How to Fix OBS Black Borders When Capturing 4:3 Games

Capturing older retro games with a 4:3 aspect ratio in OBS Studio often results in unsightly black borders on the sides of your 16:9 widescreen stream or recording. This guide provides straight-to-the-point methods to eliminate these black bars using OBS Studio’s built-in scaling, stretching, and canvas settings, ensuring your gameplay looks professional and fits your viewer’s screens perfectly.

Because 4:3 games are narrower than modern 16:9 screens, stretching the game to fit the screen will distort the image. The most professional way to handle this is to keep the original aspect ratio and fill the empty space.

  1. Center the Game: Select your game capture source, right-click it, go to Transform, and select Fit to screen (or press Ctrl + F).
  2. Add a Background: Place a static image, a looping video, or your webcam feed in the empty space on the left and right sides of the game source. Ensure this background source is dragged below your game source in the Sources list so it sits behind the gameplay.

Method 2: Stretch the Game to Fill the Screen

If you do not mind the game looking slightly wider and distorted, you can force the 4:3 image to stretch into a 16:9 widescreen format.

  1. Open OBS and locate your game source in the Sources dock.
  2. Right-click the source, hover over Transform, and click Stretch to screen (or press Ctrl + S).
  3. Alternatively, select the source in the preview window, hold the Shift key, and drag the red boundary box handles to the edge of the screen.

Method 3: Crop and Scale (Zooming In)

You can zoom into the 4:3 gameplay to fill the 16:9 canvas, though this will cut off the top and bottom of your game screen.

  1. Select your game source in OBS.
  2. Hold the Alt key (Option key on Mac) and drag the side handles of the red boundary box inward to crop out any emulator borders if necessary.
  3. Release the Alt key, then drag the corner handles to scale the gameplay up until the left and right edges meet the boundaries of your canvas. Position the screen so the most important gameplay elements remain visible.

Method 4: Change the OBS Canvas to 4:3

If you are only recording or streaming retro content and do not want any 16:9 widescreen elements, you can change your entire OBS workspace to a 4:3 aspect ratio.

  1. Click on Settings in the bottom-right corner of OBS.
  2. Select the Video tab on the left.
  3. Change the Base (Canvas) Resolution to a 4:3 resolution, such as 1440x1080 or 1024x768.
  4. Change the Output (Scaled) Resolution to match the same 4:3 resolution.
  5. Click Apply and then OK. Your stream or recording will now output as a native 4:3 video file without any black borders.