Bug Report Ping Problems While streaming with OBS

[Xaraa]

So i've asked Jim about this problem via Livechat, and we got it fixed but now the problem has come back and i'm wondering if any one knows how to fix it.

So the problem is when i play a normal League of Legends game i get a ping of 36 no change in it nothing, but when i start streaming straight away i get a ping jump from 36 all the way up to 90-120 ping(I know my ping should be a be higher but it's not stable when i'm streaming), this is such a pain because some times my move commands via using the mouse are not picked up and sometimes there's 1-1.5 second delay via movements.

D/L 60mb's U/L 3mb's with 5ms Ping

I also got told that "Send Buffer" helps alot with this kind of problem but i didn't see a diffences maybe i had it set wrong i'm not sure, i had it set on the lowest one which was 1460 if i remember correctly.

Setting's i'm using:
Bitrate - 2000
Buffer - 2000
Qaulity - 7
Video output - 1280x720 720p
FPS - 60fps
Preset - Veryfast

PC Spec's
Intel core i5 2500k @ 4.3 Ghz
8GB's Corsair Ram
AMD 4870HD(I broke my new graphics card so my friend let me borrow his old one)

Any help that someone can give will be welcome.
(If you want a log file or Internet Statistics, i am able to post one when i get home around 4:30pm GMT+0 UK time.)
Overall i want this problem fixed soon as.

 

[Lain]

Send buffer doesn't actually do anything anymore, going to take the options out. Could be that you're using too much bandwidth.. Could be that the app is sending out too much data in bursts that are interfering with other stuff on the network on your machine, but I'd have to see the actual network data of your entire machine to really know for sure.

It's strange because I know of people who use tons of upload bandwidth and still don't have this problem. I don't have this problem either, but I mean I bought a really good router. I'm not entirely sure what the cause would be outside of simply using too much bandwidth and not leaving room for your game, but I'm taking a look at ways to reduce bursts of data at least

 

[Xaraa]

Well Jim, i don't mind posting Internet satistics about my internet to see where the fault may lie or you can even come on my PC via Teamviewer and look at my Internet that way. I did test my internet with a website called "TestmyNet" where you can test your internet more than "SpeedTest" does with 33mb's files where "SpeedTest" is 254kbps, So i tested my internet on it "I have 2.9mb upload" after the 33mb test it turned out i was normally get 2.7mb upload. Which is still 700kbps under my own upload.

But if you could make an option in OBS where you could set the amount of the data burst it could fix many problems people may have with there internet while streaming, but i'm just asking it's a lot different for you making it.

Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this, if you need me to post a log file Jim please just say and i will.
Thanks.

 

[Xaraa]

Jim, this problem was fixed today by someone in the LiveChat area. I explained the problem i was having to see if anyone knew and two people straight away said they knew and asked what settings i was using etc. And well i got the problem fix :D so now i'm a happy streamer with amazing software. Thank you so much. <3

 

[Lain]

And what did you change your settings to? I'm sure others would love to know as well what was going on.

 

[Xaraa]

So i was using what i said above, the problem i was having i was using 4128kbps of an upload even though i have 3mb(a full 1mb over) Your asking yourself how does this work, well from testing my stream with the people in live chat 2kMaxbitrate along with 2k Buffer and 128 is 4128kpbs(I was lost too don't worry) after changing my settings to what they told me to change it to, which was Quality 6 Bitrate 1900 Buffer 500 and 128 Audio. I will be using 2626kbps which is under my upload by 400kbps so they said stream that and we will watch and show your ping in game, my normal ping when i'm not streaming is 36, when i tested this it was 37 sometimes 38 but always 37(i was jaw dropping at this point) so the overall answer is don't use the same buffer rate as max bitrate unless you have like 20mb upload.


This might be odd to understand but it works for me and i'm a really happy streamer with 720p 60fps with amazing software thanks Jim!! :D

 

[McKillem]

I've starter using OBS just a couple of days ago, but did notice my ping in ArmA 2 growing up to several hundred ms several times within 15-20-25-30 minutes intervals (which led to me being kicked out of the server). This repeated several times while stream quality settings were 840x525, 3000kbps max bitrate, 1500kbps buffer size and 10 quality (took the numbers from my previous Xsplit expirience, worked ok), tried lowering quality to 8 and FPS to 25, but it didn't make any difference, so I went over here for help. Will try to play with smaller bitrate and see how it works out.

Other than that I really like OBS so far, and wish you good luck continuing this project :)

UPD:
Changed bitrate to 2000kbps with 1000kbps buffer, ping went sky high way faster (took less than 3 minutes), at the same time as OBS showed me red indicator of reaching more-than-max-bitrate.

Should I try to set bigger bitrate instead of lowering it? My connection has some width left for it, I guess:

Spoiler: My speed test

UPD 2
Changing bitrate to 4000kbps with 2000kbps buffer didn't help - ping went up to 2200ms in less than 5 minutes again - so far lowering and raising bitrate by 1000 led to results that have been even worse than before, and I'm pretty confident about my internet connection, since there is no problems when I'm not streaming.

I would love to help resolve this issue for myself and other people who expirience the same problems - just tell me what I can do or should try.

