Question / Help Best settings for my PC

[BlackenedHeaven]

So first off heres what i have in my pc right now.

Motherboard: MSI 970 Gaming CPU: AMD FX 8350 4.2ghz Ram: Corsair Vengeance Pro 16gb 1866 GPU: XFX R9 280 3gb gddr5 Internet Speeds: 250 dl/25 up

so my big issue is when i stream pc games, i need to know what settings i should be running in obs when it comes to this to make my stream look as good as possible and not choppy. Im going to order a 1070 gpu here soon would that help with making the stream look better?

 

[Beardedbob]

Hi,

Start with the following

h.264 encoder
CBR 2000 bitrate
720p
30fps
Lanczos filter
cpu preset ultrafast

see how it looks and tweak as required. A bitrate though of 2k is what twitch seems to think gives the best quality to viewer ratio. If you are streaming high motion fps you might want to start more at 2500 to 3000 if its pixels / artifacts @ 2k but see how the CPU handles it using h.264, if its feeling laggy you might need to lower the bitrate though changing the encoder to GPU would be the way to go with a slight drop in quality at the same bitrate.

 

[BlackenedHeaven]

Hi,

Start with the following

h.264 encoder
CBR 2000 bitrate
720p
30fps
Lanczos filter
cpu preset ultrafast

see how it looks and tweak as required. A bitrate though of 2k is what twitch seems to think gives the best quality to viewer ratio. If you are streaming high motion fps you might want to start more at 2500 to 3000 if its pixels / artifacts @ 2k but see how the CPU handles it using h.264, if its feeling laggy you might need to lower the bitrate though changing the encoder to GPU would be the way to go with a slight drop in quality at the same bitrate.

Thank you for this info, so for the encoder i have H264 Encoder(AMD Advanced Media Framework), H264 Encoder [advanced] (AMD Advanced Media Framework) or AMD Video Coding Engine h.264 encoder (Media Foundation) im assuming its the last one i want? and all those say amd so are they going to put the load on my gpu or will it still be on the cpu? i only ask cause every where ive read it always says to use x264 so kinda confused on the difference.

 

[Beardedbob]

AMD Video Coding Engine h.264 encoder is the equivalent to Nvidia's Nvenc h.264 encoder. There is also h.264 CPU encoding hence the confusion i think :-)

 

[alpinlol]

fx8350 should be capable of 720p30 on veryfast preset no need to use a ultrafast preset... especially with that resolution/fps/preset combination the result will look horrible.

 

[Beardedbob]

If you do get the 1070 you can then use Nvnec h.264 but at low bitrate this can also look pants. for lower bitrate cpu h.264 is best and GPU h.264 is better for say local recordings where you can apply a higher bitrate.

It can also depend on the type of game high motion, low motion so try a few out see whats looking good then tweak.

 

[BlackenedHeaven]

AMD Video Coding Engine h.264 encoder is the equivalent to Nvidia's Nvenc h.264 encoder. There is also h.264 CPU encoding hence the confusion i think :-)

so the ones i listed were for my gpu then? i didnt see just a straight h.264 so if thats not there how do i get that option?

 

[RytoEX]

so the ones i listed were for my gpu then? i didnt see just a straight h.264 so if thats not there how do i get that option?

H.264 is a video compression standard. Nvidia NVENC, AMD VCE, and Intel Quick Sync are hardware implementations of H.264. OBS Studio used to allow users to use AMD VCE via Media Foundation until AMD released AMD AMF (Advanced Media Framework). x264 is a software (code only) implementation of H.264. If you ever see an option for just "H.264" then it's not really telling you what it's using to produce that compressed video.

Thank you for this info, so for the encoder i have H264 Encoder(AMD Advanced Media Framework), H264 Encoder [advanced] (AMD Advanced Media Framework) or AMD Video Coding Engine h.264 encoder (Media Foundation) im assuming its the last one i want? and all those say amd so are they going to put the load on my gpu or will it still be on the cpu? i only ask cause every where ive read it always says to use x264 so kinda confused on the difference.

In this case, while you have a capable AMD graphics card, you could use "H264 Encoder(AMD Advanced Media Framework)". You should probably use Simple Output Mode, unless there is a really good reason that you need Advanced Output Mode. If you're using the AMF plugin, you should read up on it here.

If or when you get an Nvidia graphics card, you would switch to "NVENC" if you want to continue using a hardware encoder.

Hardware encoders utilize special hardware that handle encoding, so it would be separate from the CPU. Using x264 uses the CPU, often heavily.

 

[BlackenedHeaven]

H.264 is a video compression standard. Nvidia NVENC, AMD VCE, and Intel Quick Sync are hardware implementations of H.264. OBS Studio used to allow users to use AMD VCE via Media Foundation until AMD released AMD AMF (Advanced Media Framework). x264 is a software (code only) implementation of H.264. If you ever see an option for just "H.264" then it's not really telling you what it's using to produce that compressed video.


In this case, while you have a capable AMD graphics card, you could use "H264 Encoder(AMD Advanced Media Framework)". You should probably use Simple Output Mode, unless there is a really good reason that you need Advanced Output Mode. If you're using the AMF plugin, you should read up on it here.

If or when you get an Nvidia graphics card, you would switch to "NVENC" if you want to continue using a hardware encoder.

Hardware encoders utilize special hardware that handle encoding, so it would be separate from the CPU. Using x264 uses the CPU, often heavily.

so i did alot of testing with the encoders today, the amd video coding engine h.264 gave me pretty good quality at 60fps, but i also did a fresh restart on my computer so that i cleared the memory and all that and then used the veryfast at 30fps downscaled to 720 and used the Lanczos filter option and it gave me really good quality at least for local recordings, but using the very fast settings does tax my cpu alot is there anyway to get me cpu to handel it better but keep the same quality?

 

[Beardedbob]

Hi,

you could OC your CPU otherwise not really you would need to use a higher preset as they are less CPU intensive.