Question / Help Encoding Overloaded issues

[Gerk]

Hey all, I recently moved my streaming to a newly assembled desktop PC, a far improvement from my discount 5-year-old notebook in streaming quality.

However, I got not even two nights in when OBS started to choke, flashing Encoding Overloaded messages and apparently killing my output framerate.

Normally I'd conclude this is a slam-dunk hardware issue but:

1. This is a game from early last year, running on default settings
2. The output isn't terribly overblown, just as it appears on my monitor (no scaling, etc.)
3. CPU usage doesn't even exceed 45% when the issues occur, and the game continues to sail along at 60 FPS.

The hardware seems solid enough. So I'm inclined to wonder if there's another culprit at play here. Hence my post (and the attached log, of course.)

Any feedback/suggestions would be fantastic.

 

[Fenrir]

So, there's a few things going on here. Let's go through them:

23:23:34.007: [x264 encoder: 'streaming_h264'] preset: veryfast
23:23:34.007: [x264 encoder: 'streaming_h264'] settings:
23:23:34.007:     rate_control: CBR
23:23:34.007:     bitrate:      2000
...
23:23:34.007:     fps_num:      60
...
23:23:34.007:     width:        1920
23:23:34.007:     height:       1080

2000 bitrate is nowhere even close to enough for 1080p 60fps. If you really want to stream at 1080p 60fps, you'll need to kick bitrate up to at LEAST 7500 for that to start looking decent, and ideally, 9000. Since you're streaming to Twitch, your viable max these days is around 4000 (assuming your internet can handle it, we'll get to that in a moment.) which is just barely enough for 720p 60fps.

So, first step is to downscale your output resolution in Settings -> Video

23:35:13.596: [game-capture: 'Game Capture'] attempting to hook process: XCom2.exe
...
23:35:13.614: [game-capture: 'Game Capture'] d3d11 memory capture successful

This means that something went wrong with the capture, and it's falling back on memory capture, which is VERY inefficient compared to the normal methods. Make sure you don't have the multi-adapter compatibility checkbox enabled in the game capture properties.

00:40:10.034: Output 'adv_stream': Number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 18453 (6.7%)

This usually indicates you're overloading your CPU. While your CPU is certainly not bad, 1080p 60fps is very difficult to encode live, especially for streaming. This should be fixed by downscaling as I mentioned earlier.

00:40:10.034: Output 'adv_stream': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 62072 (22.5%)

This usually means that your GPU is being overloaded. Almost definitely cause by the memory capture method being used, which is slowing everything down.

00:40:10.034: Output 'adv_stream': Number of dropped frames due to insufficient bandwidth/connection stalls: 79 (0.0%)

While normally not a big deal with this few, be aware that dropped frames are a connection issue. This means that 2000 bitrate is probably going to be the max you can realistically stream at, which means you'll also need to lower FPS to 30 in Settings -> Video.

Hope this helps!

 

[xxAssassin349]

Post a log.

 

[Gerk]

So, there's a few things going on here. Let's go through them:

Wow, thanks for the quick response first of all!

2000 bitrate is nowhere even close to enough for 1080p 60fps. If you really want to stream at 1080p 60fps, you'll need to kick bitrate up to at LEAST 7500 for that to start looking decent, and ideally, 9000. Since you're streaming to Twitch, your viable max these days is around 4000 (assuming your internet can handle it, we'll get to that in a moment.) which is just barely enough for 720p 60fps.

While I appreciate the input, where are you getting these numbers from? I'm looking at my first broadcast from the new PC of 1080p60 footage at Source quality and finding no real faults in the picture quality.

23:35:13.596: [game-capture: 'Game Capture'] attempting to hook process: XCom2.exe
...
23:35:13.614: [game-capture: 'Game Capture'] d3d11 memory capture successful

This means that something went wrong with the capture, and it's falling back on memory capture, which is VERY inefficient compared to the normal methods. Make sure you don't have the multi-adapter compatibility checkbox enabled in the game capture properties.

Thank you! That is most likely the problem (will look into it when I get home, as I'm at work currently.) I imported my settings from aforementioned 2012-model notebook, and Multi-adapter compatibility was a must to hook some Game Capture stuffs. Good to know! (Hopefully that's the issue, anyhow...)

00:40:10.034: Output 'adv_stream': Number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 18453 (6.7%)

This usually indicates you're overloading your CPU. While your CPU is certainly not bad, 1080p 60fps is very difficult to encode live, especially for streaming. This should be fixed by downscaling as I mentioned earlier.

00:40:10.034: Output 'adv_stream': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 62072 (22.5%)

This usually means that your GPU is being overloaded. Almost definitely cause by the memory capture method being used, which is slowing everything down.

Again, thanks for the input! I'll look into those avenues.

00:40:10.034: Output 'adv_stream': Number of dropped frames due to insufficient bandwidth/connection stalls: 79 (0.0%)

While normally not a big deal with this few, be aware that dropped frames are a connection issue. This means that 2000 bitrate is probably going to be the max you can realistically stream at, which means you'll also need to lower FPS to 30 in Settings -> Video.

That's unfortunately a weird side effect of my internet here, which is gigabit but routed strangely (NTT West in Kyushu, Japan is my ISP, which does weird stuff with video streams both up and downstream.)

I appreciate the concern, but I get about 100 dropped frames no matter what bitrate I stream at.

Hope this helps!

It definitely did! Thank you very much.

I'm gonna fix the Multi-Adapter Compatibility setting - ideally that should save me from my conundrum. Just to be safe I'll probably drop my FPS for non-action games like XCOM2 (which was said problematic game last night) to 30, which will help things and also strengthen the image quality ever so slightly.

 

[Fenrir]

I'm having encoder overload problems.

My specs are:
Intel i-7 6700 stock cooler
16GB Hyper X 2335MHz Ram
AMD RX 480 4GB graphics card

Please start your own thread and provide a log. In the future, please don't post in other people's support threads with your own issue.

 

[Fenrir]

I watched the VOD you linked and there's very noticeable pixelation throughout, especially with lots of projectiles on the screen (i.e. during a boss fight). So no, the picture quality was not fine. The games you're playing are considered very low motion by video encoding standards, but if you try play anything faster motion, you will see even further image quality degradation.

The numbers come from experience and data has been tested, and tested, and tested again. Here's YouTube's chart, which is fairly accurate (assuming x264 and the veryfast encoder): https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2853702?hl=en