Question / Help 480p/432p Motion = Pixelation

[ball2hi]

Okay so I've settled on 1550 KB/s with 96 KB/s audio. Quality of 10, veryfast.

@432
@480

Quote from my previous thread in "Bug Reports". It's no longer an issue so I'm posting here to try and get this fixed, if at all possible.

If you look at the videos, you'll notice during key points of motion I get lots of pixelation. Text becomes unreadable, as you see me shoot my bot team mates throughout the stream to show the Black-Red box where incapacitation or kills are shown. I've tried various things to try and solve this pixelation.

The following:
Veryfast -> Faster
1200 Bitrate / 1900 Buffer (At 5, 7, and 10 quality)
1550 Bitrate / 1550 Buffer (At 5, 7, and 10 quality)
30 FPS -> 25 FPS
580p Res w/ 30 FPS
Riding around on a unicycle.

 

[R1CH]

Red (and purple) text will always look bad at lower resolutions due to the chroma subsampling. Nothing you change can fix this, the only option is to increase the resolution to minimize the effect. This is a side effect of the 4:2:0 colorspace used in the video.

 

[ball2hi]

Ah well damn. That sucks... well, what about the rest of the game then? There seems to be some heavy pixelation going on still.

 

[R1CH]

Mostly just a factor of your bitrate, FPS games require high bitrates especially L4D where there's lots of dark areas.

 

[ball2hi]

Mostly just a factor of your bitrate, FPS games require high bitrates especially L4D where there's lots of dark areas.

Even at 432 with 2000 bitrate? That's a lot...

 

[Krazy]

It could also be because of the low resolution. There's only so many pixels or whatever for the image to work with, after all, plus the image is being downscaled.

 

[ball2hi]

It could also be because of the low resolution. There's only so many pixels or whatever for the image to work with, after all, plus the image is being downscaled.

Well I guess that would make more sense. Sucks I don't have the upload speed to handle 540p in FPS though, lol.

 

[Krazy]

Well, almost 1900 bitrate is nearly good enough for 720p30fps really, but idk

 

[ball2hi]

Well, almost 1900 bitrate is nearly good enough for 720p30fps really, but idk

For fast-moving action games though?

So far I'm using: CBR 1550 Bitrate / 1900 Buffer. 30 FPS. 96 Audio.
@432
@480
@540
@616

I've increased the resolution to 540, and then 616 but it doesn't seem to be helping the major pixelation. Also, does Buffer have any major effect when CBR is enabled? Also, is there any noticeable difference to using the new "Filters" option?

 

[ball2hi]

Alright so I've settled on 540p@30fps with 1550 Bitrate / 1950 Buffer (Leaving about 200kb/s room for Netflix/Mumble/Game if there is a peak scene) with a quality balance of 6. Text is now readable a majority of the time but I still get a lot of pixelation while moving, which is probably from the lack of bandwidth.

Is there any way I can decrease pixelation further? What does the new filter option do exactly? It is suppose to affect blurriness but I'm not sure if the filter will increase/decrease pixelation or increase/decrease performance.

 

[hilalpro]

It will increase pixelation when hurting for bandwith and it will decrease performance when hurting for performance.

fortunately you can still make resolutions that requires much less bitrate worth watching using it.

try a 360p quality 10 stream with lanczos downscale.

 

[ball2hi]

It will increase pixelation when hurting for bandwith and it will decrease performance when hurting for performance.

fortunately you can still make resolutions that requires much less bitrate worth watching using it.

try a 360p quality 10 stream with lanczos downscale.

I can't use anything but Bilinear for downscales lower than 2.00.

 

[hilalpro]

It will increase pixelation when hurting for bandwith and it will decrease performance when hurting for performance.

fortunately you can still make resolutions that requires much less bitrate worth watching using it.

try a 360p quality 10 stream with lanczos downscale.

I can't use anything but Bilinear for downscales lower than 2.00.

Then i would say it's not worth it. try 540p once again but on bilinear it should be less "pixelated".

 

[ball2hi]

It will increase pixelation when hurting for bandwith and it will decrease performance when hurting for performance.

fortunately you can still make resolutions that requires much less bitrate worth watching using it.

try a 360p quality 10 stream with lanczos downscale.

I can't use anything but Bilinear for downscales lower than 2.00.

Then i would say it's not worth it. try 540p once again but on bilinear it should be less "pixelated".

That definitely helped at 540p, but there is still quite a bit of pixelation. I'll probably stick to 540p for now until a fix is found, hopefully.

Here is a stream from a previous version. Within 1500-1700 CBR (Back when OBS wasn't spiking 500-600kbps above my max bitrate) which is 480p@30fps. I don't remember the preset. As you see in the stream, there is almost NO pixelation in the previous version of OBS I was using, although it wasn't as smooth as the new OBS.

I figured maybe it's the new OBS processing more/better frames so I tried 480p@20fps with 1700 CBR (Which was spiking like normal in the new OBS still during the test), and just for the heck of it, tried both Veryfast and Faster preset. I still could not get anywhere near the quality of the previous version's stream that I linked.

 

[hilalpro]

Give it another shot with these settings, 540p 1440 bitrate 4320 bufsize at quality 5 it will help alot with sudden movements especially in a game like left for dead 2 and your connection should afford it.

 

[ball2hi]

Give it another shot with these settings, 540p 1440 bitrate 4320 bufsize at quality 5 it will help alot with sudden movements especially in a game like left for dead 2 and your connection should afford it.

Result: 540p (2)

It's still pretty pixelly and nowhere near the quality as the highlight I showed earlier, which was in 480p.

EDIT: Im going to try something really quick with Dxtory.

 

[hilalpro]

the ping looks much better though compared to it.

increase the bitrate to 1600 with a 4800 bufsize lower the fps to 25 and pick the preset "faster"

 

[ball2hi]

the ping looks much better though compared to it.

increase the bitrate to 1600 with a 4800 bufsize lower the fps to 25 and pick the preset "faster"

My CPU can't handle "Faster" preset at 540p. I decided to install the 32bit version of OBS (Since my video card only pushes out 32b, even though my system is 64b) and it seemed to decrease pixelation at 480p, but still nowhere near the original quality.

 

[hilalpro]

If it can handle veryfast at 30fps it should definitely handle faster on 25 . also obs no longer require your platform to match when capturing so stick with 64bit it's a faster platform.. as for the original quality, you can't stream with the original quality.

 

[ball2hi]

If it can handle veryfast at 30fps it should definitely handle faster on 25 . also obs no longer require your platform to match when capturing so stick with 64bit it's a faster platform.. as for the original quality, you can't stream with the original quality.

Result: 540p (3)
Seems much better, minor pixelation but that's probably just my bandwidth limit. I'm also not talking about my platform but my Video Card since I use Game Capture. My Video Card only puts out 32bit, so why use 62bit?

EDIT: What does buffer size exactly do? I can't seem to get an understanding of it even though I keep reading the forums n such.
EDIT2: I think I'll be sticking with the settings you gave me. Seems pretty clear without even full-screening.