Question / Help Heavy Pixelation with 8k bitrate

[MrGhostO1O]

Hello everyone!

I am new to streaming as well as this forum and require help with my output/video settings:

My current OBS settings:

View attached files.

The Problem:
When i stream TESV Skyrim SE on my YouTube channel, the screen becomes very pixelated while turning the camera around and moving the character. Also, the static overlay that i use seems to pixelate slightly every two seconds. I used various settings combinations to improve the quality of the screen as much as possible, without success. All of the things i tried did not seem to change anything at all while i was able to see noticeable differences on other users streams and videos. I use NVENC primarily as my i5 4670 3.40GHz usage gets up to 90%, causing the game itself to lag. Using x264 is only possible for me when i downscale to 720p but then, due to the pixelation issue, the quality of the gameplay becomes unacceptably poor.

When i was watching and reading tutorials about streaming with OBS and its settings i thought i understood how to change the settings in order to achieve high quality gameplay with stable performance, but it seems i was very wrong. That is why i require your help! :)

Here is an example video:

My Hardware/OS-Specs:

OS: Windows 10 Home 64-Bit-OS, x64 based processor
MB: ASUS MAXIMUS VI HERO
CPU: Intel Core i5 4670 @ 3.40GHz
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 780
RAM: 16GB Dual-Channel DDR3
Internet: 100Mbit/s download speed, 10Mbit/s upload speed, Ethernet-Lan connection, Central EU region

All drivers are up to date.

 

[Sapiens]

You're discovering that 8 Mbps isn't enough for 1080p60 to look consistently good with high motion content like a first person game, and a hardware encoder just makes the situation worse. Increase the bitrate, downscale the video and/or lower the FPS.

 

[MrGhostO1O]

Thank you for the quick response!
From what upload speed upwards is a streaming with 1080p60 recommended? What frequency of the CPU is recommended for streaming 1080p60?

 

[Sapiens]

Youtube re-encodes everything you send it so even if the original output looks great it's going to be different when viewed from the site. You'll also probably need to stick with a hardware encoder. On the rare occasions that I stream 1080p60 to Youtube I usually throw 12 Mbps at it and just accept that the output isn't always going to be stellar.

 

[MrGhostO1O]

I will try your suggestions and see how it responds to it. Thank you very much for the information.

 

[MrGhostO1O]

One last thing: Do you know what causes the piexelation of the static overlay around the gameplay? You can see it in the test video i embeded. Watch the characters helmet on the static overlay to the right.

Is there any way to prevent this?

 

[Sapiens]

That effect is a "keyframe pop" where the encoder inserts a new keyframe into the video stream. Keyframes are expensive (larger and higher quality) compared to other frame types so they're usually inserted only every few seconds, and their higher quality is what makes them stand out. The pop is more noticeable when the video is suffering from a bitrate deficit (a lot of low quality frames followed by a much higher quality frame), so increasing the bitrate can help, but it's unlikely you'll be able to eliminate it completely, especially for a live stream.