Question / Help Optional settings for casting; Youtube's quality downgrade

[ball2hi]

So I do a bit of casting for some games, IE. Left4Dead2. Are there any advanced options I could use to increase livestream quality without concern of playability since I'm just a cameraman. I currently am using;

720@30 w/ 2500kbps Medium preset (Only 70% CPU usage) Looks nearly flawless, exceptions being small text and damn foliage...

Also, whenever I upload any videos to Youtube (Directly from my harddrive, using OBS's local saved mp4) I notice that my videos look noticeably worse. Nothing too bad but it really bothers me.

 

[vbdkv]

Every video you upload to youtube will be re-encoded and look much worse than the actual video you uploaded. That's why when I upload something, I also put a download link in the description. So many 1080p videos ruined by youtube .. Oh well :)

 

[ball2hi]

Every video you upload to youtube will be re-encoded and look much worse than the actual video you uploaded. That's why when I upload something, I also put a download link in the description. So many 1080p videos ruined by youtube .. Oh well :)

So I've noticed... Although I'm not sure where I could upload my videos so that people can download them? I too gravely dislike my videos being downgraded so much.

 

[dodgepong]

Grass and foliage is notorious for being hard for x264 to encode without quality degradation. Just take a look at pretty much every DayZ stream. There's not much you can do to improve it without increasing bit rate and lowering the x264 preset, which you're already doing at your limit, I assume.

 

[ball2hi]

Grass and foliage is notorious for being hard for x264 to encode without quality degradation. Just take a look at pretty much every DayZ stream. There's not much you can do to improve it without increasing bit rate and lowering the x264 preset, which you're already doing at your limit, I assume.

I could probably lower the preset 1 more but that'd be pushing it. I could increase the bitrate but I'm trying to keep it 2500kbps as an experiment for tomorrow's cast. You say there's not much, but what little can I do then without touching bitrate/x264 preset?

 

[Jack0r]

You could lower the game settings and if the game allows remove effects etc.

For example in Quake3 with very simple textures and turned off effects you could create a reasonably good looking stream years ago with very low bitrates. The same effect is still visible nowadays. Games like the mentioned DayZ have effects, foliage and similar stuff that is always on screen and changes a lot. That would be like turning back texture quality to full and reactivating the effects in Quake3.
You would have had to increase your bitrate or cpu preset to accompany for these changes back then and you still have now. In the end its always bitrate/compression/content which decides on the resulting quality. And the compression(presets) cannot do miracles.

 

[ball2hi]

Alright, thank you. Another thing is, where could I upload my videos as @vbdkv mentioned? I too am getting frustrated with Youtube's video quality, and I archive anything of importance.

 

[dodgepong]

If you want to archive things, invest in a gigantic hard drive to save the originals, and then upload to YouTube. Don't treat YouTube as an archive.