Question / Help Minecraft quality is washed up and pixelated!

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nicksterprojects

New Member
I love streaming and i want my stream to look the best as it can be. I stream mostly minecraft because thats what my viewers watch but when i stream It looks washed out and pixelated to me.... i tried asking alot of people but no one has an answer for me and I've been trying to fix it for weeks. I ask people in my stream how it looks and they say its fine but i can see the little things like pixels and stuff that drive me crazy. Any help would be great!!

Here is a vod of my stream: GO TO 1 HOUR AND 11 MINS https://www.twitch.tv/nicksterprojects/v/112168936

LOG: https://gist.github.com/7afca61279404b9cdeefd0787e91ae11
 
wallrik

wallrik

Member
Your log looks fine, and the video as well. The blurriness/pixelation is what's called compression artifacts. It's just the nature of video encoding.

There are a few things you can do to help increase quality.

First, the most obvious solution is to increase the bitrate. You're currently at 3000 kbps. Max recommended for Twitch is 3500 kbps, so go ahead and increase it to that if you want to give it a go. However, be aware that some viewers may experience buffering or stuttering if they can't stream that fast. (This is why OBS Studio default is 2500 kbps).

Second, you can increase the encoder preset from veryfast to faster. It will make the encoder work harder to compress the video which will make it look better at the given bitrate. But please watch your CPU usage while streaming to check that it's not maxing out 100% because it will make you start dropping frames. I'm not familiar with the AMD FX-8350, but give it a go and see how you do.

Reply back if you have further questions. Good luck :)
 
wallrik

wallrik

Member
There are several reasons for that. I had a look at Giantwaffle's stream just now.

Compression artifacts are present there as well, but much less visible. If you know what to look for you're gonna see them. Here's a screenshot of him moving fast and you can see the grass texture being blurry and his webcam being slightly pixelated.
giantwaffle-00001.jpg

He's running the stream at 4000 kbps, but he's a Twitch partner which means that viewers that can't view the source stream can select a different quality.

He's also using a High profile instead of the recommended Main which makes further compression possible at the cost of compatibility. Some older phones and other players can't use the High profile which is why Twitch recommends sticking with Main. (But again, he's partnered so it works anyway)

But I think for him, the thing that probably makes the biggest impact is that he has a dedicated streaming PC that is used only for video encoding with a top-of-the-line processor. So he's playing on one PC and capturing the image on a different PC where it's streaming, making him able to probably use a medium preset.

Events and tournaments also use dedicated encoding computers for maximum quality.

There's really no magic behind it. Just throw a bunch of money at it, hehe.
 
S

sendblink23

Member
nicksterprojects said:
i see were your coming at but how do the big streamers like giantwaffle and bacon_donut get it to look so good...?
Click to expand...
They have much better hardware, use higher bitrates 4k(they are partnered) and CPU encoder preset quite heavy like to Medium or lower ... on this case they have dedicated 2nd computers just to encode and stream as in it captures their gaming pcs.

Anyways your stream looks very good so not sure why are you bothered of minor artifacts though, so if you still want to improve just go lower on encoder preset if your cpu can handle it, maybe also up to 3.5k if your internet is stable enough. Me I would stay on your current settings.
 
EBrito

EBrito

Active Member
Your VOD looks PRISTINE CLEAR.
Even in CSGO fast turns.

Rise to 3500 for even better quality
 
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