Question / Help I cant seem to find the right settings...

[BillyThatcher001]

Ive spent so many nights staying up trying to find the right stream settings for my slow internet. I know it'll be harder because of it being slow, but I feel like ive been right where I liked it and then the next day its just wrong. I've even tried starting from the bottom and working my way up and making sure I drop now frames, attempting to keep a stable stream. I feel like I'm either missing something or hoping its just my hardware. I know it isn't the best but I'm also currently in the process of building a new custom PC. But what do you all think or suggest? I'm open to trying any ideas.

This is my last OBS log:
https://gist.github.com/25e854a1e194a50fd44a9c464c8d3a79

I just feel like I'm running in circles at this point.

 

[BornDownUnder]

Can you do a speedtest via the link:
https://www.dslreports.com/speedtest
and post the results so I or anybody else that can assist can get an idea of your network bandwidth capabilities.

In your logfile I noticed you have Windows Game Bar and Game DVR enabled in Windows settings, this will increase the workload of your PC, even if you are not using them to record/stream game play.

I also noticed in your logfile you are recording and streaming at the same time, which will use a lot more resources than just recording/streaming by itself. I think you should only do one at a time, it will ease the workload of your PC.

In your scene 'Waiting scene' you have game capture and monitor capture as sources, these two will conflict with each other and cause higher resource usage. You should have one or the other as both do the same thing when you are in-game (Game capture is preferred as it is more efficient by means of grabbing the frame from the GPU, instead of using system RAM as well, really depends upon your usage for that scene, for example if you alt-tab when you switch to that scene to display another window, etc)

Last yet not least, can you remove the x264 parameter scenecut=0 and set your x264 encoder options to:

resolution scale 1280x720
rate control CBR
bitrate 1800
key interval 2
preset veryfast
profile main
tuning profile none
30 fps

And do a few minutes' worth of a streaming session, doing what you would normally do in-game, stopping the stream then uploading the current logfile please. This will give us a baseline to work with.

 

[BillyThatcher001]

Can you do a speedtest via the link:
https://www.dslreports.com/speedtest
and post the results so I or anybody else that can assist can get an idea of your network bandwidth capabilities.

In your logfile I noticed you have Windows Game Bar and Game DVR enabled in Windows settings, this will increase the workload of your PC, even if you are not using them to record/stream game play.

I also noticed in your logfile you are recording and streaming at the same time, which will use a lot more resources than just recording/streaming by itself. I think you should only do one at a time, it will ease the workload of your PC.

In your scene 'Waiting scene' you have game capture and monitor capture as sources, these two will conflict with each other and cause higher resource usage. You should have one or the other as both do the same thing when you are in-game (Game capture is preferred as it is more efficient by means of grabbing the frame from the GPU, instead of using system RAM as well, really depends upon your usage for that scene, for example if you alt-tab when you switch to that scene to display another window, etc)

Last yet not least, can you remove the x264 parameter scenecut=0 and set your x264 encoder options to:

resolution scale 1280x720
rate control CBR
bitrate 1800
key interval 2
preset veryfast
profile main
tuning profile none
30 fps

And do a few minutes' worth of a streaming session, doing what you would normally do in-game, stopping the stream then uploading the current logfile please. This will give us a baseline to work with.

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/25475668


I guess that's my internet, breaks my heart because some other sites show that I have or had 2.4 upload instead of this one. I had no idea that those softwares ate up that much of my cpu. I just assumed they were all extremely small programs. But with my internet, is streaming even remotely possible? I can already tell the difference between my gameplay and test streams from turning off all that extra stuff, I don't really lag anymore in game. ​

 

[BillyThatcher001]

https://gist.github.com/anonymous/9cbd8e7069da7c7c813c22657ac7f40f

that's the last log using those settings. I hope I turned all the unnecessary stuff off.​

 

[BornDownUnder]

Unfortunately you will struggle to get any decent quality as a result of your bandwidth.

Try a down-scaled resolution of 852x480 at 60fps, with a bitrate of 1500, I think that may be the most you can push your bitrate.

The good news is your rendering and encoding lag has all but cleared up.
Out of curiosity what game were you streaming for the last stream attempt in your logfile?

 

[BillyThatcher001]

Unfortunately you will struggle to get any decent quality as a result of your bandwidth.

