Hello guys,
so it's 2018, Twitch is slowly raising it's limits even for non-partners and internet/hardware isn't really limiting me (anymore), so I thought it's probably time to try out 1080p again. I'm using a dual PC setup and streaming 720p since using it. Rough set-up is an i7 6700K and GTX750Ti (+16 gigs RAM) in my streaming PC, i5 4460 and GTX 970 STRIX (+12 gigs RAM) in my gaming one (which doesn't matter too much I think). Encoder is obviously x264, currently with the fast CPU-preset (problem is still happening with faster presets) and as I said above - 720p output resoulution. FPS I'm streaming with is 60. Also, I'm using NDI to get video/audio from one PC to the other.
I have quite some video sources and they seem to cause lot's of encoding lag. Especially transparent video files are present in my scenes, things like animated facecam-borders and social media in my overlay. Scenes themself are pretty simple, just got an intro-, main-, "big-facecam"- and credits-scene. But it seems like these video files in particular are causing the lag to happen. Interestingly, the main scene (where the gameplay happens) causes the most less lag and really way less CPU usage than the other ones, although it has one transparent video and one none-transparent one as well. Most horrible ones are the big facecam-screen and the endcard (credits) where the encoder definitely gets overloaded, especially at the beginning. I also got a stinger transition which is obviously a transparent video as well, which I'm pretty sure adds up to it.
Originally, all these transparent video files where rendered out in After Effects/Sony Vegas in a raw .mov file, but compressed afterwards using WinFF to a webm. None of these webm's are bigger than 15MB, yet still they use as much CPU as the raw files would use. There is something that just isn't going right. I tried playing around with settings like the hardware-decoding for example, but disabling made it worse (as it should). I tried finding a "devil" under these files by disabling them one-by-one by trial and error, tried disabling the webcam too which didn't make much of a difference. It really seems to be the videofiles themselves. I used the exact same rendersettings as in this video, this goes both for After Effects and WinFF:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C56bMk-bMS4
I couldn't get smarter from the log files, probably you do (test recordings from recent tests, I can add up a log file from todays stream later after I've done the stream): https://hastebin.com/iharumuhej
Now what's really mind-boggling me about this is that it's still eating up a lot of CPU even in 720p (the settings I'm streaming with at the moment), I just ignored it so far. Especially when my transition is lagging already, just tells me it has something to do with the video files - and the unsmooth experience is very unpleasent of course. What's really weird to me is that all my other scenes use up to 99% of my CPU, but my main gameplay-scene only uses 30% when nothing is happening despite it still has two video files in it (which are compressed the same way as well). I really hope someone has a fix or can help further; I'm sure when I get this fixed, I can work myself closer/up to 1080p60 streams as well. That's my next step, for now I just wanna get it working consistently with my current settings.
Happy easter everybody! Best regards,
cees
so it's 2018, Twitch is slowly raising it's limits even for non-partners and internet/hardware isn't really limiting me (anymore), so I thought it's probably time to try out 1080p again. I'm using a dual PC setup and streaming 720p since using it. Rough set-up is an i7 6700K and GTX750Ti (+16 gigs RAM) in my streaming PC, i5 4460 and GTX 970 STRIX (+12 gigs RAM) in my gaming one (which doesn't matter too much I think). Encoder is obviously x264, currently with the fast CPU-preset (problem is still happening with faster presets) and as I said above - 720p output resoulution. FPS I'm streaming with is 60. Also, I'm using NDI to get video/audio from one PC to the other.
I have quite some video sources and they seem to cause lot's of encoding lag. Especially transparent video files are present in my scenes, things like animated facecam-borders and social media in my overlay. Scenes themself are pretty simple, just got an intro-, main-, "big-facecam"- and credits-scene. But it seems like these video files in particular are causing the lag to happen. Interestingly, the main scene (where the gameplay happens) causes the most less lag and really way less CPU usage than the other ones, although it has one transparent video and one none-transparent one as well. Most horrible ones are the big facecam-screen and the endcard (credits) where the encoder definitely gets overloaded, especially at the beginning. I also got a stinger transition which is obviously a transparent video as well, which I'm pretty sure adds up to it.
Originally, all these transparent video files where rendered out in After Effects/Sony Vegas in a raw .mov file, but compressed afterwards using WinFF to a webm. None of these webm's are bigger than 15MB, yet still they use as much CPU as the raw files would use. There is something that just isn't going right. I tried playing around with settings like the hardware-decoding for example, but disabling made it worse (as it should). I tried finding a "devil" under these files by disabling them one-by-one by trial and error, tried disabling the webcam too which didn't make much of a difference. It really seems to be the videofiles themselves. I used the exact same rendersettings as in this video, this goes both for After Effects and WinFF:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C56bMk-bMS4
I couldn't get smarter from the log files, probably you do (test recordings from recent tests, I can add up a log file from todays stream later after I've done the stream): https://hastebin.com/iharumuhej
Now what's really mind-boggling me about this is that it's still eating up a lot of CPU even in 720p (the settings I'm streaming with at the moment), I just ignored it so far. Especially when my transition is lagging already, just tells me it has something to do with the video files - and the unsmooth experience is very unpleasent of course. What's really weird to me is that all my other scenes use up to 99% of my CPU, but my main gameplay-scene only uses 30% when nothing is happening despite it still has two video files in it (which are compressed the same way as well). I really hope someone has a fix or can help further; I'm sure when I get this fixed, I can work myself closer/up to 1080p60 streams as well. That's my next step, for now I just wanna get it working consistently with my current settings.
Happy easter everybody! Best regards,
cees
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