Question / Help Browser Source & CPU (optimization)

Emitoo

New Member
Hi,

I have started streaming using Streamlabs OBS recently, and made alerts and other gimmiks using the Streamlabs OBS chatbox / alerts with custom HTML & CSS.
FYI: i am using quite a lot of transparancies, glow effects and box-shadow. Plus, I am not actually playing games, but using other CPU heavy software on stream. So I will upgrade my CPU in the future.

It feels like when I use the browser source, my CPU has to work much harder (about 2x ) than when I just load the URL in Chrome itself. Most of the time, I have to disable the effects, because my CPU cannot handle it when its displayed via OBS Browser source in my stream.


So, i have a two part Question:

1. Are there any insights on WHY displaying animations in Browser source is so much more taxing on the CPU, and how to optimize the overlays for it without sacrificing the effects themselves?

2. When I buy a new CPU for this purpose, what are the specs that really matter? Do more Cores help with rendering animations in browser sources smoothly, or is the speed of the CPU much more important?

I am trying to decide between these CPU that cost around 300€ at the moment.
a. AMD Ryzen 7 1800X, 8x 3.60GHz
b. Intel core i7 7700k , 4x4.2 GHz
c. something completely different maybe
 
I can't tell you about the browersource part, but I can tell you the difference with the CPUs.
In my case I have a 2 pc setup. My first PC has had a 7700k even overclocked to 5ghz and could stream 720p/60fps on medium preset. With my new streaming pc and a ryzen 1800x in it I am able to stream 900p on medium preset.
In general you can say the more cores the better the encoding. 8x 3,6GHz is better than 4x 5.0GHz.
 

xvlc

New Member
The problem is that the CEF (Chrome embedded framework) used in the browsersource plugin is not using hardware acceleration, thus it's using a lot of CPU power. I don't know what the reason for not using hardware acceleration is, if you want to know this you probably have to ask the developers.
Generally the faster the CPU the better, so just check the (multi threaded) benchmarks.
 

xvlc

New Member
Probably these are CSS animations, but i don't have the files so i can't tell you for sure.
It depends on your setup. Let's say you all you want to do is stream a webcam and add animations you could use the GPU for the video encoding, and you have nearly all of the CPU for the animations.
I would assume most people who earn money with streaming games have a two computer setup.
 

Osiris

Active Member
The problem is that the CEF (Chrome embedded framework) used in the browsersource plugin is not using hardware acceleration, thus it's using a lot of CPU power. I don't know what the reason for not using hardware acceleration is, if you want to know this you probably have to ask the developers.
Generally the faster the CPU the better, so just check the (multi threaded) benchmarks.

Hardware acceleration in CEF is not very good, to put it mildly.
 

Emitoo

New Member
Although it is probably the best way to stream, a two computer setup is out of the question for what i am doing.

At least now i know where the Problem really is (CEF & missing hardware acc), and that i am not doing anything wrong, i just need a more powerful CPU to do what i want to do.

This has been insanely helpful guys, thanks a lot!
 
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