Hey there. I'm pretty much a n00b when it comes to streaming, seeing as I've only been streaming for just over a week. I've been running into quite a few problems, and no matter how much I tweak settings and look up tutorials / help threads, I've been completely unable to improve the quality of my stream & recording. I'm hoping some of the knowledgeable people here can help me out.
My specs as it pertains to OBS. I might be missing some relevant specs here:
One of my recent logs, I believe this has the information for the 480p stream.
The MAJOR issue that I'm having is the heavy pixelation you can see in the video links I posted. I've tried a number of things to try and improve my stream/recording quality, such as lowering it to 480p, but the quality of my streams/recordings remains like poo compared to other streams I've seen. My mic issue is completely another issue, which I'll try to resolve later.
I have my upload bitrate set to 1500. I use a 30 fps setting for my streams, and I've tried using both CBR and the quality balance at different settings. My videos remain heavily pixelated. I understand that my bitrate is a little low for FPS streaming (ideally it should be at 3000 or so), but my 480p video for example, shouldn't look so bad. I have a decent rig, albeit an i7 would be more ideal for streaming/recording. I just don't know what to do to get rid of the heavy pixelation. My streamers tell me that my live streams don't look half bad, but if you ask me, the videos I posted are terrible compared to most other Arma 3 videos or streams. A 1500 bitrate shouldn't look so terrible in 480p, right?
Does anyone having any recommendations on what I should do to improve my streams/recordings? I'm running out of ideas. Would overclocking my i5 to a higher speed help any? Maybe a 4.0 Ghz speed. My i5 is stable at its stock settings. My idle temps are low and when I'm gaming I average about 45C, so I don't see any harmful effects from overclocking to a higher setting. Maybe I should turn off recording to a file and just live stream.
I'd like to stream in 720p with little to moderate pixelation. I know that I don't have the upload/bitrate to do any 1080p streaming, but I don't mind if I end up having to settle for a 480p stream.
P.S. I say stream/recording because I also record my videos to an HDD.
My specs as it pertains to OBS. I might be missing some relevant specs here:
- i5 2500k at its stock settings (3.3 Ghz)
- XFX Radeon HD 7950
- 12GB of DDR3 memory @ 1600.
- Samsung 840 Pro SSD (I run OBS off my SSD. I don't know if an SSD makes much of a difference tbh. I record my videos to a 3.0 GB/s HDD though.)
- 30 Mb/s download, 2 Mb/s upload
- One of my recent twitch videos in 720p (http://www.twitch.tv/lvl1k0n/b/406288937)
- One of my twitch videos in 480p (http://www.twitch.tv/lvl1k0n/c/2309676)
- I mostly stream a high action FPS game known as Arma 3
One of my recent logs, I believe this has the information for the 480p stream.
Code:
23:46:42: Open Broadcaster Software v0.522b - 64bit ( ^ω^)
23:46:42: -------------------------------
23:46:42: CPU Name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz
23:46:42: CPU Speed: 3310MHz
23:46:42: Physical Memory: 12264MB Total, 7819MB Free
23:46:42: stepping id: 7, model 10, family 6, type 0, extmodel 1, extfamily 0, HTT 1, logical cores 4, total cores 4
23:46:42: monitor 1: pos={0, 0}, size={1920, 1080}
23:46:42: monitor 2: pos={1920, 0}, size={1920, 1080}
23:46:42: Windows Version: 6.1 Build 7601 S
23:46:42: Aero is Disabled
23:46:42: -------------------------------
23:46:42: OBS Modules:
23:46:42: Base Address Module
23:46:42: 000000003F570000 OBS.exe
23:46:42: 00000000EB210000 OBSApi.dll
23:46:42: 00000000F8880000 DShowPlugin.dll
23:46:42: 00000000F8850000 GraphicsCapture.dll
23:46:42: 00000000F7130000 NoiseGate.dll
23:46:42: ------------------------------------------
23:46:42: Adapter 1
23:46:42: Video Adapter: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
23:46:42: Video Adapter Dedicated Video Memory: 3198349312
23:46:42: Video Adapter Shared System Memory: 1866874880
23:46:42: =====Stream Start: 2013-05-19, 23:46:42===============================================
23:46:42: Multithreaded optimizations: On
23:46:42: Base resolution: 1920x1080
23:46:42: Output resolution: 852x480
23:46:42: ------------------------------------------
23:46:42: Loading up D3D10...
