# Script
Streaming HDR to YouTube is now possible with OBS!
Thankfully it’s less of a mess than editing videos with HDR, which…
we’ll talk about in the next video, but this begins my 3-part series of making HDR content OR
playing games in HDR and streaming in SDR. We’ll cover everything you need to get set up. Let’s go!
This video is sponsored by Curiosity Stream. Help keep this documentation coming and get access
to my own streaming site, Nebula bundled with Curiosity Stream at the link below.
First and foremost, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and is the new video format that much of
video technology is moving to. With HDR video, the higher dynamic range, as the name suggests, allows
for much brighter whites in the video, allowing for an exponentially higher contrast between
white and black parts of the screen, allowing for much more dynamic and true-to-life images.
There’s a bunch of different standards, it’s a trainwreck on PC, and it’s not even worth using
other than on phones or if you have OLED-based displays, BUT that’s where things are going.
For this video, you will need a HDR display that you plan to use or
game on (or theoretically just a HDR input video source from a camera),
the ability to encode HEVC H.265 video via an AMD or Nvidia GPU, and a YouTube account with
live streaming enabled. Those last two are only required for actual HDR streaming, you can use
H.264 and other websites if you’re streaming in SDR and just tonemapping - which we’ll cover, too.
I do want to note here, while you DO need a HDR monitor to engage HDR in games and capture them,
you DON’T need a good one. A lot of LCD monitors come with HDR
400 or 350nits modes - what we like to call “HD-Aren’t”, it’s fine for making content.
Just like how game captures don’t reflect the quality of your screen, if you’re just trying
to capture HDR gameplay and not doing a bunch of color grading or anything, you’ll be just fine.
By the way, this is all using the new OBS Studio version 28 beta.
The full release build of the update should release by the end of August,
and I generally recommend waiting due to the plugin incompatibility issues I mentioned in my
previous video covering the beta, but this kind of functionality will mostly remain the same.
If you want to just PLAY your games in HDR and continue streaming and making content in SDR,
we’ll cover that first.
First, if you’re playing console games - or games on a dual PC streaming setup - via a capture card,
you don’t actually have to do anything different. All of the existing capture cards you would be
using that allow for HDR to pass through it to your monitor will also automatically
tonemap your footage from HDR to SDR in OBS by default. Just do what you’d normally do.
If you’re unhappy with the capture card’s HDR to SDR tonemapping or just want to experiment,
you can let OBS tonemap it to SDR for you. Go into your Video Capture Device properties for the
capture card and change the Video Format to P010 and Color Space to Rec. 2100 (PQ), if available.
Of course, also setting your console or PC on the other end to HDR. I’ll have a list linked below
of capture cards that the OBS team have already validated to work in HDR mode with the update
so far, but here’s where it stands. AVerMedia Live Gamer 4K, the 4k60 Pro Mk.2, the HD60 X and
S+, and 4K60 S+ from Elgato, plus the EVGA XR1 Pro and ASUS TUF CU4K30. Most Magewell, AJA,
and BlackMagic Design cards that support 10-bit and HDR should also work. As I get time, I’ll
try to validate more cards and contribute them upstream, but I don’t have time at this moment.
This will add your capture card’s HDR feed to your normal
SDR canvas and tonemap it to SDR to fit with everything else.
If you’re on a single PC capturing your PC games, first make sure your display
is set to HDR and your game is running in HDR, or using Auto HDR in Windows 11.
Then go into your Game Capture source properties and change the Color Space setting from RGB
to Rec. 2100 (PQ) which will hook your game in full HDR. And again,
it’ll be added to your normal SDR canvas and tonemapped to SDR for you. Easy peasy.
It’s very important to note that many filters and effects will not work if a
source is operating in HDR, so this will impact some existing setups.
Now what if you want to STREAM in HDR? Currently, YouTube is the only
mainstream platform to support this, and you can’t stream the normal way.
First and foremost, let’s set up OBS to operate in HDR. Go to settings - Advanced.
Change “Color Format” under the “Video” subsection to “P010”. Change Color Space to “Rec. 2100 (PQ)”.
Leave Color Range on Limited. Leave everything else alone
unless you know what you’re doing. I010 and HLG can be used instead of these settings for HDR,
but they’re less ideal and P010 and PQ are recommended for most users. Click apply and OK.
