Finding a good spot for resolution/fps/bitrate/bpp

dyne092

New Member
Hi everyone,

Can someone help me with understanding how these 4 things affect eachother when determining the quality output of my streams ? Basically i'm trying to tweak my stream for FPS games at 1440p@144hz and want to squeeze the most quality out of a set bitrate cap of 4000/6000 kbps. I know that sticking to a 16:9 output if i'm recording a 16:9 source is the right thing to do but i'm unsure if sticking to a number divisible for 4 or 8 can help with screen tearing in some way ? Also if how setting a custom stream fps impacts frame pacing or skipping. I've been thinking and testing 1080@48/50 fps to get a clearer image during motion by sacrificing overall smoothness. Some of the changes i've been making feel like they've been useful tweaks to help get my streams to what I want them to be but I want to know if anything behind them may be fundamentally wrong and causing problems ?

Thanks for anyone that can help.
 

koala

Active Member
This is a very good set of questions you are asking yourself. I try to give some information, so you might be able to find an answer to your specific demands:
  • aspect ratio isn't relevant for quality, as well as if a resolution is dividable by 4 or 8. Relevant in this regard is what the streaming provider supports and what your viewers support. Actually, the 16:9 aspect ratio is supported by everyone and other aspect ratios are supported by almost nobody
  • the vast majority of users are using screen resolutions of 1920x1080 (63%) and 1366x768 (11%) according to the Steam Hardware Survey. Other resolutions are negligible.
  • choosing a fps where the monitor resolution isn't evenly dividable by the fps leads to tiny stutters. The standard monitor fps is still 60 Hz, which is relevant if you design your stream with regard of your potential viewers. So you should create a stream with 30 or 60 fps, and no other fps, because your stream might not look smooth. And if you choose 30 or 60 fps for your stream, make sure your local monitor refresh rate is also evenly dividable by 30 or 60. If you use a 144 fps monitor, reduce to 120 fps while you stream.
  • double the resolution means 4 times the bandwidth requirement
  • double the fps means double the bandwidth requirement
  • not satisfied bandwidth requirement means less quality. That means, if you increase the fps, you need to increase the bandwidth accordingly. If you increase the resolution, you even have to increase the bandwidth with a factor of 4. The other way round works as well: if you half the resolution, you get a quality improvement as if you provided 4 times the bandwidth.
  • reducing the resolution means reducing the sharpness of details. With restrained bandwidth this is often better than stream with higher bandwidth but visible compression artifacts or lost frames. Often your streams are not viewed fullscreen by your users but in windowed players, thus with reduced resolution anyway, so a reduced resolution isn't even relevant if you seek for sharpness. Reducing the resolution is the most effective way to increase perceived quality, if you are on constrained bandwidth.
I propose you start with low settings. Low fps, low resolution. Make your stream look reasonably good with these settings. Watch your own streams from different devices. Then increase one of the parameters you'd like to increase: more fps or more resolution. Only one parameter at a time. Again watch your own stream and see what has changed. See if and how the viewing experience improved. Stick to improvements, and rollback changes where you were not able to see an improvement.
 

dyne092

New Member
thanks for your insight, i guess sticking to common resolutions and frame rates while capping my own is the best thing to do for me and my viewers.
 
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