OBS: cropping without black bars

Question

OBS is awesome because of its many many versatile features. Sadly, at the same time it seems very rough around the edges, making it hard to get even basic things working.

I want to capture a portion of the screen. This seems very difficult, and never works out quite right. By comparison, when using QuickTime (on MAC), I don't get many other features, but at least I can just use the mouse to select a portion of the screen and start recording.

In OBS (on Windows), I try to do the following:

1. Add a Window Capture source to the scene.
2. Add a Crop/Pad filter.
3. Guess and adjust the numbers needed for the Crop/Pad filter to work. (Why can you not just select the area with the mouse? Why does it want numbers? It has that "mouse selection" feature in other places...)
4. Start Recording

Results

• Now it comes out with black bars because, for some reason, the input does not match the output resolution or something?
• I have to manually adjust the output resolution width and height, for this to work.
• Also, when making certain changes, the originally nicely configured Crop filter suddenly moved everything ever so slightly, and the recorded area needs more manual adjustments.
• The most fun part: the next time I do it again, I have to do all these steps again.

Can this be just ever so slightly less involved? Maybe I'm just doing something completely wrong?

Answer 1

I guess, OBS is just a bit buggy, but with some gentle nudges, it forgets being buggy for a little while.

I found that this works:

1. Add a Window Capture source to the scene.
2. Add a Crop/Pad filter.
3. Adjust the filter numbers.

Now, whenever recording (or after changing any numbers), the following "life-hacks" help fix all the size and misalignment issues:

1. Right-click the Preview -> Resize output (source size)
   • This fixes the preview and crop misalignment.
2. Press Stuio Mode twice, and voila! Fixed!
   • This fixes Program on the right-hand side having those extra black bars.