HLG and PQ are different “gamma curves” for HDR video - effectively complicated maths
used to determine brightness and saturation levels of the pixels. It’s out of the scope
of this video to dive too deep into them, but these days PQ is the preferred way to
go for most applications, so sticking with it should get you the best results most quickly.
Now we need to add HDR sources to your canvas or modify your existing sources to support HDR.
If you add a Video Capture Device for a capture card, under Video Format
choose P010 and Color Space, choose Rec. 2100 (PQ). I’ll have a list linked below of capture
cards that the OBS team have already validated to work in HDR mode with the update so far, but
here’s where it stands. AVerMedia Live Gamer 4K, the 4k60 Pro Mk.2, the HD60 X and S+,
and 4K60 S+ from Elgato, plus the EVGA XR1 Pro and ASUS TUF CU4K30. Most Magewell, AJA,
and BlackMagic Design cards that support 10-bit and HDR should also work. As I get time, I’ll
try to validate more cards and contribute them upstream, but I don’t have time at this moment.
Obviously make sure you have a HDR signal running
through the capture device from a game console, PC or camera setup, of course.
Click OK.
Game Capture sources - for games running on the PC you’re running OBS on - now have
a new option at the bottom for “Color Space.” RGB should be left on for SDR,
but if you’re gaming in SDR, set that to Rec. 2100 (PQ) and click OK.
It’s very important to note that many filters and effects
will not work if a source is operating in HDR, so this will impact some existing
setups. I cover this in the previous video. This will break a lot of existing setups.
It’s also worth noting that any non-HDR sources added to your
canvas will now appear a little dim, since they, well, *are* compared to HDR sources.
This is normal and just the consequence of mixing SDR and HDR sources. You can use the
Color Correction filter on your SDR sources to try to tweak brightness or contrast to
fit a little better, if desired, but it won’t ever really look perfect.
If things are looking too dark and grey, you can also experiment with both the “SDR White Level”
in Advanced Settings in OBS and in your Windows HDR settings
and see if that makes your footage look a little more true to life with mixed sources.
Now we have to set up your stream. As mentioned, YouTube is the only platform
to support HDR right now, but you can’t use the normal RTMP streaming method,
instead we have to use a different protocol called HLS.
Go to Settings - Stream. Click the drop-down next to Service, click Show All,
and choose “YouTube - HLS.” Connect your account if desired. Now we also have to
change your encoder. H.264 encoders cannot be used for HDR, so no x264 or normal GPU
encoders. This version 28 update lets you use AMD and Nvidia HEVC H.265 encoders instead,
which will encode HDR video. Quick Sync HEVC support will come in the future,
and eventually AV1 can be used, too. Go to Output Settings. Change your encoder to NVENC HEVC
for Nvidia users or AMD HW HEVC for AMD users. Set up your normal stream settings. Change
“Profile” from “Main” to “Main10”, as we need 10-bit for HDR. Click apply and OK. Make your
stream event on YouTube and start streaming. Congrats, you’re in high dynamic range!
Covering this OBS update and Intel's AV1 encoder has brought out a LOT more support than I could
have imagined the past couple weeks, and I just want to say thank you. I have received a
ton of requests to cover more ways to use the AV1 encoder, HDR in OBS, all the different OBS update
bits and everything you can imagine - and I'm getting there as quick as I can. But really,
I'm only able to drop EVERYTHING else and focus so significantly on these new developments thanks to
your support over on Nebula. Nebula is my own creator-owned video streaming site where my
videos are ad-free, higher quality (as often noted with Microphone reviews) and I include lots of
extra exclusive stuff that I can't have on YouTube - such as extended cuts of quality comparisons,
full sample downloads, and so on. The best way to sign up for Nebula is through the bundle we've
made with Curiosity Stream - another awesome video site full of documentaries and wonderful
nonfiction work. I've been OBSESSED with all the new photos coming out of the James Webb telescope,
and Curiosity Stream has a new show all about them called "First Images" that you should check out.
Our bundle is priced more cheaply than anything I've honestly ever seen in this market, as you get
access to Curiosity Stream's massive library WITH Nebula thrown in for free
for under $15 per year. That's a lot of content for your money, a higher value than just about
any other site can offer. Sign up for the best deal in streaming and help me continue to provide
tons of thorough testing and documentation on this kind of tech at CuriosityStream.com/epos
Thankfully, HDR streaming isn’t too complicated, but editing HDR videos gets messy. We’ll
cover that after I show you the recording workflow in the next parts in this series.
I’m your Stream Professor, remember: Be kind, rewind.