Question / Help Capture card question

[BluetickCooner]

If you look at this post https://obsproject.com/forum/thread...oads-constantly-for-my-viewers-but-why.18465/ you can see the issues I am having with some viewers after some more investigation it seems to be more when I stream from console not pc. I have the magewell xi100dusb-hdmi I bought this when I was going to stream some with laptop which proved to be a dead in. I do know some streamers that use this with no problems. I have also noticed green dots all over the captured video. My question is does anyone know or use one of these and are they having any problems with it? Also since I built a new computer now I could get an internal capture card. Which one would someone suggest the pcie avermedia live gamer hd or the pcie elgato hd60 or any other that if you had to buy a new card you would buy now. Thanks.

 

[Boildown]

Green dots is a bad sign, or maybe a loose connection. The ability for people to watch without buffering has to do with your output bitrate more than any other factor. Might be the only factor. If you have OBS logs from your console vs PC streams then we might be able to say more.

As for a capture card, if you have a PCIe 4x (or better) slot available in your PC and you can route audio separately (to line in of sound card for example), then snipe this Ebay auction: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Datapath-Vi...-Capture-Card-PCIe-PC-APPLE-NEW-/201534435638 . The last one this seller sold went for the original price to someone who sniped it with 4 seconds left. And $100 is an absolute steal for that capture card.

Failing that, you could try to see if the Magewell works better with your new computer, since you already have it. The Avermedia you mentioned works well for most people but it can't do 1080p60 recording. The Elgato is new and not a lot has been said about it yet.

 

[FerretBomb]

I stand by the SC512 (Micomsoft SC-512N1-L/DVI, or Yuan SC-512; same card). 1080@60 capture with sync'd audio (unlike the Datapath cards) and a variety of inputs (including HDMI via passive adapter). If mine broke, I'd be ordering a new one within five minutes.

I also have an Elgato HD60 Pro. Solid card after some early software teething issues, but it's HDMI-only.

Recommend against Avermedia. Starter-grade gear. Don't waste the money.


Just as a side-note; I've had green-dot problems before, as well as a few other graphical issues. Once was a dying HDMI cable due to flex damage, and each other time was that the cable wasn't securely plugged in fully before the cap/console was started up. Switching them off, unplugging and firmly replugging the cable all the way in, then turning everything on again fixed it up. Usually can tell by getting the green dots, then wiggling the cable. If they shift around, bad cable or connection (possibly even inside the console/cap device connector).

 

[BluetickCooner]

Streamed for couple hours tonight and things seem to have smoothed out FerretBomb I took your advice and went back to 2000 bitrate seemed to work fine even played with the hdmi cables and got the green dots off the screen. I am attaching the log for tonights stream. Everything seems to be fine but I do have this warning in it

WARNING: Another hook is already present while trying to hook d3d9.dll, hook target is unknown. If you experience crashes, try disabling the other hooking application

Is this something that can be fixed or do I even need to worry about it?

 

[FerretBomb]

Those can just appear sometimes. I have that warning myself. The only time to worry about it is if you have something like MSI Afterburner, AMD "Gaming Evolved", SweetFX, Overwolf, etc installed. If you do, should uninstall them as they can impact performance and capture stability.

Glad to hear the green-dots problem was just the HDMI connection after all! Saves a couple bucks.

Can just run with your current settings and everything should be fine now. If you want to optimize further though, two things. First, disable CFR. Twitch needs CBR, but CFR is just there if you're locally recording and want to edit the videos you've saved with a 'picky' video editing suite, like Sony Vegas. It doesn't make much difference if it's on or off, but it can smooth things out just a little more.

Second, and more quality-based, you have an i7-4790K. It's almost certain that it will be able to handle a lower x264 preset than Veryfast. I'd recommend going down to Faster, then do a test stream at least 20 minutes long of actual heavy gameplay. Watch your CPU temperature, throttling and load. If it's fine, then go down another step. The slower the preset, the more CPU it uses, but the better compression it uses, so your stream's video quality will be higher. You generally want to shoot for 60-80% CPU load as a safe point, with the option to run up to 90% load. Want to leave some safe margin for any game you're playing on the machine (and shouldn't use the Magewell for on-system gaming; Game or Window Captures are much more efficient and lower-overhead), but the slower you go on the preset without over-loading the system, the better. I'd spitball-guess you'll probably be able to hit Medium at least, but do test each step.

