OBS Studio on a MacBook Pro vs iMac vs Mac Mini

Continuing the discussion from Can we talk about the Mac mini for home working?:

[Hopefully I’ve done the mechanics of splitting off this reply correctly into its own topic. Didn’t want to hijack the other one]

Would love to hear generally what settings you’re using in OBS, @andyupton. I’ve been fooling around with OBS the last week or two for a live stream webinar I’m doing this week. I’ve been using my 2017 MacBook Pro, but have been tempted to go to the office and bring home my 2015 iMac. I’ve cranked down the MacBook settings to 720p (both as the built in screen’s resolution, and in the OBS output settings) and a 2500 bit rate, and the MacBook finally seems OK. Anything higher and the fan was churning and processor usage spiking.

The MacBook Pro has a 3.1 GHz quad core i7 and a Radeon Pro 560 graphics card with 4 GB of memory. The iMac has a 4.0 GHz quad core i7 and a Radeon R9 M395X with GB of memory. I’ve played around with both hardware and software encoding in OBS.

Part of me wonders if the overall lower cooling capabilities of the MacBook have it throttling things a bit, and kicking in the fans, whereas the iMac might be a smoother experience even though older.

And, on a side note, OBS is a ton of fun to play around with!

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