OBS Studio will soon be able to live stream to YouTube with AV1. The program previously received support for this codec for recording videos, but it didn’t allow users to go live with it yet.

AV1 live streaming option It will be added with OBS Studio version 29.1And Note VideoCardz. The feature can be used by users who have a GPU with an AV1 encoder, such as an Nvidia GeForce RTX 40 or Intel Arc GPU. YouTube itself is currently still transcoding the AV1 live stream to a different codec, OBS Studio reports in its patch notes. This means that the live broadcast has not yet been presented to viewers in the original AV1 format. With the AV1, live streaming equipment should be able to deliver higher quality at a lower cost compression artifactseven at lower bit rates.

Discord previously received support for AV1 live streams, though that currently only works on GeForce RTX 40 GPUs. OBS Studio’s AV1 live stream feature also works on Intel Arc Alchemist GPUs. However, the OBS Studio changelog does not mention whether YouTube AV1 live streaming is also supported on AMD Radeon RX 7000 GPUs. OBS Studio previously received support for recording videos with the AV1 codec, also on the RX 7000 series.