Question / Help Getting the best image quality out of YouTube Live

[Vinterbird]

Hi,

My place of work is doing webinars for our users, and we're using OBS to stream it out via YouTube Live.

We're currently running at 720/30 with 4000kbps, and the quality is not stellar. It's not as sharp as I want it to be, despite us having high end cameras and optics to deliver it. The image quality is good when looking in OBS, but when watching the live broadcast it's just not as sharp or defined.

Is this a limitation of live streaming in general, or are there ways to get a sharper and better image? Will moving to 6000kb at 720 resolve the issue, or should we move to 1080/30 for a better image?

Or will a higher then recommended bitrate result in our users getting a bad viewing experience with buffering and stuff?



And bonus question, not related to OBS:

Is there any way to force YouTube to start at a higher resolution when streaming? When our users open the streeaming link, YouTube defaults to its "Auto" setting and gives everyone a 360p signal, which makes all our work useless anyway.

 

[NalaNosivad]

A 720p30 stream at 6000Kbps will look pretty significantly better than one at 4000Kbps. If I had the bandwidth, I'd happily be streaming to YouTube at 12000Kbps or more.

 

[Harold]

With youtube, viewer buffering is a non-issue, since youtube transcodes all the things.

You can throw as much bitrate at your stream as you feel you need to attempt to maintain quality. Also, you can go with the slowest sounding x264 preset your streaming system can handle to increase the quality further.

 

[Mroczny_Gustaw]

nah 6000k is enough for 720p60, check my epic calc
as webinars i understand events like tv interviews? 1080p30 could be possible to get better sharpness
make sure you have set x264 high profile and lanczos scaling

 

[Vinterbird]

A 720p30 stream at 6000Kbps will look pretty significantly better than one at 4000Kbps. If I had the bandwidth, I'd happily be streaming to YouTube at 12000Kbps or more.

YouTube won't freak or anything? At the office we have around 94Mbps upload speed, so we can easily push a higher bitrate. My concern is for the viewers and whether YouTube will accept it.

nah 6000k is enough for 720p60, check my epic calc
as webinars i understand events like tv interviews? 1080p30 could be possible to get better sharpness
make sure you have set x264 high profile and lanczos scaling

Webinars = Essentially a TV interview like situation. Someone stands in front of a camera and talks for 30 minutes or so with graphics here and there.

Sorry to be a idiot, but what is lanczos scaling?

Will outputting at 1080/30 with a 6000 bitrate result in any serious demands on our users? We're trying to avoid a buffer hell situation for them as much as possible.

 

[Harold]

With youtube, viewer buffering is a non-issue, since youtube transcodes all the things.

You can throw as much bitrate at your stream as you feel you need to attempt to maintain quality. Also, you can go with the slowest sounding x264 preset your streaming system can handle to increase the quality further.

I guess you COMPLETELY ignored me.

 

[Mroczny_Gustaw]

Lanczos scaling is a method of changing one resolution to another. Lanczos gives better quality than bilinear and bicubic. check video tab in studio
Demands? Internet speed mostly, 6000 is 750kb/s which is not much tbh. If your audience is big there may always be people for whom it may be to high but YT offers automatic reencoding to lower bitrates so it wont be big issue i think. 30fps seems to be enough for such content

yes @Harold is right, my point of view is a bit skewed with streaming on twich where bitrate is greatly limited

 

[Vinterbird]

Lanczos scaling is a method of changing one resolution to another. Lanczos gives better quality than bilinear and bicubic. check video tab in studio
Demands? Internet speed mostly, 6000 is 750kb/s which is not much tbh. If your audience is big there may always be people for whom it may be to high but YT offers automatic reencoding to lower bitrates so it wont be big issue i think. 30fps seems to be enough for such content

yes @Harold is right, my point of view is a bit skewed with streaming on twich where bitrate is greatly limited

Thanks for the input. Greatly appriciated.

I guess you COMPLETELY ignored me.

I'm genuinely sorry, I missed your respond.

So if I get you right: I can just tell YouTube in the ingestion settings that I will throw 12000kbps at them, and do the same within OBS without issue?

 

[Harold]

should be able to yes. Youtube will transcode it anyway.