GMArcturus
New Member
So I'm not sure what is going on. I can provide system specs if you need me to, but I will go ahead and drop the log file first.
https://hastebin.com/zugugeguda
https://hastebin.com/zugugeguda
Question / Help Just Bought A New PC Getting Really Bad Frame Drops
- Thread starter GMArcturus
- Start date
11:22:51 PM.908: Output 'simple_stream': Number of dropped frames due to insufficient bandwidth/connection stalls: 2135 (8.1%)
https://obsproject.com/wiki/Dropped-Frames-and-General-Connection-Issues
https://obsproject.com/wiki/Dropped-Frames-and-General-Connection-Issues
GMArcturus
New Member
Yeah I saw that but that isn't telling me what specific steps I should take that I haven't already taken.
Edit: Hmm, seems using that "Use New Network Code" checkbox on the advanced settings helped. Just did a 10 minute test stream and didn't drop a single frame.
2nd Edit: Hmm, according to this log file I did drop frames but it never showed up on the status bar during the 10 minute stream. https://hastebin.com/buvuzalite
Edit: Hmm, seems using that "Use New Network Code" checkbox on the advanced settings helped. Just did a 10 minute test stream and didn't drop a single frame.
2nd Edit: Hmm, according to this log file I did drop frames but it never showed up on the status bar during the 10 minute stream. https://hastebin.com/buvuzalite
Last edited:
GMArcturus
New Member
Nevermind here is the most recent log file.
https://hastebin.com/aquhelotof
https://hastebin.com/aquhelotof
BornDownUnder
Member
Your logfile is showing your current settings are in need of a little bit of work.
Your Elgato Capture card is set to 720p60fps resolution via source properties in OBS, is that intentional? Normally one would use a capture card to capture footage at 1080p60fps (Native resolution for the capture card)
Then downscale via OBS output, instead of doing so at the source properties.
In your logfile I noticed you have Windows GameDVR enabled. This may be a cause of the performance issue as even when you are not using it, just having it enabled in Windows settings it will always hook into the game process and commit resources (Similar to what OBS does when OBS is open, though more aggressively as it also buffers for replay recording)
https://www.howtogeek.com/273180/how-to-disable-windows-10s-game-dvr-and-game-bar/
For your video settings in OBS, you could use Lanczos downscale filtering which would provide slightly better image quality by mitigating the blurred image output when downscaling to 720p.
Your colour format setting of 601 is also out-dated as 601bt YUV colour space is for resolutions below 720p (Or SD resolutions) 709bt colour space and partial colour format is optimal and default for OBS (Though you should be able to stream using any as Twitch/YouTube transcodes your stream on their end before it goes live)
Given you have a R7 1700x, you could actually use x264 encoding to stream, which will provide a higher quality image output at low bitrates.
Depending upon the game (If it is GPU intensive, not CPU intensive) you could also potentially use a slower CPU Usage Preset for small gains (Heavier workload on your CPU though, could create encoding lag) than the OBS default of veryfast.
Your current bitrate setting is incredibly low for streaming at 1080p60fps, you should be looking towards using 9k bitrate as a minimum or so for 1080p60fps (13k is optimal, based upon bpp calculation)
Simply put, you have a very very low Bit Per Pixel value, 0.020bpp. This will result in low quality output at 720p and very low quality output at 1080p.
For very static background/slow motion games you may get away with a bpp value of 0.05 or so.
For high motion games you want to be as close as possible towards 0.1bpp (Going above 0.1 will provide an increase in quality output, though may not be worth the extra workload on your PC)
To calculate bpp value, the below formula is used:
(Bitrate x 1000) / (Pixel Width x Pixel Height x fps)= bpp
bpp formula source from the below link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Twitch/comments/2dz7ru/bitrates_resolutions_and_quality/
Below is a link to R1ch's TwitchTest Utility. It will assist you in selecting the most optimal Twitch ingest server based upon your regional location.
https://r1ch.net/projects/twitchtest
It is best to do a medium length test duration.
Once it has completed choose the server that as first priority, has the highest Quality and second priority, the lowest RTT (Round Trip Time) For good stream throughput, quality should be 80+.
TwitchTest utility will also provide the estimated potential (Twitch only allows up to 6,000 kb/s) bitrate you can stream to for each particular server as well, which may or may not assist you in regards to your upload speed.
