Container Codec Support

Container and Codec support in OBS

Note: Everything here assumes the early 2023 obs-deps FFmpeg muxers being used.

Video Codecs

Container	H.264	HEVC	AV1	ProRes
FLV	✅	❌	❌	❌
MP4	✅	✅	✅	❌
MOV	✅	✅	❌	✅
MKV	✅	✅	✅	✅
M3U8 (HLS)	✅	✅	❌[1,2]	❌
TS	✅	✅	❌[2]	❌

[1]: HLS with fMP4 supports AV1, but is not supported by OBS
[2]: AV1 in MPEG-TS is being standardised

Audio Codecs

Containers	AAC	ALAC	FLAC	Opus	PCM
FLV	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
MP4	✅	✅	☑[3]	☑[3]	❌[4]
MOV	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅
MKV	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
M3U8 (HLS)	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌
TS	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌

The following issues are worth noting:

• MP4 with FLAC crashes Resolve but seems to work fine in other software

[3]: Current obs-deps FFmpeg version requires "experimental" standards compliance (-strict -2), no longer necessary in latest FFmpeg
[4]: Support is standardised, but FFmpeg doesn't support it yet. See https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/10185

Which container(s) can I use?

For the purposes of this list, TS also includes M3U8 (HLS).

Codecs	H.264	HEVC	AV1	ProRes
AAC	Any	MP4, MOV, MKV, TS	MP4, MKV	MOV, MKV
ALAC	MP4, MOV, MKV	MP4, MOV, MKV	MP4, MKV	MOV, MKV
FLAC	MP4[5], MKV	MP4[5], MKV	MP4[5], MKV	MKV
Opus	MP4, MKV, TS	MP4, MKV, TS	MP4, MKV	MKV
PCM	MOV, MKV	MOV, MKV	MKV	MOV, MKV

[5]: Current obs-deps FFmpeg version requires "experimental" standards compliance (-strict -2), no longer necessary in latest FFmpeg

This leaves us with this "scoreboard":

Container	Valid combinations
MKV	20 (all)
MP4	12 [6]
MOV	9
TS	4 [7]
FLV	1

[6]: Once PCM support in MP4 is in FFmpeg this number will go up to 15
[7]: Once AV1 support in MPEG-TS is finalised this number will go up to 6