Question / Help Improve quality with custom x264 options

M

___Maggi___

Member
Hello my friends,

I'm streaming for quite a while now, got a 2 PC setup and it works fine. But I was wondering how streamers like DrDisrespect get this insane quality.
He is streaming at 720p but there is no pixelation, no fragments or anything else. Not even when turning/moving fast in FPS games. It looks like at least 900p.

My streaming PC is made of:
Shuttle XPC Cube SZ270R8
Intel Core i7 7700k @ 4,9GHz delid
M.2 128GB SSD
8GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce 1030 Low Profile

I can either stream on 720p/60fps with slow preset or 900p/faster preset. Even when playing with custom x264 options I couldnt nearly reach DrDisrespects quality.

So my generell question is: Do you have any suggestions for me what I can try to improve stream quality? Maybe some good x264 custom settings? I've already read a lot about the x264 encoder but the quality gain in comparisson to the cpu usage was pretty high. Was experimenting with the following parameters: me, subme, ref, bframes, deblock, rc-lookahead, direct, b-adapt, trellis and partitions

Every help appreciated!!!


Kind Regards
Maggi
 
Hi Budkovsky,

first of all thank you for your reply!
I'm streaming at stable 6000Kbit/s.

I've read your thread and can't find the scaling option for the source. I am using an Elgato HD 60 pro so I don't have a game capture.
Quicksync is not available through OBS Studio. Do I have to activate somewhere in the BIOS?


Regards
Maggi
 
___Maggi___ said:
Hi Budkovsky,

first of all thank you for your reply!
I'm streaming at stable 6000Kbit/s.

I've read your thread and can't find the scaling option for the source. I am using an Elgato HD 60 pro so I don't have a game capture.
Quicksync is not available through OBS Studio. Do I have to activate somewhere in the BIOS?


Regards
Maggi
Click to expand...

Right click on your source -> Filters -> click on "+" -> choose "Scaling/Aspect Ratio" -> click "OK" -> choose proper "Scale Filtering" option, type the the resolution manually -> click "Close".

QuickSync should be activated in BIOS/UEFI probably, but the device driver is important too.
More info: https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/how-do-you-enable-intel-quick-sync-video.7238/
 
QSV and other hardware encoders will provide noticeably lower quality than x264 when bitrate is constrained (i.e. streaming to Twitch). If you're already running 720p60 on the medium or slow presets, custom x264 params are not going to make an appreciable difference.
 
There is no way you can reach stream quality of Dr.Disrespect, Summit or other popular streamers who has high volume viewers (above ~10K) even if you provide 6K bitrate with SLOWER encoding for 720p60FPS. Twitch provides full backhand RTMP server utilization for these streamers (probably each streamer has its own dedicated RTMP server, not a shared one). Your stream will be trimmed accordingly if you hit above some server utilization (CPU) at Twitch side as a "normal" streamer.

You can also compare this at partnered vs non-partnered streamers using the same encoding settings.
 
Last edited:
All right guys first of all thank you for your response!
I didn't know that popular streamers has their own RTMP Server, but it makes perfect sense and would explain their superior quality.

And thanks Osiris! So I just use default settings :-)


Have a nice weekend!!!
Regards, Maggi
 
There are no private servers for bigger streamers, not that it would make any difference quality wise anyway. And you can see from the analysis results above, they get the same transcode stack as everyone else.
 
That's a pretty cool website R1CH!!!
Thank you for that so far.

Can you guys tell me what this means?:
  • Transcodes: Yes (5 options via 2017TranscodeX264_V2 )
 
It means Twitch is providing transcodes (quality options) using the "2017TranscodeX264_V2" stack. x264 generally provides the best quality, so his transcodes probably look quite good. Note this has no effect on the main stream (Source) quality.
 
R1CH said:
There are no private servers for bigger streamers, not that it would make any difference quality wise anyway. And you can see from the analysis results above, they get the same transcode stack as everyone else.
Click to expand...

I respect your idea but I don't agree with it. Using the same transcoding setting doesn't mean they use the same server RTMP configuration (quality options) or server specs (hardware). In order to provide efficient server resource (CPU) Twitch tune the backhand for normal streamers like all other streaming services.
 
If they use the same transcoding settings, the quality will be the same. And for "Source" there isn't even any transcoding going on.
 
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