How to change base (canvas) resolution with screen resolution

Do what now?
So I had an issue where sometimes I wanted to record in one resolution and sometimes in another, for example: 3440x1440 (21:9) and 1920x1080 (16:9)

It was a pain to change the display resolution, then change the settings in OBS to match the new screen. So with a couple of free downloadable programs and windows batch files, this is how I solved my dilemma:

First in OBS, set up a new profile for each resolution you wanted to use. I have two:

• 1440p
• 1080p

Change the settings of each profile to the base canvas you want (and the output resolution and any other changes you wish to make, such as frame rate.

Now create a folder to store the files you need and the bat files to run. I called mine "bin"

I then downloaded two command line applications from the internet, putting them in the bin folder:
Qres: https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/qres.html
PSkill / PSkill64: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/pskill

Now create batch files for each resolution in the bin folder:

• 1440p.bat
• 1080p.bat

Use the following code in each bat file, changing

• Line 2 to the resolution you want, e.g. x:1920 y:1080
• Line 5 to the profile you want, e.g. 1080p

This example is the 21:9 setting:


What does it do?

1. PSkill (or PSkill64 for the x64 version) closes OBS if open
2. Qres changes the resolution to whatever you set it to
3. C: changes back to the c: drive (as I was on a different drive to start)
4. CD changes to the directory OBS is installed in
5. Start starts OBS minimised to tray with the profile I specified

Why lines 3 and 4 and not just one line including path to OBS?
I tried doing this in one line but OBS threw errors so this was the quickest (messiest) way for me to work round the working directory issue. There may be a neater way to do that.

Hope this helps someone else with such a (strange) requirement.

Wayne.