Question / Help Motion Blur?

Involus

New Member
Looking to get some ideas on how to improve stream quality. I keep getting some motion blur on my stream, it's really all that happens. CPU stays around 50% when streaming and playing.

Log: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/d822f5d337c0bd0091d5

VoD: http://www.twitch.tv/involus/b/595625501

When I analyzed the log it said I should maybe switch servers. I currently use Ashburn, VA here is my JTVPing:
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Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
 
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FerretBomb

Active Member
Blur/pixellation means that you're running too high of a resolution or framerate (or too fast an encoder preset, or all of the above) for your given bitrate.

As there's no log linked or attached to your post, we can't take a look and see what's going on under the hood. Chances are, you'll need to dial it back a bit.

The golden-point for non-partnered streamers is 720p, 30fps, 2000kbps.
 

FerretBomb

Active Member
60fps is the problem. You are not running enough bitrate to supply a 60fps 720p stream with enough bits-per-pixel density to support fast action (eg: large amounts of full-screen motion, as happens whenever you turn the camera in WoW). Optimal is a 0.1bpp density; you're running around 0.045, less than half of optimal for good quality.

Drop to 30fps. That'll get you to 0.09 at least, at 2500 (or 0.75 at 2000).

To draw a parallel, you're running a bit density at the moment roughly equal to 720p@30 at 1250kbps. Minimum recommended for a reasonably barebones-watchable 720p@30 is 1500.

That said, on the ingest side, your JTVPing says that either Miami or Dallas would be better options. But that'll just help with dropped frames, not image quality. The quality issue is the high framerate for your bitrate.
 

DrKoin

New Member
I guess you could try a lower ( well, higher, well.. you get it ) preset, like Fast or Medium. This is probably the only thing left to tweak ! :)
 

FerretBomb

Active Member
Ah I see, I'm not dropping frames so that isn't an issue. I'll drop to 30 and try it out, I have wiggle room with my bitrate, can push 3500.
...
Looks a lot better, still gets a little blurry though. Thoughts?

Tried streaming League of Legends, stream quality is very good. Now just gotta figure WoW out.

Unfortunately, unless you are a Partnered streamer on Twitch, the advised target bitrate to use is 2000kbps. This is the point where a majority of viewers will be able to watch your stream without constantly buffering.
People won't generally tell you if they're buffering... they'll just leave.
So even if your connection can handle a higher rate, it's not a good idea to use one. More to work within the technical realities available. A Partner doesn't need to worry as much as they will have transcoding (quality options) available from the start, so if someone is buffering, they can just go to a lower quality to fix it.

League is a mid-low motion game. Most camera moves are primarily just slides (no rotation) with minimal overall changes so are MUCH easier on compression and manageable with a lower bitrate. WoW is not.
This is not something that can be figured out, it's a fundamental difference between the games; it's the same reason you can stream Hearthstone at a super low bitrate and look awesome, while a super-fast racing game like F-Zero GX needs a metric butt-ton of bitrate to look decent.

Sadly, livestreaming will never be a pure 1:1 reproduction. You're always going to get some blur and artifacting. You can minimize this with a slower encoding preset and more bitrate, as well as running at native resolution (downscale will incur some artifacting as well, especially with text; the only way to avoid this and run a 720p stream is to play at 1280x720 locally).
 

Involus

New Member
Could reducing in-game graphics help with streaming? I currently play WoW with all settings maxed out on Ultra. But I analyzed like 5 un-partnered WoW streams and some people are running excellent quality 1080p@30fps@3000 (http://www.twitch.tv/ov1d/c/4869877) others runnning 720@60@3000. I am even moreso confused now. Lol.

Edit: After messing with settings more I've found I can push x264 CPU Preset Medium at the maximum, CPU is high but doable. Fast is obviously more preferable as I don't even push 50% using it.
 
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Osiris

Active Member
There isn't anything more to suggest, the first vod you linked didn't look all that bad to me. The "blurriness" might be coming from the downscaling from 1080p to 720p that will always make it a bit "blurrier".
 
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