Question / Help Low quality at 720p / Audio very loud

[Jimmy]

Hello

I am trying to stream at 1280x720 with a good quality but when i do it gets blurry and i cant figure out what could cause this problem. i have 100/100 up and down so my internet shouldn't be the problem and i have a i7 overclocked and a GTX 560 ti. Logs below

also to mention my native screen resolution is 1680x1050 if that affects it in any way

now to my second problem, when i stream i haf to put the volume level almost all the way down for me to be heard on stream and that annoys me because if i want to listen to a song in the background i must lower it so much that i cant hear it but when i record it to test if the settings are okay i can hear the song loud and clear. Very weird i have a razer kraken 7.1 headset and a at2020 microphone

 

[kexus]

To improve the audio, try adjusting your mic boost either in windows or OBS. To turn it up in OBS, go to settings, then audio, and look for "Mic/aux boost". This will let you increase the volume of your mic on the stream.

 

[Jimmy]

I have it set to 2 don't really want to go that high with the mic boost as i picks up more background noises and white noise

 

[Kiada]

Hey Jimmy, are you streaming to Twitch? I can see a couple of things wrong with your settings to what Twitch recommends if so. I can't guarantee this will fix any blurriness but you should probably do this anyways!

1) Change your buffer size to be the same as your bitrate. You have your bitrate set to 3500* and your buffer set to 6000. Set your buffer to 3500.

2) Change your keyframe interval from 60 to 2.

*a bitrate of 3500 is not recommended and it is certainly overkill for 720p @ 30fps. With a bitrate this high most regular stream viewers will not be able to keep up with your stream, so they will buffer a lot. It is best to accept a quality loss with the bitrate at around 2000 until you're partnered and Twitch transcodes your incoming stream into different bitrates themselves.

Do you have Twitch archiving your past broadcasts? A link to one of them so we could see this blurriness would be helpful!

I see you're using Virtual Audio Cable - does this mean you're running through some vocal processing before routing the microphone to OBS?

 

[Jimmy]

Hey Kiada yes i am indeed streaming to Twitch. Okay i will change my bitrate to 2000 and change keyframe interval.

My keyframe interval is already set to 2.

The reason i am using Virtual audio cable is so that i can use Adobe Audition and lower my background noise like the sound coming from my computer fans.

linking to on of my recent streams: http://www.twitch.tv/exotis_/b/534030871 from 3 days ago (I am using noisegate on this stream but i cant really get it to work the way i want it to like it should only activate when i speak and be off when i don't but at you can hear on the stream it cuts my voice out some times)

 

[Kiada]

Wow, stream quality looks fine to me :) It's going to look even more blurry by reducing the bitrate to 2000, but if any of your viewers are complaining about your stream quality in that video then meugh! stuff em. If you're just worried about it yourself, don't be. Quality is good, I'd be more worried about viewers not being able to view without buffering.

I'm using Adobe Audition for the same reason, are you using OBS noise gate or the dynamics processing inside Audition? I'm guessing you followed the youtube vid below to set up Audition and VAC?

 

[Jimmy]

I am using obs noise gate but i'm leaning towards not using it at all and just go with mic always on. Yes that's the video i followed but i didn't use any other things except the background noise reduction

 

[Kiada]

Ah, well he uses the Dynamics Processing effect as a noise gate - I prefer it over OBS's noise gate.

I digress anyways, I'm unsure why when you record locally the audio levels are fine but when you stream they aren't. Is that what you're saying? There shouldn't be any difference between changing the mode from 'File Output Only' to 'Live Stream'!

 

[Jimmy]

I will test it out later :) this is how it looks in obs. As you can see i got to lower the volume quite a bit

 

[Kiada]

Ah so just to clarify:

You have to reduce the overall streaming volume (in-game sounds, music, everything) because your microphone is so quiet? If you boost your microphone volume any more you pick up background noise and it triggers your noise gate / doesn't sound too great?

For me the Adaptive Noise Reduction effect in Audition works perfectly for any sort of consistent background noise, seemingly however loud I have my mic. You mentioned you're using this earlier?

I honestly think to get your sound working right you need to play about with your microphone processing in Adobe Audition after boosting your microphone volume through control panel!


This is the best place to alter your microphone volume. Control Panel --> Hardware and Sound --> Manage Audio Devices

http://i.imgur.com/GMS7bwy.png

For the Audition processing, all you really need are the enabled effects in the below image. What I did was go through the youtube guide above and pause the video when it showed his settings for each of the plugins. Then I copied his settings exactly, and tweaked here and there. It takes a little bit of time but it's a one-time thing once everything is setup right!

1) Adaptive Noise Reduction - you know what this does, it eliminates any background noise.
2) Dynamics Processing - as mentioned above, this is used as a very nice alternative noise gate to OBS's.
3) Multiband Compressor - keeps your vocal levels at the same volume with few peaks and troughs, so it is more consistent and sounds 'louder'.
4) Hard Limited - Stops your microphone level going over a certain threshold, so it never clips / distorts.

http://i.imgur.com/DFgiUPs.png

Once you have your Noise Reduction and Dynamics Processor (noise gate) working properly you don't need to worry about the volume of your mic / background noise. Fiddly and annoying but worth it. Also to save time you should monitor your microphone through your headset whilst tweaking. This lets you listen to your microphone levels and processing in real time and saves you having to test with local recordings. Just remember to switch it off before recording / streaming as you will be recording double.

http://i.imgur.com/9pYxhd7.png

Sorry if some of this advice isn't new to you, its hard to gauge what people already know when offering help online!

 

[Jimmy]

Thank you for the help Kiada i will try everything in a little bit and do some more tweaking and i really hope this works so i can start streaming again without problems :)

 

[Jimmy]

One thing in the video that he changes is the sample rate on the microphone and headset to 48000Hz but my mic is 44100Hz so i should not change it to 48 like he does in the video correct?

 

[Kiada]

Nah you don't need too - I kept mine at 44100Hz. The point he was making was to make sure it's consistent across the board, so follow the steps and make sure it's 44100Hz everywhere if that's what you decide to use :)

 

[Jimmy]

I am in the process of going through all the settings on my mic but somehow i lose quality along the way when i enable these effects in adobe audition