23:46:42: Playback device Default
23:46:42: ------------------------------------------
23:46:42: Using desktop audio input: Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi)
23:46:42: Using 5.1 speaker setup
23:46:42: ------------------------------------------
23:46:42: Using auxilary audio input: Microphone (Creative SB X-Fi)
23:46:42: ------------------------------------------
23:46:42: Audio Encoding: AAC
23:46:42: bitrate: 128
23:46:42: Using bitmap image
23:46:42: Using graphics capture
23:46:42: ------------------------------------------
23:46:42: Video Encoding: x264
23:46:42: fps: 30
23:46:42: width: 852, height: 480
23:46:42: preset: veryfast
23:46:42: CBR: no
23:46:42: CFR: yes
23:46:42: max bitrate: 1500
23:46:42: buffer size: 2000
23:46:42: quality: 7
23:46:42: ------------------------------------------
23:46:44: Using RTMP service: Twitch / Justin.tv
23:46:44: Server selection: rtmp://live-iad.justin.tv/app
23:46:44: Using bitmap image
23:46:45: SO_SNDBUF was at 8192
23:46:45: SO_SNDBUF is now 65536
23:46:48: SharedTexCapture hooked
00:16:48: Capture window 0x00E90A12 invalid or changing, terminating capture
00:17:08: SharedTexCapture hooked
00:36:16: Capture window 0x000B0EAA invalid or changing, terminating capture
00:36:27: SharedTexCapture hooked
01:03:10: Capture window 0x04AF0108 invalid or changing, terminating capture
01:03:35: SharedTexCapture hooked
01:59:23: Total frames rendered: 229307, number of frames that lagged: 7585 (3.31%) (it's okay for some frames to lag)
01:59:23: Total duplicated frames: 12684 (5.53%)
01:59:27: RTMPPublisher::SocketLoop: Aborting due to bStopping
01:59:27: Number of times waited to send: 0, Waited for a total of 0 bytes
01:59:27: Number of b-frames dropped: 0 (0%), Number of p-frames dropped: 0 (0%), Total 0 (0%)
01:59:27: =====Stream End: 2013-05-20, 01:59:27=================================================
01:59:28: =====Stream Start: 2013-05-20, 01:59:28===============================================
01:59:28: Multithreaded optimizations: On
01:59:28: Base resolution: 1920x1080
01:59:28: Output resolution: 852x480
01:59:28: ------------------------------------------
01:59:28: Loading up D3D10...
01:59:28: Playback device Default
01:59:28: ------------------------------------------
01:59:28: Using desktop audio input: Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi)
01:59:28: Using 5.1 speaker setup
01:59:28: ------------------------------------------
01:59:28: Using auxilary audio input: Microphone (Creative SB X-Fi)
01:59:28: ------------------------------------------
01:59:28: Audio Encoding: AAC
01:59:28: bitrate: 128
01:59:28: Using bitmap image
01:59:28: Using graphics capture
01:59:28: ------------------------------------------
01:59:28: Video Encoding: x264
01:59:28: fps: 30
01:59:28: width: 852, height: 480
01:59:28: preset: veryfast
01:59:28: CBR: no
01:59:28: CFR: yes
01:59:28: max bitrate: 1500
01:59:28: buffer size: 2000
01:59:28: quality: 7
01:59:28: ------------------------------------------
01:59:29: Using RTMP service: Twitch / Justin.tv
01:59:29: Server selection: rtmp://live-iad.justin.tv/app
01:59:30: SO_SNDBUF was at 8192
01:59:30: SO_SNDBUF is now 65536
01:59:31: SharedTexCapture hooked
02:09:43: Total frames rendered: 17870, number of frames that lagged: 607 (3.40%) (it's okay for some frames to lag)
02:09:43: Total duplicated frames: 709 (3.97%)
02:09:43: RTMPPublisher::SocketLoop: Aborting due to bStopping
02:09:43: Number of times waited to send: 0, Waited for a total of 0 bytes
02:09:43: Number of b-frames dropped: 0 (0%), Number of p-frames dropped: 0 (0%), Total 0 (0%)
02:09:43: =====Stream End: 2013-05-20, 02:09:43=================================================
02:11:08: =====Stream Start: 2013-05-20, 02:11:08===============================================
02:11:08: Multithreaded optimizations: On
02:11:08: Base resolution: 1920x1080
02:11:08: Output resolution: 852x480
02:11:08: ------------------------------------------
02:11:08: Loading up D3D10...