Do take into account that your viewers can only watch your streams without hitching/buffering if they have a download speed that is the same or higher than your bitrate setting.
After the above changes:
Can you do a few minutes' worth of recording/streaming (Doing what you would normally do in-game) then stop the recording/streaming session, then upload a current logfile please so I or someone else can further assist in troubleshooting.
I hope this helps!
Your Elgato Capture card is set to 720p60fps resolution via source properties in OBS, is that intentional? Normally one would use a capture card to capture footage at 1080p60fps (Native resolution for the capture card)
Then downscale via OBS output, instead of doing so at the source properties.
In your logfile I noticed you have Windows GameDVR enabled. This may be a cause of the performance issue as even when you are not using it, just having it enabled in Windows settings it will always hook into the game process and commit resources (Similar to what OBS does when OBS is open, though more aggressively as it also buffers for replay recording)
https://www.howtogeek.com/273180/how-to-disable-windows-10s-game-dvr-and-game-bar/
For your video settings in OBS, you could use Lanczos downscale filtering which would provide slightly better image quality by mitigating the blurred image output when downscaling to 720p.
Your colour format setting of 601 is also out-dated as 601bt YUV colour space is for resolutions below 720p (Or SD resolutions) 709bt colour space and partial colour format is optimal and default for OBS (Though you should be able to stream using any as Twitch/YouTube transcodes your stream on their end before it goes live)
Given you have a R7 1700x, you could actually use x264 encoding to stream, which will provide a higher quality image output at low bitrates.
Depending upon the game (If it is GPU intensive, not CPU intensive) you could also potentially use a slower CPU Usage Preset for small gains (Heavier workload on your CPU though, could create encoding lag) than the OBS default of veryfast.
A base setting of OBS for high quality streaming and recording would look something similar to:
Video Settings:
Base Resolution: 1920x1080
Canvas Resolution: 1920x1080
Downscale Filter: Lanczos Filtering
FPS Value: 60
Output Settings:
Output Mode: Advanced
- Stream Tab:
Audio Track: 1
Encoder: x264
- Enforce streaming service encoder settings: Box unchecked
ReScale Output: Box checked, 1280x720 (For Twitch) or 1920x1080 (Can leave Box unchecked) or Box checked, 1280x720 (For YouTube - see below note on streaming)
Rate Control: CBR
Bitrate: See below note on streaming
- Use Custom Buffer Size: Box unchecked
Keyframe Interval: 0 or 2
CPU Usage Preset: veryfast
Profile: High
Tune: None
x264 Options: Leave blank
- Recording Tab:
Recording Format: .flv (You can possibly recover the file if recording attempt crashes before you end the recording, if you need multiple audio tracks then use .mkv format. There is no good reason to use .mp4 format)
Audio Track: 2
ReScale Output: Box unchecked
Custom Muxer Settings: Leave Blank
- For nVidia Cards:
Encoder: NVENC
Rate Control: CQP
CQP: 15
Preset: High Quality
Profile: High
- For AMD Cards:
Encoder: h264/AVC Encoder (AMD AMF)
Preset: Indistinguishable or Lossless (Lossless will result in incredibly large file sizes)
Quality Preset: Balanced or Quality (You may have some issues with encoding/rendering lag with Quality)
Keyframe Interval: 0 or 2
- Audio Tab:
Track 1:
- Audio Bitrate: 160
Track 2:
- Audio Bitrate: 320
Video Settings:
Base Resolution: 1920x1080
Canvas Resolution: 1920x1080
Downscale Filter: Lanczos Filtering
FPS Value: 60
Output Settings:
Output Mode: Advanced
- Stream Tab:
Audio Track: 1
Encoder: x264
- Enforce streaming service encoder settings: Box unchecked
ReScale Output: Box checked, 1280x720 (For Twitch) or 1920x1080 (Can leave Box unchecked) or Box checked, 1280x720 (For YouTube - see below note on streaming)
Rate Control: CBR
Bitrate: See below note on streaming
- Use Custom Buffer Size: Box unchecked
Keyframe Interval: 0 or 2
CPU Usage Preset: veryfast
Profile: High
Tune: None
x264 Options: Leave blank
- Recording Tab:
Recording Format: .flv (You can possibly recover the file if recording attempt crashes before you end the recording, if you need multiple audio tracks then use .mkv format. There is no good reason to use .mp4 format)
Audio Track: 2
ReScale Output: Box unchecked
Custom Muxer Settings: Leave Blank
- For nVidia Cards:
Encoder: NVENC
Rate Control: CQP
CQP: 15
Preset: High Quality
Profile: High
- For AMD Cards:
Encoder: h264/AVC Encoder (AMD AMF)
Preset: Indistinguishable or Lossless (Lossless will result in incredibly large file sizes)
Quality Preset: Balanced or Quality (You may have some issues with encoding/rendering lag with Quality)
Keyframe Interval: 0 or 2
- Audio Tab:
Track 1:
- Audio Bitrate: 160
Track 2:
- Audio Bitrate: 320
Note on Audio tracks -
Setting up track 1 for streaming and track 2 for recording settings allows you to have more bitrate for video output when streaming and provides highest quality audio bitrate when recording.
