Question / Help Low quality 1080p stream

[speaker1264]

Hello! So I relocated to a new area, and unfortunately have a measly 2 Mbps upload speed (Actually I'm usually only getting around 75% of that). The problem is, if you watch the short 1 minute video below, the quality is utter garbage. It is unbearable in my opinion, the only time it is clear is when I am not doing anything. Is this really all the quality I can get from a 1080p stream at 1.5 Mbps?

All my settings are below. I have an i5-3570k overclocked to 4.5 Ghz, and a 660ti video card. All my ingame settings are at low, and I even limited my fps to about 30, just to show that it isn't my CPU that is being bottlenecked... or is it? Is my CPU in anyway the problem?

Are my settings wrong, or is there any setting I could change to improve the quality? I even turned the Process Priority Class to Above Normal in the advanced settings so that OBS should have higher priority than pretty much everything else on my system.

So what's up? Is this a problem that my computer can't encode fast enough, or is that just the quality I get when I have to encode so much of the data, rather than straight upload it all?

Would I get better quality by downscaling the resolution to 720p?

Also, I've done some researching, but I'm still not sure what Use CFR (Constant Frame Rate I think?) does, and whether or not I should have it enabled.

Thanks a lot everyone!!

Video (Warning, Loud music. Turn down volume, or mute it)
http://www.twitch.tv/speaker1264/b/475345892

 

[dodgepong]

You're not really going to get very good quality in 1080p with gaming content at that low of a bit rate, especially in an MMO. Games like WoW suffer the most from motion compression with low bit rates. Downscaling to 720p would help for sure, though 1500kbps might still be too low for that. Try 540p or 480p.

CFR = constant frame rate. You'll want to leave that enabled.

You can try lowering your x264 preset to faster or fast (if your CPU can handle it) for a small boost in image quality, but there's only so much you can do with 1500kbps.

 

[FerretBomb]

Yeah, the beginnings of 'decent' 1080p@30 quality is around 3000kbps devoted to the video stream alone; not counting audio, game overhead, or network fluctuation.
1500kbps is around right for 720@30 video, but even then it will start blocking badly under high-motion action. And still that doesn't count audio or game overhead.

I'd agree with Dodgepong, though I'd probably recommend going right to 480p. Alternately, you could try dropping to 720@25fps... could keep it watchable, even if it wouldn't be as smooth.