Question / Help Pixelated video when streaming to YouTube Live...

«DN»Lasky®

«DN»Lasky®

New Member
This is my first post here, let me try and explain my issue as best as I can.

For years I have been recording videos to my computer/laptop with Fraps that I later convert to MP4 and upload to my YouTube channel. I have been doing this for a number of years and as a result, I have a lot of hard drives full of these videos which I am now in the process of uploading to YouTube in order to save at lease most of my hard drive space of which, I am using multiple TB of (I do have something like 48TB of storage), but that is fast running out with all of these videos I am recording.

I came up with a solution by uploading as I am playing to YouTube as it would save me the trouble of both converting a recording, and uploading it. I am trying to save time, and money (by not having to purchase more large hard drives to store all of my videos). This has become a little bit of a nightmare for me trying to put all of these drives in safe places so they are not damaged and thus don't work. I have streamed a few videos of me playing to show you what the quality is like and the results I have after YouTube has finished processing them once I stop streaming. I have included some links to my videos of random game play to show you what I mean. This is Halo: Custom Edition I am playing at resolution of 1280x720@30FPS. Yes, some of us do still play this game and Halo: Combat Evolved. I do have other games, like Call of Duty: WaW and Modern Warfare, but that I have not tried to run just yet. Once I get this running fully, I can try them.


(More videos available on my channel if you would like to see them)

I am also adding screenshots of my settings for you to see what I currently have:

xykSKig.png

zV7qHVZ.png


These settings that were recommended by a few posts on this board and I have tried them with no success.

My system specs are:
Windows 7 Professional (x64)
24GB DDR3 1600MHz Crucial (three SO-DIMMS 8GB each | plus 8GB page file)
SSD 1: 256GB Transcend SSD (Windows + Applications only)
SSD 2: 525GB Crucial SSD (mounted volumes for games)
Hard Drive: 2TB SATA III (6Gbps) Hard Drive (mounted volumes) in various folders to make my SSD's last longer such as Windows updates folder, downloads folder, just a few examples.
Processor: Intel Core i7 4710MQ (2.5GHz) 4 cores 8 threads | 3.4GHz turbo.
Internet: 200Mbps download and 20Mbps upload (System is hard wired to the hub with a Cat.5 Ethernet cable for a Gigabit connection between my computer and the hub only.

I am hoping that this is enough details for someone to hopefully assist me to resolve my issue.
Thanks for reading.
 
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Boildown

Boildown

Active Member
First of all, there's no way you can use x264's Slow preset on that CPU. Change it to Very Fast to get a baseline of something that works, and then test downwards from there.

Second, I'd suggest a change of workflow, rather than stream to YouTube for archival. You have 48 TB of hard drive space that you've been filling with FRAPS. Record with OBS instead and you'll be able to fit far more video at nearly equivalent quality (assuming you were using FRAPS lossless, if compressed then it'll be much higher quality) in the same amount of hard drive space.

There are many reasons why this is a better idea, but mainly because you can record at a much higher bitrate than what you can stream out, you're not held hostage to by your internet connection or YouTube performing perfectly for the duration of your stream, you can use a fast-ish preset and just increase bitrate for quality instead so that your games don't lag, you avoid YouTube's rather poor transcoding, and you don't have to download them again to edit the videos.

Check out this tutorial: https://obsproject.com/forum/resour...ality-recording-and-multiple-audio-tracks.221

To get specific help on OBS performance problems, we'll need an OBS log file rather than screenshots of your settings. To be most useful the OBS log file needs to be from at least 5 minutes of streaming or recording of high action content.

Finally, with that CPU you might find Quicksync encoding useful, depending on your laptop's GPU.

For reference, I made this video from over 1000 hours of 1080p60 video recorded at 20Mb/s; needed two 4TB hard drives for that project. You have far more storage available than that and your game only records at 720p30. You ought to be able to store an insane amount of video if you do it right.
 
«DN»Lasky®

«DN»Lasky®

New Member
Apologies, I did forget to mention my GPU model. It's the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M. It's a 2GB card.

This should be easy for this system to get a good quality stream should it not?
 
«DN»Lasky®

«DN»Lasky®

New Member
Its not like I have uploaded something malicious is it?

Anyway, I have pasted a log file to pastebin.com at the folowing link: https://pastebin.com/RUJqT2UD

This paste is from 73 minutes of high action gameplay but not on Halo: Custom Edition. This is from Halo: Combat Evolved. I was streaming to YouTube at 1080p@30FPS The link to the video from this log is on youtube here:


I hope that this log helps...
 
