Question / Help Artifacting

S

SolAureus

New Member
So I've been having some trouble with Artifacting when lots of stuff is happening on screen (for example, in MMOs when I spin the camera quickly). With my preliminary research I came across this thread:

http://obsproject.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4798

which is the issue that I'm having, but it seems like the person resolved it for a local copy, but I'm looking to resolve it for my livestream.

I've tried the suggestions that FerretBomb gave in that thread: My average upload bitrate was 3.6 Mbps (via http://testmy.net/upload), I set my buffer to 3500 (Max bitrate is currently at 2000). I tried dropping the quality to 8, it didn't seem to help much either. Downscaling 1.5x did help, but the artifacting is still there. In addition, I'll mostly be streaming FFXIV, and I'm a bit concerned that with the downscale the chat log and tooltips on abilities might become unreadable, so I'd rather not downscale if I don't have to.

So my question is: what do I need to do to get rid of this artifacting without downscaling? And what's causing it? I'm new to streaming and don't necessarily understand a lot of what's actually going on with the streaming process and what specific settings do exactly, so any sort of explanation of pertinent information there so I could learn would be awesome.

Video tests and log files (I played the same stage in Sonic Generations for all videos. Since it's a Sonic game, there's a lot of movement and thus a lot of the artifacting.):

1920x1080 Quality 10
Log File (08:57)

1920x1080 Quality 8
Log File (08:44)

1280x720 (1.5x Downscale) Quality 10
Log File (09:06)
 
R

R1CH

Forum Admin
Developer
You cannot do 1080p60 with such high motion and only 2mbps. You need like 4-5mbps for a game like that. It's probably best to downscale to 720p or lower if you're limited to 2mbps, and use CBR.

You could also try tune=animation in x264 custom settings.
 
S

SolAureus

New Member
Thank you for the reply. I gave my ISP a call to upgrade to a better internet package so I could get higher upload speeds, and supposedly I'm supposed to be getting up to 10Mbps up right now. testmy.net still shows me as averaging 3.4 Mbps average (doing 6MB and 25MB upload tests) even after their fix though, the only thing that changed was speedtest.net shows 10-12Mbps up now. Can someone explain to me why it's different, what my actual speed is, and what I should do from here to get that 4-5 Mbps required to run 1080p60?

Testmy.net results:
http://testmy.net/db/w8MU6CW

Speedtest.net results:
http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/2881044583
 
K

Kharay

Member
Do not stream at 1080p@60 FPS, period. Not only is it very costly in terms of PC performance and bandwidth for yourself, it is also quite heavy to watch and may prevent people with a less than brilliant PC from watching your stream.

If you must stream at 1080p, do it at 30 FPS instead. However, I personally would suggest sticking with 720@60 FPS instead. Which would leave you with more CPU & GPU time to work with as well as leaving you with more bandwidth to increase the quality of the stream with.

As far as the difference between SpeedTest and Testmy.net goes -- SpeedTest's test is more bursty in nature; testing the maximum burst capability of a connection as opposed to Testmy.net which is based on a more constant stream of data. SpeedTest is awesome for testing the viability of a connection for purposes such as browsing and such; Testmy.net is better suited to test the viability of a connection for streaming purposes.

Regardless, I would also recommend against streaming at 4 - 5 Mbps in general. The Twitch.TV staff frowns upon anyone streaming at exceedingly high bitrates and recommends a maximum of 3500 Kbps. And, in fact, it is more than possible to make a stream look pretty damned good with as little as 2000 Kbps.
 
Krazy

Krazy

Town drunk
I would also recommend sticking to 720p60fps, especially with that CPU. Play with Lanczos and Bicubic downscale filter for some more image clarity.
 
S

SolAureus

New Member
Thanks for the responses all! After some tinkering I got it to work at an acceptable level doing 720p45fps with a 3500 Kbps max bitrate and 4000 Kbps buffer.

I didn't encounter any problems with this bitrate even though my average upload speed is 3.4 Mbps, so I think I'll stick with this and see how well it work for FFXIV once I can play it again.

Thanks again for all of your help!
 
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