Bug Report Benefits of using Dxtory and OBS?

X

Xerouz

Member
I'm having some issues streaming, as it seams my computer is aging. But specifically I'm having issues streaming Starcraft II. When not streaming, I get an FPS of around 100-120fps with a dip around 60-90fps during big battles and such. But when streaming, I get a starting FPS of about 60, and it works it's way down to 30 fps as more stuff appears on screen. It should be noted that all my ingame settings are on the lowest quality.

I have an AMD Phenom II 940 Black Edition processor clocked at 3.2 GHz and and nVidia GTX460 GPU and 8GB DDR2 (833MHz) memory. Now, when I stream games like League of Legends (in fullscreen) I keep a constant 60fps (but with flickering).

But I guess what I need to get to is this: I've heard people say they use Dxtory to capture fullscreen games and output that to OBS (or Xsplit in some cases). What I want to know is, what would be the benefit of doing this? Is it a performance boost? Would it be worth it, with my specs, to try this route? Would recording games in fullscreen with Dxtory help at all? When gamesource capture is implemented in OBS, will this improve performance?

Thanks in advance.
 
M

Muf

Forum Moderator
If you want to try high performance capturing similar to DXTory, try out the alpha test of the new Game Capture Source:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=283

Note that it may be unstable or not faster than regular software capture at all, depending on your system and the game you're trying to capture.
 
X

Xerouz

Member
Thanks. I've also noticed I posted this question in the wrong section of the forum. But what I was wondering, is there an actual performance gain to using a capture software and doing it in fullscreen? To me it seems counter-intuitive to add another running process to decrease workload on the CPU.
 
Warchamp7

Warchamp7

Forum Admin
The issue is how fullscreen rendering works. In order to capture a fullscreen game, you need to hook the process somehow, either using something like Dxtory or OBS's experimental game capture.

Fullscreen games perform better than windowed but they make alt tabbing more difficult, so it's a tradeoff you have to choose.

Is Fullscreen + Dxtory less intensive than Windowed Fullscreen + Window Capture? That's something I personally can't answer
 
F

funtimeplayer

New Member
Does OBS Game Capture mode only benefit games in fullscreen non-windowed mode? Can it benefit fullscreen windowed mode too, or would that not even work with Game Capture mode?
 
X

Xerouz

Member
OK, I've installed Dxtory and can confirm, after a few settings tweaks, that I do indeed get increased performance in Starcraft II. While Dxtory still shows me dipping down to 30 fps, there is a significantly less amount of "stuttering" that seemed to be present before. Next time I'll try streaming with the game capture plugin to see how that goes.

Also, I don't know if this is a bug that's been reported, but if Dxtory is capturing, and you stop preview or streaming in OBS, OBS seems to hang until you stop capturing in Dxtory. It acts as if OBS has crashed, but if you hit your hotkey to stop capturing in Dxtory, OBS recovers instantly.
 
R

ruxxar

New Member
Xerouz said:
OK, I've installed Dxtory and can confirm, after a few settings tweaks, that I do indeed get increased performance in Starcraft II. While Dxtory still shows me dipping down to 30 fps, there is a significantly less amount of "stuttering" that seemed to be present before. Next time I'll try streaming with the game capture plugin to see how that goes.

Also, I don't know if this is a bug that's been reported, but if Dxtory is capturing, and you stop preview or streaming in OBS, OBS seems to hang until you stop capturing in Dxtory. It acts as if OBS has crashed, but if you hit your hotkey to stop capturing in Dxtory, OBS recovers instantly.
Click to expand...

I've been using DXtory for a very long time together with Xsplit, I can tell you this: Whether you use window capture or game source capture with OBS, you're going to get similar if not better performance than DXtory.
 
R

Raini

New Member
You're seeing a significant performance dip regardless of graphic setting because streaming is reliant on CPU power; not GPU power. I'm overclocking to 4.8 GHz just to be able to stream games like DayZ, Chivalry, and TF2 at 1080p/30FPS while getting around 60FPS in my game; and that is with both Dxtory and OBS! Prior to Dxtory and OBS, I could only stream 720p/20FPS when playing these games. XSplit also contributed significantly to FPS drop on my end as it was a CPU hog even when it wasn't doing the video capturing.

The short answer is that if you are using XSplit to Broadcast, then OBS will reduce your CPU load. If you're also using XSplit to Capture, then Dxtory will help to reduce your CPU load considerably. This is all while working within the limitations of your PC/processor however. Not everyone can stream 60FPS or even 30FPS video while maintaining a good framerate within their games, no matter what software they are using. Processor is important.

I personally think that Dxtory was worth every penny that I spent on it. Dxtory, like OBS, is a program maintained by the blood and sweat of a single individual who works very hard to keep it updated. Purchasing it once also entitles you to access to all future updates. It isn't like XSplit where you have to pay a recurring subscription just to have access to basic features and keep the program updated. It is also a program that you're likely to use and benefit from regardless of the broadcaster software that you decide to use.
 
L

Lain

Forum Admin
Lain
Forum Moderator
Developer
Raini - I definitely don't discredit what dxtory has done. Writing a game capture hook that works well, with as few bugs as possible is an extremely daunting task. I should know, because the reason I haven't even had any updates in about 2 weeks now is because I spent my entire time on trying to perfect my own game capture, something which I'm only just about finally completing after spending about a total of 4-5 weeks time on it. And that's me spending literally every waking hour on it (coupled with a guy who has no life, that's a lot of coding time). It's a seriously complicated project. I have quite a bit of respect for the work that was put into dxtory after my own experiences.

