Question / Help Buffer size/stream quality help?

[ball2hi]

CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 635 3.2 Mhz
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 5670 1920 x 1080
RAM: 4 GB
Upload Speed
1.80 MB/s
2.07 MB/s
Current Stream Channel

Current Settings
Quality: 7
Max Bitrate: 1600
Buffer Size: 3200
Audio Bitrate: 128
Minimize Network Impact: ☑
Downscale: 2.00 (960x540)
FPS: 30
Use Multithread Optimization: ☑
x264 CPU Preset: Veryfast (Can increase to Faster)

Currently, the settings above are the settings I've been using for my past few streams. They work great, but I've been noticing that my streams feel a little "choppy". I don't know if that's just how 30FPS looks, or if there's a problem.

I set my buffersize to 3200 because of some "Ultimate Streaming Guide for TF2" saying to put int double your bitrate as buffersize in OBS. Everywhere else I read though, it says set my buffersize to the same as your bitrate. The thing is, if I set my buffersize to 1600 (Or even lower my bitrate to 1500 and set buffer to 1500) my in-game ping spikes like crazy. Every few seconds my ping would double, if not triple unless I had buffer size of 3200, or something absurdly high.

I read this, but I don't understand the buffer-size part. Increasing the buffer size actually stabilized my ping, but I read in some places that higher buffer-size can result in lost frames.

TL;DR: What the hell is buffer-size? How do I use it properly.

 

[hilalpro]

you have enough bitrate for 540p that the bufsize doesn't matter much. so try the following

enable cbr
max bitrate= 1700
aac 96

the quality and bufsize values doesn't matter when using cbr.

you should close/pause your stream, it's best to just checkout the vods if you wanna check for smoothness.
it is also a good idea to post a log file if you're still having any problems.

 

[ball2hi]

you have enough bitrate for 540p that the bufsize doesn't matter much. so try the following

enable cbr
max bitrate= 1700
aac 96

the quality and bufsize values doesn't matter when using cbr.

you should close/pause your stream, it's best to just checkout the vods if you wanna check for smoothness.
it is also a good idea to post a log file if you're still having any problems.

Whenever I used CBR, and set it to something like 1700, my stream would constantly peak at 1900-2100. Causing ping issues. It's a little annoying, but I'll give it a try with AAC 96. 96 won't cause too much audio quality loss, will it?

 

[hilalpro]

yes aac 96 will be saving you around 50kbbps when there's alot of audio going on. if you focus you will notice the difference from 128 if you're playing lossless music in the background. otherwise there's little to no difference.

 

[ball2hi]

Alright so, I tried out CBR with 1700. Before I always had issues with it, but then again I had AAC 128 and had custom buffer size still on (Don't know if that causes any issues even though CBR is on?). Didn't notice much of a ping issue but Im going to drop it down to 1650 to see if I can lower my ms spike of 10/15ms.

Anyways, I recorded a VOD but unfortunately I can't test it out right now. Either my ISP or Twitch is being a PoS right now because all of my VODs/highlights are stuttering like I don't have the bandwidth to view them.

EDIT: Been meaning to ask, what's "Desktop Boost" do? Some streams, other people talking on Mumble are hard to hear and such over the loud game.

 

[ball2hi]

so the ping spiking as stopped. Stream looks decent but during high-movement my in-game chat becomes unreadable. Blurry, ect.