Bug Report Frame Skipping?

Z

Zephiris

Member
Smoshi said:
I have no idea what I'm paying for. I've had to get new lines when I moved in here because the internet kept cutting out. I can handle 2000 bitrate, but anything higher than that and I get frame drops and very blurry in-game.

I don't know why I can't stream at 2000 bitrate and a 1.5x downscale. I get massive frame drops at those settings and my fps is only set to 25.

It's not like AoE 2 is a cpu intensive game. What gives?
Click to expand...

The most likely cause is that you have an Intel i3 3220 @ 3.3GHz (according to your original post) which is a dual core CPU. When you use down-scaling in OBS, it uses your CPU to re-size the video output. Doing this likely creates a significant load on a dual core CPU such as yours. It may be better to just turn down-scaling off and leave it at the original resolution.
 
Z

Zephiris

Member
Haliinen said:
I'm pretty sure that the downscaler is done by the GPU and not the CPU.
Click to expand...
Well if that is the case, it could still be a possibility that the GPU is being overloaded. If I remember my cards correctly, the AMD Radeon 6670 is a mid-range card, so even games that only moderately tax the GPU still might not leave enough processing room for down-scaling. It's just a guess, but from what I've inferred from the previous posts, it doesn't seem to drop frames when down-scaling is disabled.
 
B

Bensam123

Member
Yeah, I stream a meg under my upload as well. I have a 'cap' on Speedtest of 4.1Mbps, but I have to stream at 3.2Mbps to maintain a constant and clean stream. It hasn't been suggested yet, but knocking quality down to 8? That may only matter in high motion scenes though... I sorta doubt AoE2 has any of those.

In general it seems like you should be able to stream at higher quality settings. At that downscaled resolution and fps I don't suspect people will get pixelation even if you stream at say 1500... Maybe even 1000... You're throwing a awful lot of bandwidth at a low motion scenario (RTS), low FPS, and low resolution... I stream 720p@30 in a FPS at those settings without pixelation.

I highly doubt streaming at a native res would put less stress on a system then downscaling would. Even for me with my system it's noticeable when I go from my downscaled 720p res to 1680x1050.


This may be a shot in the dark, but have you tried disabling core parking? Since AoE2 is so old it may not be properly triggering c-states, so your processor actually revs down because it isn't getting fully utilized by AoE2. Really I'd recommend everyone disable Core Parking that streams or games, but my campaign can only do so much.

http://bitsum.com/about_cpu_core_parking.php

'Parkcontrol' is what you want. It allows you to disable it and re-enable it if you so chose.
 
R

retbergen

Member
I live in Norway, and my upload speed is 5000. 5000 is myline speed to a server very close.
As Jim says, this number dwindle as your information travel, its the nature of the internet.

I'm an old xsplit user, and xsplit have a nice bandwith test function for twitch. The average speed im getting to the dutch twitch server is 2500, half og my true upload speed. This is the speed from a computer in small town in Norway to a server locadted in Amsterdam, and not an easy speed test to a server close to my connection.
To be safe I use 2300 as my speed in OBS, and I dont suffer any lag or drops.

Instead of fucusing on you raw upload speed, please see if you can check the actual speed you get to the service youre using. It will save you from a lot of testing and optimizing. Maybe one day in the future, OBS will speed test and set these values on auto :)
 
S

Smoshi

Member
Thank you all for your help. I will try disable Park Control and everything else mentioned. Also, good news is I live on the opposite side from Miami so I am able to get 23 ms when using Miami as my Twitch server.

Another thing to note,

In my Task Manager I was monitoring my CPU usage. With no down-scaling, it's using about 2.77ghz. With down-scaling, it's only using 1.66ghz.
 
S

Smoshi

Member
Another thing worth mentioning,

A couple people (including the Voobly staff) said that it is recommended to play AoE2 in Windowed Mode. Now, I don't quite understand why because I can get the game full screen, plus I can down-scale and get no lagg or FPS drops.

Why would they recommend windowed mode? Also, if I do try and play in windowed mode (on the chance that I can stream at higher quality) should I stream both the game and my desktop, or is there a way to section off just the game so all the viewers on my stream see is the game.

And also, if there is a way to zoom,etc on the Windowed game, will it make it look like crap because it's essentially stretching the game?
 
S

Smoshi

Member
Just ran the game at my native resolution with no down-scale.
Had no frame drops or in-game lagg at all.

