Question / Help Bad quality on x264 medium preset?

[El Matador]

Hello,

i checked many forums and topics about this and i am still a little bit confused, so i will try my luck to ask a question here about my stream quality.
I am currently using double pc streaming setup with Elgato HD60 Pro and i am not very satisfied with the output video quality on my stream.
Here is VOD of my last stream and i think the quality doesn't even look a little bit satisfying for x264 medium preset on 8000 kb/s

VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/454059095
OBS log: https://pastebin.com/hngFPW1u

Am i just paranoid and the quality is fine for this setup? Maybe there is something wrong in my OBS settings, maybe everything is allright and this is the quality i should get with my pc specification. Also i've seen many streamers encoding trough new RTX cards and their streams looks beautiful. Should i invest in new RTX card and switch to NVENC? I am curious and kinda desperate about this, any responds much appreciated!

Thank you in advance, have a nice day,

Marv

 

[koala]

I cannot comment if the quality of the vod is good or bad (for me it's good enough), but the log you posted shows that you were encoding with a bitrate of 6000, not 8000. The log shows a negligible amount of errors (lags or lost frames), so it's as good as it can be from the streaming PC's point of view.

 

[Sukiyucky]

It looks fine.

Avoid getting caught in the trap of chasing quality. You'll just be never satisfied, let alone throwing money at more hardware for such little improvement that very few people will even notice.

The difference in veryfast to medium is slightly discernible. Along the lines of 2% in PSNR. Striving for better quality requires more CPU horsepower and cost its not even worth it for a miniscule percent improvement above medium preset (tenths of a percent PSNR).

Without higher bitrate and higher worldwide average download speeds (4.5Mbps currently), high quality Twitch streams aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

 

[Deleted member 121471]

I noticed a trend among my friends with great setups that they tend to over scrutinize their own steam quality and under scrutinize popular streams when, in fact, everyone has issues in high motion, high particle count scenes and other scenarios that contain elements that require much higher bitrate to compensate for. If 3rd parties start pointing out all the quality issues, they stop seeing these popular streams as "flawless".

Your stream looks as good as it can be expected for your chosen preset and bitrate.