Question / Help Another "help with choppy/blurry stream" thread!!

[therick04pp]

I have been trying and trying and just cant get a good stream for the life of me. It's either blurry and not choppy or clear and choppy, so here I am looking for some help/info.

Not sure what you need for info, but here is some:
i5 6600k (oc to 3.9)
32gb ddr4 (oc via XMP) @3200Mhz
MSI gtx 1070
1080p 32" 165Hz monitor, running it @ 144Hz with vsync to lock frames at 144 in game
Playing/streaming Warthunder on Max or high settings.
350Mbps down, 12Mbps upload, internet speeds (Fiber coming soon if that matters)

Of course I want to stream at 1080/60fps, but I don't think that's going to happen. It looks semi-ok at 30 FPS @1080, still a little too blurry and still a little too choppy for enjoyable watching. At 720, its much more blurry but not choppy at all. I have tried using filter to increase sharpness, but they do very little.

So here I am.. What can I or should I use for settings for the best possible stream? I could try medium graphics I suppose, but anything short of that?

 

[Narcogen]

There's no stutter-free method of streaming 60fps from a 144hz or 165hz display.

If the problem you're having is more than just the inherent stutter of the conversion to 60hz, please post a logfile.

Please post a log with your issue! Here's how...

 

[therick04pp]

There's no stutter-free method of streaming 60fps from a 144hz or 165hz display.

If the problem you're having is more than just the inherent stutter of the conversion to 60hz, please post a logfile.

Please post a log with your issue! Here's how...

Thanks for responding. After some research, I was able to stream at 1080 @60 fps without any choppiness by using the graphics card, instead of my cpu for encoding. This allow me to run high graphics, at 144 frames on my desktop, run obs @ 1080 and 60 fps without lag in game or choppy visuals. The only issue I have now, is that the quality is not great. It looks the same as 1080 @ 60fps when it was choppy, just now it is smooth but still blurry. Bitrate is 6k, preset to quality.

Is this still part of the 144hz and 60 fps problem? It looks great when im stationary, but poor when im moving. Also, how long of a stream do I need to make a viable log file to view? I see "not a long enough stream for a good log file" thing, a lot. Lol

 

[FerretBomb]

1080p60 wants around 12mbps 'on average' to maintain decent video quality. You're giving it half of what it needs. It's going to have very visible pixelation, blur, and other artifacting.

 

[therick04pp]

1080p60 wants around 12mbps 'on average' to maintain decent video quality. You're giving it half of what it needs. It's going to have very visible pixelation, blur, and other artifacting.

Thanks! I am NEW to all of this, so please forgive the ignorance... Lol, but 12mbps on average, of what?

 

[FerretBomb]

12mbps bitrate for an average motion game. High-motion games, especially with lots of detail like grass and foliage will need more bitrate, while low-motion games like Hearthstone can generally get away with less bitrate. If you're playing a first/third-person shooter where the entire video frame moves a bunch, you'll need to use more bitrate. You're currently using about half of what you 'need' for an average game at 1080p60.

Do note that if you're streaming to Twitch, their recommended maximum bitrate is 6000kbps (which you're using at present). Going above that may result in technical problems, and is at your own risk. Generally people are able to stream 8000kbps, but going past that (and sometimes even just at that) you can run into major issues. Even more-so, streaming at a high bitrate is very harmful to your stream's accessibility... it shrinks your potential viewership to only those with a strong enough connection to the Twitch servers to watch at that bitrate.
Generally it's a much better idea to run 1080p30 at 4500kbps (for slower-moving, detail/text-heavy games), 720p60 at 4500kbps (for retrogames where sprite blitting transparency *needs* 60fps to display correctly), or 720p30 at 2500kbps to maximize your accessibility and potential for growth.

It's also advised to run your monitor at 120hz instead of 144hz; 120hz cleanly divides down to both 60 and 30fps, meaning you'll get stable frame-pacing allowing for smooth playback. 144hz will mean that the frame-discard will be uneven, leading to stuttery and non-smooth motion in the stream output.

