OBS Studio 28.1 introduces support for NVENC AV1 hardware encoding

With the release of the RTX 40 series, Nvidia introduced a new codec named NVENC AV1. As such, streaming software has to be updated to support the new encoder. OBS Studio has just introduced this with version 28.1, alongside other new features and fixes. 

Only RTX 4090 owners can take advantage of the new OBS studio feature introduced with version 28.1. In addition, the encoder can only be used to capture video because no streaming platform supports it. Other limitations include working only with NV12 (OBS default – 8-bit, 4:2:0) and P010 (10-bit, 4:2:0) colour formats and not supporting “rescale” in advanced output mode.

OBS Studio version 28.1 also brought other changes, including numerous bug fixes and updated Nvenc presets. The full changelog can be read below:

• Added NVENC AV1 hardware encoder on Windows:
  • Currently only works with the NV12 (OBS default) and P010 colour formats
  • Currently does not support the “rescale” feature in advanced output mode
  • Only available for RTX 40 Series video cards from NVIDIA
• Updated NVENC presets:
  • Presets have been split into 3 different settings: Preset, Tuning, and Multipass mode
  • Presets are now P1-P7, lower numbers being lower quality, higher numbers being higher quality. Note that higher presets may incur higher GPU usage which could impact the performance of games running simultaneously with OBS. The number of simultaneous NVENC encoding sessions may be lower when using the highest presets. OBS will automatically map your current NVENC settings to the closest preset when upgrading.
  • Tuning is used to determine whether to prioritize latency or quality. It has three settings: High Quality, Low Latency, and Ultra Low Latency.
  • Multipass Mode is used to determine whether a second pass is used in encoding, and has three settings: Disabled, Quarter Resolution, and Full Resolution. Enabling this will give higher quality at the cost of more GPU resource usage.
• Fixed a bug where Direct3D 9 games stopped capturing properly with game capture on Windows 11 22H2.
• Moved “Always on Top” to the View menu.
• You can now select a specific source for the Virtual Camera.
• Fixed a crash on resolution change of Windows Virtual Camera.
• Fixed a Discord crash with Windows Virtual Camera.
• Fixed crashes with macOS applications loading the virtual camera.
• Fixed Steam version launching x86_64 version on Apple Silicon devices.
• Fixed Stats widget appearance issues.
• Fixed Blend Method in Studio Mode.
• Fixed case where video capture is darkened when both luma wipe and scale filtering are set.

You can download OBS Studio 28.1 HERE.

KitGuru says: Do you own an RTX 4090 card? Will you try the NVENC AV1 hardware encoding with the latest OBS Studio version?

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