Question / Help Duplicated frames?

[AesoSpadez]

Alright, I'm at a little bit of a loss. I've been playing with QuickSync and trying to work out exactly what's feasible with it. In the logs, there's a couple of tests with me fiddling around. All but the last two are in a source game Dystopia, where I show no duplicated frames. I average about 55% CPU utilization during, and run ~200-300fps in-game.

However the last two streams were a test in Planetside 2, and ended up looking a little bit choppy. I checked the log files and sure enough, I show 5% duplicated frames on the encoder. CPU utilization was in the ballpark of 85% during (Lanczos, so expensive but so good). I had ~100fps the entire time in-game.

So is there anything I can do to reduce the duplicated frames? I know QuickSync uses the integrated GPU to encode, but it's directions come from a regular process. Maybe CPU load has something to do with it?

Also, ignore the audio timestamp stuff. Switching to QuickSync threw all of my offsets out the window. :P

 

[hilalpro]

You should probably lower the in game graphics a little bit if you're playing Planetside 2 at 2560x1440 to leave more room for obs to utilize your gpu.

 

[AesoSpadez]

I'm running the game on Render Quality 50% (effectively rendering 1280x720 and upscaling) to ensure I don't ever drop below 60fps. But even that aside, QuickSync is on the integrated GPU and the game is running on the discrete. I'm not sure I understand how clearing some utilization on the discrete card would decrease duplicated frames? I guess I don't really understand where duplicated frames come from though, so I'll give it a shot.

 

[hilalpro]

Actually you've increased the bitrate and used a more detailed filter when you've had those duplicated frames. It should be a little harder for your igpu to encode at the same amount of scene action.

Can you increase the bitrate little more and run this test with quicksync to see if it result in an increasing amount of duplicated frames that way? viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2613

 

[AesoSpadez]

I should preface this by saying the stream test 'noise' only covers half my display. Don't know if that's intended or not.

Even at 4000 kbps, the stream test is taking me from effectively 0% duplicated frames sitting on a desktop to right about 25%, no matter the downscaling filter. 10Mbps shows pretty identical results (23-25% across all filters).

I'm actually pretty surprised. I expected turning down the filter to make a sizable difference. But maybe you'll have insight into the results that I missed.

 

[hilalpro]

The filter work is handled by your Nvidia card it really shouldn't matter for that scene in particular what filter is as a little more blurry and less detailed text shouldn't keep the encoder from preemptively destroying all the details with a high quantizer to keep up with the bitrate restriction and it also makes it a lot easier to encode in terms of processing..

In short for a given resolution fps specification ect.. The easiest scenes to encode are low motion/details scenes the hardest are high motion/details scenes.

 

[AesoSpadez]

Good to know about the filters, learned something new today.

I'm still trying to track down these duplicated frames, though. Benchmarks using q264 with similar settings (highest quality, main profile) on videos of solid static are showing encode rates of 174fps. So if the encoder isn't overloaded, where are they coming from? Microstutters on the encoder, maybe? I set the QSVHelper.exe process to High with no result.

Any other ideas?

 

[Krazy]

Maybe from all those scene changes. Encoder may not have gotten new data while the scene was changing or something and so it just duplicated the last few until more data arrived. In almost all your tests in the log file provided, you were well under 1% duplicated frames. It seems like the 5% was a bit of an outlier. Anyway, duplicated frames aren't really too big a deal, it's late frames and skipped frames that are a problem. And again, you were well under 1% in both of those categories as well so there is nothing you need to really be worried about.

 

[AesoSpadez]

I would agree, but check out these new logs. There are few/no scene changes, and I'm still producing 25-30% duplicated frames. Granted these are monitor captures (no aero) of a full-screen video of static, but still...

I suppose you're right, that I should stop worrying about it. But it still seems sub-optimal, and I can see in the playback when the duplicated frames start coming out in force.

 

[Krazy]

Not really sure, to be honest. All the timings seem fine, nothing bottlenecking you. Like I said, the more important lines are late/skipped frames.

 

[Boildown]

I think its a Monitor Capture problem. Try using Game Capture or Windows Capture.

From the OBS Log Analyzer:

Monitor capture detected

One of your scenes appears to be using monitor capture. Monitor capture is the slowest and least efficient method of capturing, and can cause FPS lag on both your stream and your game. Consider using game capture or window capture instead (this does not apply to Windows 8).