02:11:08: Playback device Default
02:11:08: ------------------------------------------
02:11:08: Using desktop audio input: Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi)
02:11:08: Using 5.1 speaker setup
02:11:08: ------------------------------------------
02:11:08: Using auxilary audio input: Microphone (Creative SB X-Fi)
02:11:08: ------------------------------------------
02:11:08: Audio Encoding: AAC
02:11:08: bitrate: 128
02:11:08: Using bitmap image
02:11:08: Using graphics capture
02:11:08: ------------------------------------------
02:11:08: Video Encoding: x264
02:11:08: fps: 30
02:11:08: width: 852, height: 480
02:11:08: preset: veryfast
02:11:08: CBR: no
02:11:08: CFR: yes
02:11:08: max bitrate: 1500
02:11:08: buffer size: 2000
02:11:08: quality: 7
02:11:08: ------------------------------------------
02:11:08: SharedTexCapture hooked
02:11:09: Using RTMP service: Twitch / Justin.tv
02:11:09: Server selection: rtmp://live-iad.justin.tv/app
02:11:10: SO_SNDBUF was at 8192
02:11:10: SO_SNDBUF is now 65536
03:14:24: Total frames rendered: 113510, number of frames that lagged: 279 (0.25%) (it's okay for some frames to lag)
03:14:24: Total duplicated frames: 429 (0.38%)
03:14:25: RTMPPublisher::SocketLoop: Aborting due to bStopping
03:14:25: Number of times waited to send: 0, Waited for a total of 0 bytes
03:14:25: Number of b-frames dropped: 0 (0%), Number of p-frames dropped: 0 (0%), Total 0 (0%)
03:14:25: =====Stream End: 2013-05-20, 03:14:25=================================================
03:24:22:
03:24:22: Profiler results:
03:24:22:
03:24:22: ==============================================================
03:24:22: frame - [100%] [avg time: 2.708 ms] [avg calls per frame: 1] [children: 84%] [unaccounted: 16%]
03:24:22: | scene->Preprocess - [0.0369%] [avg time: 0.001 ms] [avg calls per frame: 1]
03:24:22: | video encoding and uploading - [84%] [avg time: 2.275 ms] [avg calls per frame: 1] [children: 19.5%] [unaccounted: 64.5%]
03:24:22: | | CopyResource - [0.443%] [avg time: 0.012 ms] [avg calls per frame: 0]
03:24:22: | | conversion to 4:2:0 - [0.295%] [avg time: 0.008 ms] [avg calls per frame: 0]
03:24:22: | | call to encoder - [17.4%] [avg time: 0.471 ms] [avg calls per frame: 1]
03:24:22: | | sending stuff out - [1.37%] [avg time: 0.037 ms] [avg calls per frame: 1]
03:24:22: ==============================================================
03:24:22:I have my upload bitrate set to 1500. I use a 30 fps setting for my streams, and I've tried using both CBR and the quality balance at different settings. My videos remain heavily pixelated. I understand that my bitrate is a little low for FPS streaming (ideally it should be at 3000 or so), but my 480p video for example, shouldn't look so bad. I have a decent rig, albeit an i7 would be more ideal for streaming/recording. I just don't know what to do to get rid of the heavy pixelation. My streamers tell me that my live streams don't look half bad, but if you ask me, the videos I posted are terrible compared to most other Arma 3 videos or streams. A 1500 bitrate shouldn't look so terrible in 480p, right?
Does anyone having any recommendations on what I should do to improve my streams/recordings? I'm running out of ideas. Would overclocking my i5 to a higher speed help any? Maybe a 4.0 Ghz speed. My i5 is stable at its stock settings. My idle temps are low and when I'm gaming I average about 45C, so I don't see any harmful effects from overclocking to a higher setting. Maybe I should turn off recording to a file and just live stream.
I'd like to stream in 720p with little to moderate pixelation. I know that I don't have the upload/bitrate to do any 1080p streaming, but I don't mind if I end up having to settle for a 480p stream.
P.S. I say stream/recording because I also record my videos to an HDD.