Try a down-scaled resolution of 852x480 at 60fps, with a bitrate of 1500, I think that may be the most you can push your bitrate.

The good news is your rendering and encoding lag has all but cleared up.
Out of curiosity what game were you streaming for the last stream attempt in your logfile?

Well I was just testing Overwatch, but I knew off the bat that I could never get "good" quality for a stream like that. I'm usually okay with games that take waaaay less of a load, but even then I drop an occasional frame or so. I guess I wanted to try so hard to make it work but knew very well it wouldn't.

 

[BornDownUnder]

Was just wondering as in your logfile you had increased network bandwidth issue in conjunction with the below line:

Video stopped, number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 59/11866 (0.5%)

Given your PC specs it's not too bad at all, means that Overwatch is seemingly pretty well optimized given the fact it is also Multiplayer online and your streaming.

 

[BillyThatcher001]

I switched some stuff up and now have at least a 5 up now but I have my bitrate set to 2500 with everything set to 720p/30fps. I record only just to see the quality of the stream and see some inconsistencies here and there, but when I only run a test stream it says I'm not really dropping frames. When I turn the game on, my frames in game drop from 60 to 30 and its an eye sore for me. Ive tried changing my presets but even on Ultra Fast I still drop frames in game. I use a Zotac gx 750 ti GPU and a AMD FX 6300. Could it be the combination of my CPU and GPU do not work very well for my streams? And if so, could I upgrade my rig for slightly better results?

 

[BornDownUnder]

Well I think the only way you could really improve is unfortunately going down the upgrade path.
Your FX 6300 is the real bottleneck here in regards to streaming/recording as it only has 3 physical cores, with 3 hyper-threaded.
Your GPU will also struggle to keep up the longer it is in service, with newer titles being more demanding on video cards. Below are a couple of links for you for comparison to performance for CPU and GPU (Very brief in list form)

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/CPU_mega_page.html
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

Both of the above links are taken from:
https://www.passmark.com/index.html
On the above site you can find under the benchmarks tab many lists (Full scroll-able lists can be accessed via a link at the bottom of the overview on each benchmark category page)

An excellent site for creating a build log so you can budget/price up parts:
https://pcpartpicker.com/

 

[Morgan Daniels]

Well I think the only way you could really improve is unfortunately going down the upgrade path.
Your FX 6300 is the real bottleneck here in regards to streaming/recording as it only has 3 physical cores, with 3 hyper-threaded.
Your GPU will also struggle to keep up the longer it is in service, with newer titles being more demanding on video cards. Below are a couple of links for you for comparison to performance for CPU and GPU (Very brief in list form)

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/CPU_mega_page.html
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

Both of the above links are taken from:
https://www.passmark.com/index.html
On the above site you can find under the benchmarks tab many lists (Full scroll-able lists can be accessed via a link at the bottom of the overview on each benchmark category page)

An excellent site for creating a build log so you can budget/price up parts:
https://pcpartpicker.com/

Sorry I’m replying from another account signed in mobile. But I’m totally okay with going down that path. I’m actually in the process of custom building my new rig with much better specs, I just wanted to make sure it was more of a hardware issue now and not so much a internet speed issue at this point. I had a feeling my cpu and gpu weren’t the best for what I’m aiming for, but a lot of random posts with similar problems are very misleading. I appreciate your help on the matter.

 

[BornDownUnder]

No problem at all, I hope your new rig serves you well for your intended usage.

In testing x264 streaming at veryfast preset (My CPU being a R5 1600) I found a good general bitrate to aim for is around 3500 for 720p30fps, pushing towards 6000 for 720p60fps/1080p30fps for slower motion games and as much as you can push effectively for 1080p60fps. In saying that it was private testing so you have to take your viewers into account in regards to bandwidth output.

I forgot to link you:
https://stream.twitch.tv/
https://r1ch.net/projects/twitchtest
https://obsproject.com/wiki/Dropped-Frames-and-General-Connection-Issues

In regards to your current PC setup, it is not a bad setup at all. It is just a case that it can't really handle the load of streaming/recording with a heavier encoding preset which will assist greatly in quality retention at lower bitrates. That being said, it really is dependent on the game to be not that taxing on system resources.