Question / Help Optimal Settings with Low Upload Speed ?

Y

Yukinoshita

New Member
Hello,

I got some issues configuring my OBS, used different settings and I don't find them optimal at all. I heard people could stream with a fair quality with only 1 Mbps upload.
I would mostly stream League of Legends (160 fps IG) / Aion (80 fps) / SC2 (100 fps).
My computer is ok enough I think :

Intel® Core™ i5-3570K Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.80 GHz)
AMD Radeon HD 7850 1 Go
Corsair Vengeance 8 GB DDR3 1600MHz
Upload speed : 0.85 (0.9 sometimes).

Could you help me configuring OBS ? I don't know how to configure it that much...

Random settings I tried made the games very blurry and obs estimator doesn't give detailed settings.

Thanks for the help.
 
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BullHorn7

Member
From my experience streams under 2mbit upload will look like complete garbage regardless of what people say. Especially games that have small character and letters like LOL

You can try seeing different stream qualities by only saving a local copy of the video without streaming it anywhere. Try 600kbps, try 1500kbps, try 2500kbps and try 5000kbps and then compare. You'll see that the stream becomes pretty at 2500+
 
ThoNohT

ThoNohT

Developer
While it is true that you aren't going to get a very decent looking 720p stream at that speed. You should really consider what you want to do. With those speeds, I have seen people be very happy with the streams they could produce. LoL and SC2 might be tricky with all the small things going around though, but it's a matter of trying.

For one, you would want to downscale to around 360p or perhaps 480p, at low fps, like 25. To compensate a bit, you could try using a slightly slower x264 preset (faster, or fast, just see what your cpu can handle). You also want to keep the audio bitrate as low as possible, at those upload speeds, every single bit helps, so try 64 or 80 kbps AAC for example.

As for how much bitrate you can use, probably around 600kbps. But again it's really about trying, start around that number, see if you can sustain a stream without lagging ingame or dropping frames. If you are either lagging or dropping frames, lower the bitrate, if not, try increasing it as far as you can go.
 
ThoNohT

ThoNohT

Developer
With an i5, probably, yes. Mind you, you are running a game, which is pretty heavy on your cpu, and also a stream, which is even more heavy on your cpu, both at the same time.

But again, if you want to experiment, go right ahead. Check your task manager to see how far you can push it while keeping your cpu averaging below 80%, without OBs complaining about skipping frames, and without the game starting to lose its smoothness.
 
Boildown

Boildown

Active Member
BullHorn7 said:
It might work but the difference in quality will not be noticeable.
Click to expand...

My understanding is that the greater the downscale the more you get out of stronger presets. And certainly the smaller the resolution the better chances you have to be able to run at Medium, which is impossible for my Sandy Bridge i7 at 720p45 dedicated to streaming, but might be possible at 480p30, for example.

Just watch the log files, if you're getting dropped and late frames over 1%, you've gone too far. Make sure you're streaming high complexity content for what you stream and do it for at least 5 minutes per test, to have consistent results.
 
Y

Yukinoshita

New Member
Ok so I tried the settings you adviced me :

Each vid is about 1mn (didnt make it any longer because my network sucks but is stable)

This one is the worst (settings in title) : http://www.twitch.tv/vivialhazerd/b/486914177
Other ones seem good but I might be able to be more optimal with your help :
http://www.twitch.tv/vivialhazerd/b/486919872
http://www.twitch.tv/vivialhazerd/b/486920493
http://www.twitch.tv/vivialhazerd/b/486921201
http://www.twitch.tv/vivialhazerd/b/486921774

All vids are 25fps

Thanks for helping me !
 
ThoNohT

ThoNohT

Developer
What's the quality number you put in the title? If that indicates the quality balance, then you should probably enable CBR, Twitch also requires this for better compatibility. In that case, you don't need to bother with picking the quality balance, it will use its own algorithm to calculate how to allocate bitrates.

I do think that 480p would be best, 540p looks a bit better when the scenes are still, granted. But during high action scenes, it pixelates a lot, 480p holds up a bit better there. But again, it's your choice, this is basically a recommendation to check the higher action scenes, that's where the issues with too high resolutions always become most apparent. If you compare still images, higher resolutions will almost always look better, but they will just take a bit longer to become good looking. During high action scenes, this time is not available, and pixelation is the result.

If you post a log (see viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7144), we could check your actual settings and maybe make a recommendation based on that.
 
ThoNohT

ThoNohT

Developer
Basically, if you want to control your bitrate a bit better, you might want to lower the buffer size a bit. It can generally be equal to the bitrate, there's no real need to change it from default.

There's one post that might help control your bitrate. Meaning you have a chance of upping it slightly without starting to drop frames, I've seen users benefit from it before: https://obsproject.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4516. This guide might essentially help you utilize a bit more bitrate (because it becomes more stable at the set bitrate) at the cost of using a faster preset. It's pretty advanced stuff, so it's up to you if you want to try that out or not. I also have no idea if doing this will make it better or worse.

The other issues I found are the same ones that the automatic log analyzer found, so I'll just put the output in here for you:
Aero is disabled
Aero seems to be disabled, consider enabling it unless using monitor capture.

Monitor capture detected
One of your scenes appears to be using monitor capture. Monitor capture is the slowest and least efficient method of capturing, and can cause FPS lag on both your stream and your game. Consider using game capture or window capture instead (this does not apply to Windows 8).

Slower preset in use
You have changed the default preset to medium. Using slower presets can result in late frames and high CPU usage / low FPS. You should only change the preset if you are sure you have the CPU power to spare.

Wireless detected
You appear to be streaming over a wireless connection. While this can be OK, keep in mind that interference from other radio sources or obstacles can cause your connection to momentarily stall, resulting in dropped frames or disconnects. A wired connection is strongly recommended for a reliable stream.

Possible slow server
The server you are streaming to (rtmp://live-fra.justin.tv/app) took 502 ms to connect. This may mean your connection or the server is slow, or the server is far away from you. If you are using twitch.tv, you may want to try using JTVPing to find an optimal server.
We did the slower preset on purpose, so you can ignore that. As long as you realize that this uses a lot more cpu power.

Note that if you want to use game capture on League of Legends, you might need to make a more advanced setup with two scenes, there are guides for this here: https://obsproject.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 719#p32820 (second guide on that post).
 
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