to files, so I go to Output->Recording (make sure Advanced Output Mode is selected to see all the fields). I use the “Apple VT H264 Hardware Encoder” encoder at 100,000 Kbps bitrate, with the “high” profile.

If you stream, you could probably use the same settings as a start and fiddle with it from there. I do not currently stream so I don’t have further recommendations for this section.

Add your microphone and video source. Make your video source the Logitech Brio at 3840×2160 at 24 frames per second. 30 frames per second was slightly too fast for my laptop to keep up with.

I keep all the rest of the configuration the default values.

Now if your microphone is sending data faster than your camera, you will need to delay your microphone by around 200 ms. You can get to this setting in the settings cog in the Audio Mixer tab when you click on the microphone source in the Sources tab.

I found this YouTube reference page here on bitrates:

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en#zippy=%2Cvideo-codec-h%2Cbitrate

My preview video will have a little lag when writing 4k files, but when I review the video files directly with VLC they look fine.

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