For those of us that want to create videos, either as content creators or for other home use, we are usually surprised to see that by default, the Meta Quest 2 records in an archaically square, 4:3 aspect ratio, and at a video quality that is leaving us for more. Luckily, many good folks have found ways around this so that the video footage coming from the device can look better on our typically more modern 16:9 widescreen displays.
Although this does come with some caveats, the overall quality is higher. The drawback of the following method is that the footage is zoomed in and cropped to have the appearance of widescreen resolutions and is not “true” full HD widescreen. However, the pros of the increased bitrate and the removal of vertical letterboxing is a worthwhile compromise. If you too, would like to capture 1080p footage on your Quest device, the instructions are below and are fairly simple to follow.
- Ensure that SideQuest is installed. Stay tuned for our article on that if you’d like more help setting that up on your own device.
- Once installed and with your headset connected, select the Device Settings & Tools option in the top-right menu.
- Enable Full Rate Capture. This allows the Quest to upgrade the frames per second of the recording from 30 to 60/72fps.
- Select the Run ADB commands in the top menu and select Custom Command. Simply copy & paste the following commands one by one into the Custom Command text field and click the Run red Command button.
- adb shell setprop debug.oculus.capture.width 1920
- adb shell setprop debug.oculus.capture.height 1080
- adb shell setprop debug.oculus.capture.bitrate 10000000
- adb shell setprop debug.oculus.foveation.level 0
The above commands as you might be able to tell force the Meta Quest 2 to format the recordings in 1080p, increase the bitrate for higher quality footage, and removes the Field-of-view settings that distort the image.
Soon enough, you might even be able to change these settings from within the Sidequest app!
Please note that due to the higher demand on the Quest or Quest 2, the battery will drain slightly faster during recordings. If you find this to be an issue, please check out ways to supplement this by either staying plugged in during recordings or by adopting a battery strap.
Joel Forest