Question / Help Dual Xeon Quality/settings help (log included)

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HeXBLiTz

New Member
hi there,

i have a Dual Xeon E5-2670 System for streaminng via a Elgato HDPro.

i have included a log file of my last stream also.

i can not go lower than "slow" preset without it saying encoder overload and to me with slow, 720p, 2800 bitrate the quality isn't that great so would apprechiatte someone looking over my logs and settings.

system Spec
2x Xeon E5-2670
8gb 1600MHz Ram
evga 750ti 2gb
samsung evo SSD 500gb

stream settings
encoder: x264
rescale output: 1280x720
CBR on
Bitrate 2800
Keyframe interval 2
CPU Preset Slow
Profile Main

audio rate 44.1khz
Base res 1920x1080
rescale 1280x720
filter Lanczos
fps 60

Example from the stream the log was used
https://www.twitch.tv/hexi_axios/v/75799128

Now my CPU usage on the xeon is only ever 30% on the slow preset but i can't encode at a slower rate and i don't know if i'm expecting to much but the quality of the stream to me doesn't seem better than before i setup a dedicated stream PC while gaming and using a faster preset

anyway any help or feedback to improve my visual quality would be great
 

Attachments

  • 2016-07-02 14-15-11.txt
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T

TryHD

Member
3500 kbit bitrate should increase the quality.
afaik OBS could only use one socket and the solution was to switch to xsplit to utilize both CPUs, maybe that got fixed over the years. you can set the settings to placebo and take a look at taskmanager if all CPU cores are at 100% or only some. Would be nice to get the info from you what was the outcome of this test.
 
H

HeXBLiTz

New Member
3500 wouldn't be good for me as i'm not partnered on twitch or get enough viewers for transcoded options on my strean.

and i'm not sure what you mean or want me to do , i can't go lower then slow without an encoder error so placebo wouldn't work
 
Mroczny_Gustaw

Mroczny_Gustaw

Member
to bump image quality you can
1. set profile to high
2. use fps=30

no need for output rescale if you did it once on video tab
 
T

TryHD

Member
HeXBLiTz said:
3500 wouldn't be good for me as i'm not partnered on twitch or get enough viewers for transcoded options on my strean.

and i'm not sure what you mean or want me to do , i can't go lower then slow without an encoder error so placebo wouldn't work
Click to expand...

That was just to see if OBS does use all your CPU threads or you may have to switch to xsplit so you can go with lower x264 settings. If you don't want to go with a higher bitrate on twitch you will have to switch to a other plattform like hitbox or youtube which can handle even 10000+ kbit/s bitrate fine. youtube gives you reencoding even without viewers, sadly youtube does reencode the highest setting too which makes the quality worse again. So to get the best quality go with hitbox.tv
 
O

Osiris

Active Member
Just stick to slow.
Just because you have so many threads available, doesn't mean x264 can offload work to all of them.

@TryHD Xsplit also uses x264 so switching to that won't matter.
 
H

HeXBLiTz

New Member
So I switched to 30fps and it helped reduce the artifacts quite well BUT last night the GF streamed the same game at the same settings (resolution, fps, bit rate ect) apart from she used "very fast" as she was playing and streaming at the same time.

Her video quality looked considerably clearer than my own did she has 2500K 16GB ram and a 390x.

Surely havig my cpu preset on "slow" or "slower" should net me a cleaner image right?

Whenever the action picks up my stream was considerably more pixelated than hers, could this be due to ram or gpu power at all?
 
S

sam686

Member
Log show 32-bit. Try using 64-bit. Slower preset use too high rc-lookahead that 32-bit OBS may run out of memory. Too high rc-lookahead will increase live stream delay. VeryFast default to rc-lookahead=10 which is good.

For x264 encoder, too many threads may worsen quality for constant bit rate with limited buffer as required for livestream. With CPU having over 16 threads, might want to limit number of threads for x264 encoder using threads=12 in custom x264 options. Default x264 threads is (1.5 * cpu_threads). Reducing number of threads will slightly reduce stream delay, and can improve live stream quality so long as you are not frame skipping with "CPU Overloaded".
 
H

HeXBLiTz

New Member
sam686 said:
Log show 32-bit. Try using 64-bit. Slower preset use too high rc-lookahead that 32-bit OBS may run out of memory. Too high rc-lookahead will increase live stream delay. VeryFast default to rc-lookahead=10 which is good.

For x264 encoder, too many threads may worsen quality for constant bit rate with limited buffer as required for livestream. With CPU having over 16 threads, might want to limit number of threads for x264 encoder using threads=12 in custom x264 options. Default x264 threads is (1.5 * cpu_threads). Reducing number of threads will slightly reduce stream delay, and can improve live stream quality so long as you are not frame skipping with "CPU Overloaded".
Click to expand...

Would turning off hyper threading and running both cpus as stand alone 8 cores help with thread reduction? Or best to use the code?
 
S

sam686

Member
@HeXBLiTz Just stick with using custom x264 option, threads=12, this may improve live stream quality. Hyperthreading don't make a difference while using x264 threads=12, so you may keep hyperthreading enabled.
 
H

HeXBLiTz

New Member
sam686 said:
@HeXBLiTz Just stick with using custom x264 option, threads=12, this may improve live stream quality. Hyperthreading don't make a difference while using x264 threads=12, so you may keep hyperthreading enabled.
Click to expand...

yeah i enabled the "threads=12" didn't seem to change much. i dno what i was expecting maybe i should increase bit rate away from 2500, even my friends PS4 stream (from his ps4) comes out less pixalated when the action gets going.

i'm now using

720p
30fps
2500 bit rate CBR
Slow CPU preset (slower encoder errored with threads=12 enabled)
Main profile
Keyframe 2
bicubic
64 bit OBS studio

thanks for all the advice guys it has cleaned up the image a bit in the high speed stuff
 
Videophile

Videophile

Elgato
x264 requires threads AND clock speed.

Xeon cores are generally clock lower, and that's what is most likely blocking you from using the slower preset.

I myself am using a 5960x at 4.0Ghz and can stream at 720p60 using the slow preset.
 
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