Why is my stream a lower resolution than I set?
Because one encode has to satisfy every destination at once, the programme is clamped to the least capable one enabled. Switch on a service that caps live contribution at 720p and everything else receives 720p too.
This is the most common surprise in multi-destination streaming and it looks like a bug every single time. It is not one. It follows directly from sending a single encode to several platforms, and once you can see the mechanism it becomes a decision you make rather than something that happens to you.
One encode, several rulebooks
Encoding separately for each platform would mean encoding your show four or five times over, which costs bandwidth, machine capacity and money in direct proportion. Sending one encode to all of them avoids that entirely, and is why multistreaming is practical at all.
The cost of that efficiency is that the single stream must be acceptable everywhere it is going. If one destination will not take a 1080p live ingest, the programme cannot be 1080p, because there is only one programme.
Where the ceilings actually sit
The large platforms mostly agree on 1080p for live contribution — Twitch, Facebook, Kick, LinkedIn and X all sit there. One major platform accepts considerably more. And at the other end, one very popular platform runs its live ingest at 720p.
Enable that last one alongside the others and your whole simulcast becomes a 720p simulcast. Nothing warns you at the moment you tick the box, because nothing is wrong; the system is doing exactly what a single shared encode requires.
What to do about it
Decide which matters more for the show in question. For a gameplay stream or a concert, where picture quality is most of the product, the answer is usually to drop the limiting platform from the live simulcast and post a clip there afterwards. For a talk-format show where reach matters more than sharpness, 720p everywhere may be a perfectly good trade.
What you should not do is make the decision by accident in the last minute before going live. The platform mix is a production decision with a picture-quality consequence, and it belongs in your planning rather than in your pre-flight.
One more reason a stream comes out lower than expected
Resolution and frame rate are read once when the stream starts, and the pipeline does not renegotiate them mid-stream. If you opened at a lower setting — because you were worried about the connection, or because the studio was left that way after a previous show — that is what the whole broadcast runs at, and the recording inherits it too.
For recurring shows this is worth turning into an advantage: set the format once as part of the template, and take the decision away from whoever happens to press start.
Building against the API rather than running a show? Setting the output format (developer docs) covers the same ground in implementation detail.
Put it to work on a real show
Related guides
Send one encode up and let the fan-out happen downstream. Multistreaming from your own computer sends a separate copy to each platform, so four destinations cost four times your upload. One encode upstream costs the same regardless.
For 1080p30, about 6 Mbps. For 1080p60, about 9. For 720p30, about 3, and 720p60, about 4.5. Frame rate drives the number far harder than resolution does, and your upload has to sustain it, not peak at it.
Live delivery is H.264. HEVC would use fewer bits for the same picture, but major live destinations reject it outright, and HDR is only admitted when paired with HEVC — so HDR is not available on this path today.