Note on Streaming -
If streaming via Twitch:
It is better to stream at 720p60fps maximum resolution due to the limit in bitrate that Twitch allows for (6000)
If streaming via YouTube:
Whatever bitrate you can achieve without having bandwidth related frame drops being displayed in your logfile after a streaming session (You will find them towards the end of the logfile, after you stop the streaming session)
6500 bitrate is good for 1080p30fps, 9k for 1080p60fps as a baseline.
Setting up track 1 for streaming and track 2 for recording settings allows you to have more bitrate for video output when streaming and provides highest quality audio bitrate when recording.
Note on Streaming -
If streaming via Twitch:
It is better to stream at 720p60fps maximum resolution due to the limit in bitrate that Twitch allows for (6000)
If streaming via YouTube:
Whatever bitrate you can achieve without having bandwidth related frame drops being displayed in your logfile after a streaming session (You will find them towards the end of the logfile, after you stop the streaming session)
6500 bitrate is good for 1080p30fps, 9k for 1080p60fps as a baseline.
Your current bitrate setting is incredibly low for streaming at 1080p60fps, you should be looking towards using 9k bitrate as a minimum or so for 1080p60fps (13k is optimal, based upon bpp calculation)
Simply put, you have a very very low Bit Per Pixel value, 0.020bpp. This will result in low quality output at 720p and very low quality output at 1080p.
For very static background/slow motion games you may get away with a bpp value of 0.05 or so.
For high motion games you want to be as close as possible towards 0.1bpp (Going above 0.1 will provide an increase in quality output, though may not be worth the extra workload on your PC)
To calculate bpp value, the below formula is used:
(Bitrate x 1000) / (Pixel Width x Pixel Height x fps)= bpp
bpp formula source from the below link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Twitch/comments/2dz7ru/bitrates_resolutions_and_quality/
Below is a link to R1ch's TwitchTest Utility. It will assist you in selecting the most optimal Twitch ingest server based upon your regional location.
https://r1ch.net/projects/twitchtest
It is best to do a medium length test duration.
Once it has completed choose the server that as first priority, has the highest Quality and second priority, the lowest RTT (Round Trip Time) For good stream throughput, quality should be 80+.
TwitchTest utility will also provide the estimated potential (Twitch only allows up to 6,000 kb/s) bitrate you can stream to for each particular server as well, which may or may not assist you in regards to your upload speed.
Do take into account that your viewers can only watch your streams without hitching/buffering if they have a download speed that is the same or higher than your bitrate setting.
After the above changes:
Can you do a few minutes' worth of recording/streaming (Doing what you would normally do in-game) then stop the recording/streaming session, then upload a current logfile please so I or someone else can further assist in troubleshooting.
I hope this helps!
GMArcturus
New Member
I want to thank you guys for your help, but I just got finished talking with my ISP and they said that there is a backbone issue with Twitch. One of the co-workers of the tech I was talking to said he is a twitch streamer and that he has been having issues as well. I can provide the trace route report if that would help you guys in seeing anything on that end. Also, I used the twitch bandwidth tester you guys mentioned and depending on the time of day I am getting like 0s all the way down in the Quality column.
If you can Comcast, it might be something similar to this: https://panic.com/blog/mystery-of-the-slow-downloads/
GMArcturus
New Member
I do not have Comcast. I have CableOne in Joplin, Missouri.