Boildown

Boildown

Active Member
Set the Profile to High, the KeyInt to auto, and the Preset to HQ (High Quality), when doing NVEnc recording. If you're streaming it to YouTube, you might need to leave the KeyInt alone though. Otherwise it looks good, encode statistics look fine. If you still think its too pixelated, increase the bitrate.
 
«DN»Lasky®

«DN»Lasky®

New Member
On the above example, I was streaming Halo: Combat Evolved which has an option for a 1080p resolution @ 30fps. Custom Edition does not have the 1080p option, I can only do 720p@30fps on Halo:CE and that is where I feel the issue lies on this game as I have set it to record at 720p and not 1080p. I will stream another example of playing Halo:CE when I next play it and add the log file to pastebin for you. Please keep this thread open until I get back to you. Thanks for the replies so far.
 
«DN»Lasky®

«DN»Lasky®

New Member
So I have done another live stream with Halo: Custom Edition as I said I would. This is from 13 minutes of game play.


The log files for this video are attached here: https://pastebin.com/hwcxxYTg

Hope this can finally be resolved. Thanks again for the help thus far.

While this was streaming, I had a second monitor to look at OBS Studio and noticed a red box a lot to the left of the stream rate a lot, generally when this video lags. I have it set at 15,000Kbps on the stream settings. My upload is 20Mbps so I am sure that I am not completely saturating my upload, am I? I am trying to find the best settings, on the video above of me playing Halo: Combat Evolved campaign, I was at 1080p@30fps and streaming at 10,000Kbps. This is assuming the Stream rate is measured in Kbps and not Mbps... I would appreciate a little clarification there please.

As a side note, the below is my available bandwidth. I am actually paying for 200/20 but I am actually getting 220/21 at times. The joy of cable...
6177284702.png
 
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«DN»Lasky®

«DN»Lasky®

New Member
It's gone all quiet on here... I get the same problem when I stream at 10,000kb/sec. Still pixelated but Smith as shown in the video in my first post...
 
Boildown

Boildown

Active Member
From the newest log file:

20:42:00.429: Output 'simple_stream': Total encoded frames: 9753
20:42:00.429: Output 'simple_stream': Total drawn frames: 23487
20:42:00.429: Output 'simple_stream': Number of dropped frames due to insufficient bandwidth/connection stalls: 1551 (15.9%)
Click to expand...

You were overloading your connection. Probably because of your ISP, but it could be congestion on your internal network, or a problem with YouTube's network. The solution is probably the same in any of the cases: decrease the bitrate. Since it dropped 15.9% of frames, I'd decrease the bitrate by at least that much, double that much to be safe. You were streaming at 15Mb/s so try 10Mb/s instead.
 
«DN»Lasky®

«DN»Lasky®

New Member
Well, I lowered it to 10,000Kbps and it seems to be working OK. When I play Halo Custom Edition and stream that, it is pixelated and not as good as on Halo Combat Evolved.

I suspect that this is because Halo Custom Edition can only display up to 720p and I am broadcasting at 1080p. Is there a way to have OBS broadcast at 720p for ONE GAME ONLY or is it only a global setting?
 
«DN»Lasky®

«DN»Lasky®

New Member
I now have a faster internet connection, but the upload speed remains the same... I have an engineer booked for tomorrow to see why my upload speed is at times as low as 4 -8Mbps when it should be at least 20. The guys at support said that it could be something to do with the signal, something involving db or decibels which is way outside of range at this time, oddly AFTER I had my upgraded net. Is there some sort of configuration that will allow me to upload in reasonably high quality on a lower bitrate setting so that it is smoother and less laggy and higher quality? I am trying to get my upload speed maybe 50% faster, but I am having a lot of trouble with my ISP not agreeing to, while I understand this (because people do host p2p servers for sharing which I don't), I do have servers, they share files, BUT, they are only accessible from within my network since you have to be here connected to my network via ethernet cable or wireless (which is secured) to be able to do so.

I know that certain places like the United States has Google Fiber, with speeds upwards of 1Gbps. I want that connection, and I want it NOW! But it's not available in the UK yet :(.

Here is my current connection speed as of now... taken a few days ago. Hope this helps.

6560343809.png
 
Boildown

Boildown

Active Member
Test will all your file sharing stuff disabled so you know that isn't it. Don't stream over wireless. The only way to do more with less is to use better quality presets, but since you're using NVEnc, your best option is the HQ preset anyways. Since you're using a laptop, you won't be able to software encode to anything better.
 
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