UPD 3
It's 2am, but I coudn't resist trying another thing, so I did - and it went better than previous two.

I've changed x264 CPU preset to Faster instead of VeryFast (default one). Returned bitrate back to original 3000kbps, buffer to 1500kbps, and it worked. Not sure if it's the solution for me yet, since I've only played around 10 minutes with this setting, but will try longer session tomorrow and post the results.

 

[Lain]

I actually greatly appreciate you guys doing tests like this.. I read everything on my board even if I don't respond so I am looking carefully at everyone's results.

Another thing I'd like you to do: if you're running under 50 FPS, try setting keyint=250 in advanced x264 settings. I would like to see if that changes anything. currently my app changes the default keyint and I wonder if that's affecting things in terms of ping for lower FPS users.

 

[Xaraa]

Should i give this a try even though i'm using 60 fps for the feedback Jim

 

[Lain]

No, it's really only meant at people who were using <50fps

 

[Zephiris]

I'm not sure what the difference is here, but I've been streaming League of Legends at 1800 bitrate/buffer at 1080p 30fps with absolutely no problems at all. My sustained upstream tops out around 4mbps, so I'm only using about half of it. I suppose if key frames aren't coming through often enough that they have to rebuild a full frame which causes congestion, i still have enough upstream capacity left to handle it.

Edit: Will try with the setting change and post any differences.

 

[Lain]

Currently, if your FPS is below 50, keyframes happen a little more often than they probably should.

Please try out keyint=250 in x264 custom settings in advanced, and see if that effects anything. I would be grateful for anyone running below 50 fps to try it out.

 

[McKillem]

I actually greatly appreciate you guys doing tests like this.. I read everything on my board even if I don't respond so I am looking carefully at everyone's results.

Another thing I'd like you to do: if you're running under 50 FPS, try setting keyint=250 in advanced x264 settings. I would like to see if that changes anything. currently my app changes the default keyint and I wonder if that's affecting things in terms of ping for lower FPS users.

Glad to do these tests, even more glad if they help.

My stream runs on 30fps (Twitch.tv doesn't really support any higher rate, afaik), so I will give it a try. Plan to stream couple of hours, should be enough for ensuring that stuff doesn't break.

 

[Zephiris]

Currently, if your FPS is below 50, keyframes happen a little more often than they probably should.

Please try out keyint=250 in x264 custom settings in advanced, and see if that effects anything. I would be grateful for anyone running below 50 fps to try it out.

i didn't notice any difference between the two settings in ping, but here are some bandwidth utilization graphs anyway:

OBS 0.466a -- 1920x1080 @ 30fps -- Video Bitrate/Buffer 1800kbps veryfast (quality 8) -- 128kbps AAC Audio


OBS 0.466a -- 1920x1080 @ 30fps -- Video Bitrate/Buffer 1800kbps veryfast (quality 8) -- 128kbps AAC Audio -- keyint=250

 

[Xaraa]

Twitch.tv does support 60fps, many streamers use 60fps including myself and it works fine.

Send buffer does nothing, i would say turn it off.

 

[Lain]

I actually am going to remove the send buffer option because it's no longer used

 

[McKillem]

I was lucky enough that ArmA 2 actually shows bandwidth (and desync ratio) of players on the server, my was between 2500 and 2200, while other players at the moment of streaming mostly had around 600-800 with no problems. So by doing simple math I've set my bitrate to 1500kbps and buffer to 750kbps, and, for some reason, turned CBR on (srsly, why did I do that?)...

This led to the smoothest stream I've ever had. ArmA 2 showed my bandwidth lowering to 700-1000 with some time, desync never was higher than any other player on the server, framerate was a slightly bit better than before and all remained perfect for about 45 minutes, at which point I've stopped the stream to check if the video was smooth. And it was, as I've said before, smoothes stream I've ever had, even on record.

So my settings are:

Base Resolution: 840x524
Downscale: No (840x524)
FPS: 25

Quality: 8
Max Bitrate: 1400
Buffer Size: 1400
Audio Codec AAC
Bitrate: 96

x264 CPU Preset: faster
Use CBR: checked.

Spoiler: My PC specs, just in case

CPU: Intel Core i5-2300 CPU @ 2.80GHz (4 CPUs)
RAM: 4x2GB Hynix DDR3-1333
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 1GB GDDR5

On the side note: according to the log file, which I only now decided to check, previous attempts with bigger bitrate and buffer went to buffer being constantly full.

Well, that's all that I got for now. Hope this info can be turned into something useful. My ArmA 2 stream is now smooth, with working hotkeys (yaaay, Xsplit couldn't do that), and OBS is now officially my streaming software of choice. Keep up the good work :)

UPD 17.01.13:
Made some changes to this post. Game still managed to kick me for high ping from time to time, so I've set both bitrate and buffer to 1400. In my case it seems like most of the times game server was having connection/performance/overload issues (and hugging bandwidth like crazy - ArmA 2 is quite demanding, to say least), not me. Also don't really see any point of having buffer value lower what bitrate, in my case I had to set them alike, since, according to logs, smaller buffer was overfilling all the time.