It can be very hard to avoid getting caught up in chasing big numbers. It's one of the easiest pitfalls for a new streamer to fall into.

 

[therick04pp]

Thank you FerretBomb, I appreciate it! Before I switched monitors, I had 1080 @ 60fps running good and I was very happy with it. 6kmbps and defaults from running OBS auto config, worked well (My 1080 @ 60fps gameplay video), but I was running 60hz on my old monitor. Now with the new monitor, I can't get anything close to how good it was. I have not tried 120hz on the monitor yet, but I will give it a try. It was such a huge difference going from 60 to 144 that I really, really do not want to drop it back to 60hz, so I am trying everything that I can to avoid it. It's crazy to me to think, that my monitor is causing my stream problems.

 

[therick04pp]

Figured I would report back. So 60hz didn't do much at all. Dropping quality to medium in game, resulted in real bad choppiness?? It was smooth on max settings.. Lol, im at a loss. I can not for the life of me, get the stream as good as it was in the above video, after changing monitors. Not even using the 60hz / 60 fps option. Lowering the in game graphics resulted in worse stream then max settings. I think I need a beer.. Only other thing that has changed, is the game went through a major update. Maybe that is what is causing my issues. Something with their new update.

 

[SpectreKid]

Figured I would report back. So 60hz didn't do much at all. Dropping quality to medium in game, resulted in real bad choppiness?? It was smooth on max settings.. Lol, im at a loss. I can not for the life of me, get the stream as good as it was in the above video, after changing monitors. Not even using the 60hz / 60 fps option. Lowering the in game graphics resulted in worse stream then max settings. I think I need a beer.. Only other thing that has changed, is the game went through a major update. Maybe that is what is causing my issues. Something with their new update.

It would be helpful with a log. That way we can see your settings in more detail. You could be overloading your encoder, but we don't know for sure without a log.

Post a log here: https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/please-post-a-log-with-your-issue-heres-how.23074/

 

[therick04pp]

It would be helpful with a log. That way we can see your settings in more detail. You could be overloading your encoder, but we don't know for sure without a log.

Post a log here: https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/please-post-a-log-with-your-issue-heres-how.23074/

Here it is. https://obsproject.com/logs/S_4uxXzHznJ5c63n

 

[therick04pp]

Figured I would post the results of the Twitch inspector report.

 

[SpectreKid]

Choppiness is normal at 1080p60 @ 6mbps. This is also the Twitch bitrate cap, so there is no better quality than this for streaming. You can't really expect perfect quality in a stream, anyways. However, if this was a recording, I'd tell you to either use CQP values or a bitrate of 20000 (Elgato HD quality) - 50000 (overkill basically flawless quality).

For streaming, this is the best you can get, only suggestion to get a little better quality is to change to Lanczos and use 709 Partial (Full oversaturates the image.)

 

[FerretBomb]

Concurring, never run Full color range unless you know exactly what you're doing, and have an end-to-end Full colorspace production pipeline. It only works with local recordings, and will skew the color space badly on streams which are hardcode-forced to Partial on output. 601/709 is more personal preference, even if 709 is 'better', it's mostly a wash.

From your log, it appears you have two monitors connected? Are both running at the same refresh rate?
If not, be aware that Windows has a MAJOR, long-standing problem with hardware accelerated applications running on disparate refresh rate monitors. It'll cause massive judder and chop, as Windows doesn't deal with mixed refresh rates well.
The fix is to run all monitors at the same refresh rate.
A workaround on some machines is to disable the Preview in OBS (right-click in the preview window, select Disable Preview).
An update is expected in Windows 10 2004 later this year that fixes the issue, but until then, running all monitors at the same refresh rate is the only sure-fire fix.

 

[therick04pp]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I did read about the issue with different refresh rates on muti monitor setups, I have been minmizing my 60hz monitor so there is no animation on it, while streaming. After playing around some, I got it to where I think it is good. I have made the changes recommended above, hopefully it makes it even a little bit better. I appreciate the help!