Question / Help Image transparency, quality and widescreen

F

FShiwani

New Member
Hello, I have a couple of questions to ask, I am going to refer to the stream video I have recorded, the quality is the same as it was when actually streaming.

lgt1059q.png


Q1: The image I have added as a source is showing up with a black background even though the image is transparent. FIXED: On the image source properties, I disabled "Colour Key" option.

Q2: I would like to improve the quality of the stream, I have seen many streaming especially on twitch.tv with great quality, you can see the text clearly, like it was a YouTube video.

Q3: There are black edges at the sides, even though in OBS I have maxed it out, to full size.

I have posted my settings and specs below.

lgtd232.png


vNN6Kxj.png


Specs
AMD FX8120 8 core Processor 3.1GHZ
Arctic Freezer 7 pro rev. 11
AMD Radeon HD6770
CORSAIR GS600 600W PSU
5400RPM 500GB SATA DRIVE
60GB SSD
1TB EXTERNAL HDD 7200RPM
45MB DOWNLOAD SPEED
9MB UPLOAD SPEED

Thank You
 
dodgepong

dodgepong

Administrator
Community Helper
You get the "black bars" because you are streaming at at 16:10 aspect ratio, and Twitch's player is a 16:9 aspect ratio.

Viewers with 16:10 monitors will see it in full screen, but everyone else will have black bars.
 
FerretBomb

FerretBomb

Active Member
Quality, you'll have to play with the settings to get it to work well. I'd start by running http://testmy.net/upload (the 6MB test) during your normal streaming time to get a good idea of what kind of bandwidth you have available. Your bitrate is the starting point. The other options, you can work with from there. Don't go over 3500kbps (it will make your stream laggy for lower-connection-speed viewers), I'd recommend 3000 if you can get it (and have it stable).

Image Transparency:
I HIGHLY recommend that you create any images/overlays you plan to use as .PNG, which supports a native alpha (transparency) channel. No need to chromakey stuff out, and you can have graduated transparency through the image, even. OBS will read and use the alpha channel information natively, allowing your splashes/bumps/frames/watermarks to have MUCH smoother edges, if you know how to create the image to take advantage of the alpha overlay (effectively giving you antialiased text that you can lay over any other image/source).

Letterboxing:
You'll need to set up your base resolution as a 16:9 ratio res, under Custom. 1920x1080, 1600x900, 1280x720. Twitch expects (demands) a 16:9 feed... if it doesn't get one, it will letterbox it to one automatically.
You can't really get rid of it by doing the above, but you will be able to control it; if you want to push the gameplay to the side to have both letterbox bars on one side (and then overlay a webcam or text-chatbox over the empty space), or include a background 'frame' image so the letterbox bars at least look a little spiffier, rather than just empty black space.
You can also use SHIFT when resizing to stretch the game video... this isn't recommended, as it will make the game look 'short and fat' due to the incorrect ratio, but it IS still an option, even if it looks pretty crappy.
 
F

FShiwani

New Member
FerretBomb said:
Quality, you'll have to play with the settings to get it to work well. I'd start by running http://testmy.net/upload (the 6MB test) during your normal streaming time to get a good idea of what kind of bandwidth you have available. Your bitrate is the starting point. The other options, you can work with from there. Don't go over 3500kbps (it will make your stream laggy for lower-connection-speed viewers), I'd recommend 3000 if you can get it (and have it stable).

Image Transparency:
I HIGHLY recommend that you create any images/overlays you plan to use as .PNG, which supports a native alpha (transparency) channel. No need to chromakey stuff out, and you can have graduated transparency through the image, even. OBS will read and use the alpha channel information natively, allowing your splashes/bumps/frames/watermarks to have MUCH smoother edges, if you know how to create the image to take advantage of the alpha overlay (effectively giving you antialiased text that you can lay over any other image/source).

Letterboxing:
You'll need to set up your base resolution as a 16:9 ratio res, under Custom. 1920x1080, 1600x900, 1280x720. Twitch expects (demands) a 16:9 feed... if it doesn't get one, it will letterbox it to one automatically.
You can't really get rid of it by doing the above, but you will be able to control it; if you want to push the gameplay to the side to have both letterbox bars on one side (and then overlay a webcam or text-chatbox over the empty space), or include a background 'frame' image so the letterbox bars at least look a little spiffier, rather than just empty black space.
You can also use SHIFT when resizing to stretch the game video... this isn't recommended, as it will make the game look 'short and fat' due to the incorrect ratio, but it IS still an option, even if it looks pretty crappy.
Click to expand...

I got all the other stuff fixed except letterboxing which i will leave, I tried the speed test 6mb while streaming, it gave me
KVCP9n3.png

I was at 3500kbps
 
FerretBomb

FerretBomb

Active Member
Yeah, don't run it while you're actually streaming, just around the time you usually stream. Like just before you start casting, so you get a good idea of any network congestion issues you might be facing as well.
 
F

FShiwani

New Member
FerretBomb said:
Yeah, don't run it while you're actually streaming, just around the time you usually stream. Like just before you start casting, so you get a good idea of any network congestion issues you might be facing as well.
Click to expand...

Well I stream at random times, my line is almost fully uncongested as the ISP has recently rolled out a new Fibre Plan and it was just released like 2 weeks ago and most people in my area dont use that ISP.
 
F

FShiwani

New Member
How do I increase the quality though? I want the text to be clear and readable, I have seen many streamers, alot of them using OBS have very clear streams, mine is blurry.
 
X

Xianahru

Member
Thats because youa re downsclaing. If you would stream at your base resolution, the picture would be more crisp, but that would mean more load on your hardware.
 
FerretBomb

FerretBomb

Active Member
Note that just setting your resolution to 1280x720 and squishing things down to fit in the new preview window won't work either. It'll actually look worse that way.
 
X

Xianahru

Member
Probably because youa re on quality 8. Quality 10 will give you a sharper picture, but requires alotmore bandwith to work with, when there is high motion that is. If you are not downscaling, you shouldnt loose THAT much quality.
 
F

FShiwani

New Member
FerretBomb said:
Note that just setting your resolution to 1280x720 and squishing things down to fit in the new preview window won't work either. It'll actually look worse that way.
Click to expand...
I set it to my native resolution 1680x1050 and twitch say its streaming at 1110p+, it looks the same though.
 
F

FShiwani

New Member
Fixed quality issues, instead of using DXtory to record, I tried OBS recording, very nice. One question, once I switched, my transparent picture no longer shows up, even though it is added in sources
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top