Anyway, I don't want to downplay the work that went into dxtory, however I do have to point out that my game capture plugin is going to get far better performance due to a variety of reasons. First one being that I made a fairly huge technological development that makes it so that it uses almost literally zero CPU (does everything via the GPU, doesn't transfer anything to RAM) and has almost no effect on your game, and the second reason is that it interacts directly with my application -- it doesn't have to go through directshow or anything for example, it just goes straight into the stream output. I have managed to keep good on my promise for a high performance game capture, and I'm pretty proud of it. I was a bit worried while making it for a while, but I refused to give up, and finally pulled it off.
 
X

Xerouz

Member
Jim, I would love to try the game capture, but as of now, I'm getting a game crash with Starcraft II every time I alt+tab out of game. Sure, I could avoid crashes by just not alt+tabbing, but I'd like to be able to look at my builds, change songs on Padora, or other things while between games. Sounds like the gamesource capture would work great for my system, but until you've got it where you want it, I think I will have to stick with Dxtory.
 
M

Muf

Forum Moderator
Switching to Windowed Fullscreen should allow you to continue reaping the benefits from Game Source without getting crashes while alt+tabbing.
 
X

Xerouz

Member
I could try that, but some games (League of Legends) seem to run at about half the FPS in windowed borderless mode (fullscreen) as they do in fullscreen.
 
L

LunarEclipse

New Member
yeah ive been having that problem with league of legends. put my league of legends in fullscreen window to stop my HUD flickering. It worked. only downside is that i get terrible frames :( . maybe a build will be released soon that will fix the full screen flickering. *crosses fingers*
 
G

Gorgatron

New Member
Jim said:
Raini - I definitely don't discredit what dxtory has done. Writing a game capture hook that works well, with as few bugs as possible is an extremely daunting task. I should know, because the reason I haven't even had any updates in about 2 weeks now is because I spent my entire time on trying to perfect my own game capture, something which I'm only just about finally completing after spending about a total of 4-5 weeks time on it. And that's me spending literally every waking hour on it (coupled with a guy who has no life, that's a lot of coding time). It's a seriously complicated project. I have quite a bit of respect for the work that was put into dxtory after my own experiences.

Anyway, I don't want to downplay the work that went into dxtory, however I do have to point out that my game capture plugin is going to get far better performance due to a variety of reasons. First one being that I made a fairly huge technological development that makes it so that it uses almost literally zero CPU (does everything via the GPU, doesn't transfer anything to RAM) and has almost no effect on your game, and the second reason is that it interacts directly with my application -- it doesn't have to go through directshow or anything for example, it just goes straight into the stream output. I have managed to keep good on my promise for a high performance game capture, and I'm pretty proud of it. I was a bit worried while making it for a while, but I refused to give up, and finally pulled it off.
Click to expand...



This is very good news to hear. I'm glad to hear about your dedication. Will you setup a donation button via paypal of some sort? I know for sure if I earn anything from streaming I will donate. IF not, I will try and find some funds for your time.
 
R

Raini

New Member
Jim said:
Raini - I definitely don't discredit what dxtory has done. Writing a game capture hook that works well, with as few bugs as possible is an extremely daunting task. I should know, because the reason I haven't even had any updates in about 2 weeks now is because I spent my entire time on trying to perfect my own game capture, something which I'm only just about finally completing after spending about a total of 4-5 weeks time on it. And that's me spending literally every waking hour on it (coupled with a guy who has no life, that's a lot of coding time). It's a seriously complicated project. I have quite a bit of respect for the work that was put into dxtory after my own experiences.

Anyway, I don't want to downplay the work that went into dxtory, however I do have to point out that my game capture plugin is going to get far better performance due to a variety of reasons. First one being that I made a fairly huge technological development that makes it so that it uses almost literally zero CPU (does everything via the GPU, doesn't transfer anything to RAM) and has almost no effect on your game, and the second reason is that it interacts directly with my application -- it doesn't have to go through directshow or anything for example, it just goes straight into the stream output. I have managed to keep good on my promise for a high performance game capture, and I'm pretty proud of it. I was a bit worried while making it for a while, but I refused to give up, and finally pulled it off.
Click to expand...

Jim, I recently updated OBS (thank you for fixing the Text Source issue and also adding a Layered Window option so quickly), and decided to try out the Game Capture function after reading your post. I wasn't expecting to see much of a marked improvement over Dxtory, but this is phenomenal! I'm able to get around 50FPS within Planetside 2 now while streaming the game at 1080p/30FPS (prior to this I had around 30-20FPS depending on what was going on in the game, which is a major CPU hog in and of itself). I was having mouse sensitivity issues for some reason prior to this (possibly due to the load on my CPU), which forced me to stream at 720p. If it wasn't for my viewers wanting 1080p video, I would totally stream this at 720p and be getting 60FPS within my game (and possibly on the stream, too) -- it is THAT huge if an improvement. If there is still room for improvement here then I can't wait to see it, because this is like silk over Dxtory. You have every reason to be proud of this! Amazing work!
 
X

Xerouz

Member
I would also like to say that with the latest update, I've completely dropped Dxtory. Not that I don't like it, but my performance is so much better now.

On my older system: (CPU- Phenom II 940 @3.2GHz, 8GB DDR2, nVidia GTX460), I'm able to stream my games at 720p, on quality 10, faster preset @ 30FPS. I'm still getting 120-130 FPS at the start of a Starcraft Match, with a dip down to about 80 FPS.

With Dxtory, I dropped my quality to 7 and preset to veryfast and would get framerates on the high end of 90 and low end of 45. It really has improved my performance, especially on my older PC.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top