But there also not much action going on. Wondering if I will get stream lagg if I were to play in an 8 player game with a bunch of action going on.

http://www.twitch.tv/xsmoshi/b/357034036

Can skip to around 7:30
Getting very small pixelation. But other than that, no lagg at all.

So does this mean I can stream the game at this quality? Or does that just mean I can stream at this quality only when there is little action going on :lol:
 
B

Bensam123

Member
Probably all the time... RTS's don't have a lot of action going on, so they generally don't need a lot of bandwidth. You can always go with it and see what happens. MOBAs are like a faster and more action oriented version of RTS's as far as encoding goes and they still don't have the same demands of FPS's.

You have to keep in mind, this is still an encoded and compressed stream and as such you'll always see some form of distortion.

I don't know why they'd suggest playing in windowed mode. Some games react and play differently depending on if they're in windowed mode or operating in full screen. It could be that windowed mode was another way to keep your processor operating at it's highest frequency and thus reducing jerky lag. Usually you can set windowed mode to fullscreen-borderless with a launch command (you'd have to look it up) or found in the graphical settings, you'd have to look it up for your specific game. It doesn't look different from fullscreen mode, but in my experience I've found they feel different no matter what game I've played.

So your problem has cleared up? I'd personally be interested to know if this was fixed by Core Parking or if it was something else. What version of Windows are you using?
 
S

Smoshi

Member
Code: 
=====Stream Start=====================================================================
  Multithreaded optimizations: On
  Base resolution: 1920x1080
  Output resolution: 1920x1080
------------------------------------------
Loading up D3D10...
------------------------------------------
Using auxilary audio input: Microphone (AT2020 USB               )
------------------------------------------
Audio Encoding: AAC
    bitrate: 64
------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------
Using Monitor Capture
Using graphics capture
Using graphics capture
Using text output
------------------------------------------
Video Encoding: x264
    fps: 25
    width: 1920, height: 1080
    preset: veryfast
    CBR: no
    max bitrate: 2000
    buffer size: 2000
    quality: 10
------------------------------------------

Total frames rendered: 42570, number of frames that lagged: 10 (0.02%) (it's okay for some frames to lag)
RTMPPublisher::SocketLoop: Aborting due to bStopping
Number of b-frames dropped: 509 (0.44%), Number of p-frames dropped: 511 (0.44%), Total 1020 (0.88%)


I keep seeing Buffer is full. What does this mean exactly? During this stream, I didn't really notice much lag afterwards when I went back to watch it, but it got a little blurry when I would move the screen.

This was with no down-scaling.
Also, not sure if Core Parking did anything or not.

Here is something else worth mentioning;

Code: 
DiffProbe release. January 2012. Build 1008.
Shaper Detection Module.

Connected to server 38.98.51.17.

Estimating capacity:
Upstream: 4201 Kbps.
Downstream: 25091 Kbps.

The measurement will take upto 2.5 minutes. Please wait.

Checking for traffic shapers:

Upstream: Burst size: 4945-5022 KB;
Shaping rate: 2090 Kbps.

Downstream: Burst size: 9357-9854 KB;
Shaping rate: 15978 Kbps.
 
B

Bensam123

Member
When you move the screen around it makes a lot of 'action' on the screen so it's probably bumping against your bitrate cap and reduces the quality so it doesn't drop any frames. You could fix that by reducing the resolution of the stream.

That's unfortunate. I've been trying to figure out a specific test case to show the effects of core parking, but have been unable to isolate it, except it can improve responsiveness and reduce jerkiness of a system...
 
S

Smoshi

Member
So,

Should I lower my bitrate? Or try raising it small amounts at a time? I can't believe I can get 4.2mbps upload but can only stream at 2000 bitrate. I hate comcast :(

Also, if I play a single player match with a lot of action I don't get any frame drops, lagg, or reduced quality. Only happens when I'm playing in an online game against other players. :S
 
D

dramabomb

Member
Your ShaperProbe results are intriguing.

What kind of cable modem/router setup do you have? Comcast/Twitch are going through some real issues right now. I know it doesn't help your problem, but I wanted to give you a little insight. Comcast denies that they throttle connections to Twitch from time to time, but it's pretty obvious that they do.
 
R

R1CH

Forum Admin
Developer
Comcast temporarily boost your upload / download speed to get good results in speed tests, however your actual sustainable throughput is a lot lower as you are seeing. You need to drop your bitrate to 1500-1900.
 
R

R1CH

Forum Admin
Developer
You can probably do 720p 25-30 fps at that bitrate, it might be blurry for FPS or other high motion games though.
 
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