Likewise, if possible gaming and streaming at 'native resolution' is going to give you the best possible picture quality on-stream. Consider running your console in 720p mode, cap card the same, and OBS also with a base resolution of 720p. Everything will be much crisper and clearer for your viewers; a downscale is a noticeable quality loss beyond just the lower resolution. It's mostly there for those on-PC gaming on a 1080p monitor who don't want to deal with playing their game at 1280x720; something that really shouldn't be a problem as far as console gaming is concerned, since most are optimized for each resolution level, and many just don't/can't run at actual 1080 with a good framerate anyway (looking at you, XBone).

 

[BluetickCooner]

ok so Im doing the suggestions my question is do i just go to base resolution in obs and select custom and put 1280 x 720? and leave windows settings the same correct? Then go to capture card right click on it go to properties and do the same for the capture card? Should I leave the frames the same for streaming off of the ps4 and xbox at 60 or change to 30? Also i do stream counter strike will i be able to keep these settings or will i need to make another profile for 1080p game capture streaming which is how i stream csgo btw in game capture.

 

[FerretBomb]

You'll want separate profiles. One for 720p native, with a base 1280x720 resolution and a scene collection with all of your art assets scaled in a graphic editing program to be the right size for 720p. Then set the capture card input to produce 720p video, and the console to output 720p video as well. Framerate is dependent on what your capture card can capture.

A different profile (not using the capture card at all) for on-system gaming with a base res of 1920x1080 and a 720p downscale, and a scene collection with all of your scenes set up with 1080p-sized art assets. You don't want to squash/stretch ANYTHING in the preview window, as it's a very poor quality resize. Use GIMP or Photoshop beforehand.

60fps in general is NOT recommended if you are streaming to Twitch and are a non-partner. It requires quite a lot more bitrate, and generally isn't needed outside of a few technical requirements... it's wasting bitrate that nonpartners don't have to spare.

 

[BluetickCooner]

thanks for all the help... another quick one if i decide to go from console to pc will i need to restart the stream or can you switch profiles on the fly ? Also OBS is saying i need to use the encoding profile main for twitch instead of the default high? Any idea why or what that does?

 

[FerretBomb]

You need to restart the stream to switch profiles/resolution/scene collections.

Main is a marginally lower quality setting, but it's supported by a lot more mobile devices, why Twitch recommends it. You can run on High and it will look better on PCs and any mobile devices that support it. (Apple didn't put in High support on older models of their iphones, so your stream wouldn't be available on them.) I'd just stick on High, honestly.

 

[BluetickCooner]

So I did what you said and tried to stream division today for a test and it looks like that is a cpu hog of a game. Attached is the log file. Using the corsair software my cpu load stayed between 90-100% I dont think i will be able to use the faster preset for that game or maybe any game capture that Im gaming and using obs on the same computer. The funny thing is that the CPU load stays from 60-100% when Im just playing the game and not streaming and if i drop the quality down to medium on the game it still does not seem to change much. Im not sure how accurate the CPU usage is with that program but i do know when i streamed that game i did get high cpu encoding errors and it did not look good. Your thoughts on this game and streaming and playing it on same pc? I know there are some out there doing it and I feel my computer while it might no be the best out there should hold its own. I did download a new video driver after that log file that was supposedly released just for that game. I did move preset back to veryfast for pc stream profile. Is there possibly a more accurate cpu usage program out there i should try?


Also there seems to be reports of this from the beta

https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision/comments/43a7xu/the_division_stuttering_100_cpu_usage/

http://www.pcgamesn.com/the-divisio...-footage-may-be-difficult-due-to-known-issues

 

[BluetickCooner]

changed back to very fast and this is the log file it seemed to run decent have the game set on medium quality. I'm still running anywhere from 85-99 % rarely hit the 100% mark I did the test for about 25 mins of gameplay.

 

[FerretBomb]

Yep, The Division is extremely heavy, along with being very visually complex along with high-motion. I'm normally able to run most games on my 5820k at 1080@60 on Medium. I have to cut down for The Division to 1080@30 Veryfast. It's a massive pig, and is poorly optimized as heck. The problem is that even a 2PC setup is going to have issues with it as a lot of the load is the amount of *stuff* that tends to be on-screen. It's super-noisy all around.