Artifacts in my videos, please help!

[Mastrada101]

So I have an issue with artifacts appearing in my videos, and it happens no matter what game I am playing. I play at 4K resolution, but I have it set to record at 1080P. I am using the nvenc encoder, with CQP set to 25. My color format is set to I444, color space 709 and color range limited. Max key frames are set to 2, and the preset on slow. I have tried cycling through the color spaces and formats, and even tried changing from full to partial color range. I have tried CQP all the way from 18 to 35. I have tried turning on and off psycho visual tuning, as well as cycled through the presets from fastest to slowest. Nothing seems to work. My specs are as follows:

MB: MSI MPG B550 Gaming Plus
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Ram: 32GB
GPU: Zotac RTX 3080
Monitor: Samsung LU28R55 4K monitor

I have plenty of hard drive space as well. What am i doing wrong here?

Log file link: https://obsproject.com/logs/WJwA8ddvRBLyf1Oa

 

[Mastrada101]

So I said I record in 1080P. The reason for that is because I used to record in 4K and I would get bad laggy video with a lot of artifacts. I've recently decided to scale it back down to 1080P, but the artifacts still remain. The colors aren't as exact as in the games themselves, and I have cycled through every possible color setting in OBS as well as tinkered with the nvidia settings themselves to no avail. Also, I already have HDR turned off in Windows settings, and I did try turning it on and off again, so I know it isn't that. My GPU drivers are the ones from about a month or two ago, but even before that I still had the issues. Anything you guys can do to help would be appreciated.

 

[koala]

It's not clear what you mean with "artifacts". In case you mean visible compression artifacts (blurry parts, loss of detail), start with default settings and change one thing after the other to iterate to your desired picture quality.

canvas resolution and output resolution both 3840x2160 (nvenc should be able to handle 4k @ 60 fps just fine)
color format nv12, color space rec. 709, color range limited (these is the default, use this!)
simple output mode
recording video encoder hardware (nvenc, h.264)
quality "indistinguishable quality, large file size"

This should be your baseline and should give acceptable video quality with no visible compression artifacts. Use VLC media player to inspect your video, not the integrated video playback from Windows.

In case you want to switch to advanced output mode (definitely not required), make sure you choose nvenc h.264 as encoder, cqp as rate control. For fine tuning quality, keep in mind lower cq values mean higher quality. You used 25, but with this you were choosing a somewhat low quality. Simple output mode with "indistinguishable quality" uses something along 18-20 as far as I remember, and 23 for medium quality. Your 25 is even lower than medium quality. If you choose something along 15-18, your eye will not observe any quality difference from the video to your original raw game.
Don't ever use CBR or VBR for recording.

And forget color format i444, if you don't have an explicit requirement for that. For just gameplay recordings, this isn't required. Don't be obsessed with videos being 100% exact to the raw game. They're not. Video compression simply takes its toll to quality. Rate the quality of a video by watching the video. Not by pixel to pixel side-to-side comparison between original and video.

 

[Mastrada101]

Hi koala,

I tried the changes you suggested, and went back to standard settings by letting obs set them via the wizard, and switched the color format and color space back to default, and I had the same artifacts appearing still, as well as my colors being dull and a little washed out. I had already tried a reinstall of OBS while saving all my scenes and settings and such but that didn't work either.

So today I tried a complete fresh reinstall of OBS from scratch, no saved settings or scenes. I let OBS set my recording settings automatically at 1080o, which is where I want it for now, and re-set up my headset and mic the way I had it before. I recording format was set to mkv by default, which I changed to mp4, and changed it so that it only records 2 audio tracks (one for desktop/game/background sound, while the other track was for my mic exclusively, which is how I had it before). I got a game source set up using game capture, entered the gme, hit my record hotkey, let it run for a few minutes, then stopped it to check the recording. I checked and watched the test and everything was as it should be, no artifacts, no dull washed out colors. Everything was literally exactly as shown in the game. So success, finally fixed my problems. Really wish I'd done a fresh install with no saved settings in the first place, it would have saved me days of troubleshooting, lol.

In any case, got it all working properly now, so thanks for the suggestions, it did kind of help point me in the right direction towards a full reinstall with no saved data. I plan to switch back to 4K recordings soon, but I am waiting to upgrade my system to AM5 platform and the top model cpu for it before I do that, the 7800X3D. Only things I still don't have are the CPU, a liquid cooler I'll be using for it, and ddr5 ram. Maybe I'll get one or two of those for christmas lol. Anyway, thanks again!