Question / Help Getting blurriness periodical and fps drops without dropping frames

[Edge419]

I've been trying to trouble shoot my stream in order to figure out how to get the clearest/sharpest picture and have also been experiencing from choppy frames.

my specs are=

Windows 8.1 pro
Intel Core i5-4670K CPU @3.40GHz
Installed RAM 16GB
64-bit OS
GTX 970 graphics card

I stream at 30fps
I was testing between 2000-2800 bitrate with 5mb upload

current log file

https://gist.github.com/57b3b7a0a808d7c51bd7d9987369fa48

it's like the cleaner I make my stream the more fps I experience. To my knowledge 5mb upload should be more than sufficient for me to stream with 2800 bitrate yet it looks grainy and pixilated throughout the stream but will sometimes clear up and look great. It's the inconsistency that bothers me the most.

I appreciate any help you guys can give here is a sample of my stream where this occurs a little, it looks great at the start but deteriorates towards the end.

https://clips.twitch.tv/BlindingPunchySalsifyOSsloth

Thanks again!

 

[BK-Morpheus]

Your log shows no stream/recording attempt (or let's say, it's shows the start of a stream, but not the part after stopping the stream).
With 2000-3000kbit/s videobitrate, the 720p30fps footage will still look blurry when there is a lot of movement or animated effects.
Encoding with x264 and preset "very fast" or "faster" it should be "okay". With GPU based encoders like NVENC, Quicksync etc. it will look a little worse, as they are not as efficient when it comes to video compression, but they are fast without a huge performance hit.
Try x264 and 3800kbit/s

 

[Edge419]

hmm I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong with recording the log, I made sure to play for a few hours and during the stream I used the help tab in OBS to upload "Current Stream". I did some reading where people said never to exceed 3500, is this a myth? Lastly I did take my stream up to 3000bitrate at one point and watched my "stream health" via the dashboard and it looked like my bitrate never exceeded 2600, I raised the ceiling but it didnt appear to increase what bitrate was being processed. It maintained around 2600 bitrate with a stream health of "excellent" in my twitch dashboard.

 

[BK-Morpheus]

A few month (or maybe it's already a year) back, Twitch canceled their old "limit" of 3500kbit/s for non partners.
So you can go higher, if your bandwidth allows it. Just keep in mind, that some viewers (with slow internet) might have trouble watching very high bitrate streams if there is no twitch transcoding available (the option for viewers to watch in lower quality is only available if you have over 100 active viewers or you are a partner).

You can re-upload your log, after you stop the stream, so the log can show if there were any dropped frames and what might have caused that.

 

[Edge419]

Ok good to know, oddly enough I can transcode my stream (my wife also transcodes my stream when viewing) so I wonder if this was a recent update as well. One last question I have Morpheus, I multi stream with my brother and when we play together I've noticed his colors are so much more sharper than mine. My colors are very...washed out, what do you think would cause this?

 

[BK-Morpheus]

You talk about the colors in the stream, or your actual ingame colors?
If you see low contrast and flat colors in general, it could be the color format or range setting in the nvidia controlpanel for HDMI / Displayport.
If it's just in Videos/Streams, it could be the video color range setting in the nvidia system settings menu.
You can try this: Open the nvidia system settings menu and go to "adjust video color setting" under video.
There you can see your monitors and at default it is set to application controled or some thing like that. You can change it so that nvidia settings will take over control and than you switch from partial range to full range (0-255).
http://webtrickz.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/12-12-2012-16-08-55.jpg

If it is just your twitch stream that looks dull, you can check your advanced settings in OBS.
There is YUV color space and YUV color range. Maybe you need to hange YUV color range to get the correct contrast+colors in your stream.

 

[Edge419]

The colors in game look great, it's once it translates to the stream. I'll check the advanced settings in OBS when I get home. I'll also try to get you a log file tonight from the stream. Thanks BK-Morpheus you guys are the real hero's to us plebs ;)