Question / Help 24/7/365 OBS stream with 6x Logitech webcams

[Adam Powers]

I've used OBS Studio to stream my African Cichlid show tank to YouTube live for over a year 24/7/365. Along the way I've added a bunch of custom HUD integrations to provide interactivity through YouTube Live chat with stream itself. Super nerdy but it's been fun for putting the parts together. See it live here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheCichlidShow/live

There are actually 5x Logitech c920s and a single C930e feeding a single OBS Studio media server at 1080p 30 fps. From a performance standpoint OBS destroys XSplit. I've tried both.

But despite the awesomeness of OBS I'm finally reaching the limits of what I can do with my current configuration and the number of cams is leading to BSDs and other OBS problems that are really quite difficult to recover from. I have a ritual that I must follow after an OBS crash else the media server will BSD when OBS starts. Stuff like that.I also have two USB addon-cards helping with voltage, etc. It all works but needs 24/7 care and feeding.

I think the config file from my setup might be of interest - especially for testing corner cases. It's also running 24/7 so you can see it in action.

https://gist.github.com/84e2b843e2dfea49bc2cd8790846c987

 

[Michael Graves]

The config file indicates that your C920s are setup for I420 format video, but the C930e is set for MJPEG. You might find the system more stable if you used MJPEG for all the cameras. That would ease the load on the USB bus controllers.

Also, ensure that all cameras are operating at the scene resolution. You have one operating at 1600 x 896. That could have been forced if you were running out of bus bandwidth. Again, changing to MJPEG format would ease that problem.

 

[Adam Powers]

Thanks Michael, I had wondered if mixing / matching formats made a difference. I'll synchronize on MJPEG. The quality seems better with I420 but I'll give it a shot.

I also didn't know it matted that they were all at the same resolution. In fact the last time I tried to get the stereoscopic view to run at 2x 1080p I got encoder shortfalls. I'll set it up again with all same format and resolution and see what's up.

 

[Michael Graves]

If your output is set for 1080P the largest factor in terms of image quality is scaling the video. Ideally, all the cameras should be set for 1080P, which means that they must be set to MJPEG.

You can't get 1080P at a decent frame rate using YUY2, I420 or RGB. You'll only get 7-10 frames/sec and the USB bus could become unstable.