Question / Help Only certain games pixelate 720p 60fps 3500kbps

[TheGroobster]

Hey everyone,

I am back again with another question. I was recently streaming Elder Scrolls Online with the above setup and I had little to no problem with pixelation on my stream. But when I switched over to DayZ with the exact same settings, I noticed lots of pixelation when moving. I should mention that the CPU preset is set to "veryfast".

So maybe certain games require more bit rate for the same resolution/fps? I have heard of this before but I am surprised because ESO is a fairly demanding game. I don't know if it is classified as "High Movement". Maybe DayZ has more going on graphically or something, I don't know.

Here is a link to the stream in question http://www.twitch.tv/thegroobster/b/528296163

Thanks

 

[Jack0r]

I have no idea how ESO plays or what it looks like when played, but DayZ is by far the most bitrate demanding game I currently know. WoW in some cases can come near but most other games in the range of first person shooters for example, need less bitrate to look good.
Pixelation has always the same reason, too less bitrate for what you want to show in the video :)

 

[TheGroobster]

Ok Thanks a lot. I will try lowering the resolution to 616p(1.75) and see what the results are.

 

[Boildown]

Complexity to a video encoder doesn't always correlate with complexity to a GPU. If you watched the Super Bowl this year with the confetti streaming down after the Seahawks won, you probably saw the picture on your TV break up and pixelate, because even the broadcast standard compression technique they were using couldn't handle it. I found this kind of hilarious, personally. H.264 just doesn't handle well the kind of picture that DayZ sends it, just like that confetti strewn scene after the Super Bowl was won.

By the way, you can also try using 30fps instead of 60fps, with the same bitrate. 60fps is kind of a luxury given the limitations of Flash anyways.

 

[TheGroobster]

Thanks for the response Boildown. I have seen streams where I think they are using < 60fps (I think it's probably 40-45) and it looks quite choppy which I believe is due to the frames that are being discarded. I might have to run some tests to see the difference between 30, 40, 50 fps if 616p @ 60fps still pixelates a lot.

 

[TheGroobster]

Well it seems like even 616p @ 60fps will pixelate when outdoors. Indoors its not so bad. I wonder if shaving of 10 fps for a total of 50 will make a big difference. Otherwise I will have to settle for 540p.

 

[FerretBomb]

Really, give 30fps a shot. 60fps is mostly stat-wanking, unless you're playing a game that blits sprites for transparency. If people are dropping frames and getting choppy results on-stream, it's FAR more likely that they're just trying to run at too high a resolution for their hardware, and dropping or duplicating frames... not because they're running at lower than 60fps.

But yeah, DayZ is a known problem. Apparently it's something about how they do the grass and the significant amount of other foliage. Even among high-motion games, it's particularly bad.

 

[AndehX]

DayZ is just extremely demanding on the x264 encoder. Or any encoder for that matter. (looks 10 times worse with quicksync)
In my opinion, I wouldnt bother with odd framerates like 40 and 50fps. I would stick to either 60, or 30.
In all honesty, I would never stream at anything higher than 30fps on twitch, because of the way twitch's flash player butchers the fps. You might notice when watching someone who claims to be streaming at 60fps, that it looks very choppy. Thats twitch's fault, not the streamers. If you watch in fullscreen (which nobody does) then it generally looks alot smoother.
But yeah, if you're streaming on twitch, don't bother wasting encoding time on 60fps as nobody viewing your stream will get a smooth 60fps experience. Stick to 30 for consistency.