Question / Help Pixely/Blocky c920 Footage in High Motion Sections of Stream

[banticstv]

First and foremost, thank you to anyone who can offer assistance.

Problem: While streaming, my c920 camera gets super pixely/blocky in high motion moments. The game Path of Exile, aRPG, looks fine, just seems to be camera quality.

My rig isn't anything amazing, and I'm in a position to upgrade either the GPU or Moba, Ram, CPU. Which ever improves the Viewer's experience by eliminating this issue. Overall, an aging, but balanced enough system.

Spoiler: M-ITX Rig

Fractal Core 500 M-ITX Rig:

• GTX 960 2GB (Big Yikes I know)
• i5-4690K CPU (has a small OC to 4.0GHz)
• 16GB 1600 RAM
• ASRock H97M-ITX/ac (It is overclocking the CPU, using previous BIOS with settings available, before Intel prevented it with newer BIOS updates)
• Cryorig H7 Cooler
• Corsair CX430W PSU

My target stream settings are as follows:

• OBS Studio
• Nvidia Nvenc H.264(New)
• 1080p Canvas, downscaled to 720p (via Video)
• CBR, Bitrate 3500, Max Quality, High. B-frames: 2.
• 30FPS
• Lanczos Scaling

Having looked for solutions both here and via Google I've tried several remedies:

Spoiler: Attempted Solutions

• Driver Updates for c920
• Fresh Install of OBS Studio
• Trying SLOBS
• Disabling all the Win10 Gaming settings.
• Changing Bitrate to 6000 and other amounts.
• Swapping which Twitch server OBS uses.
• Different B-frame settings.
• Both x264 & Nvenc encoding
• Trying different USB slots for the c920
• Default c920 settings
• Having the c920 at resolution used while gaming. ie. not 1080p and subsequently being downscaled on Canvas.
• Removing Filters, Not Greenscreening
• More Subject Lighting
• Disabling Audio Filters
• Removing Overlay and Other Sources in Scene

Alas, none helped identify what the issue is.

I ran two streams (on my bot channel for testing, same settings as my main channel though). One at 3500 Bitrate and other at 6000. The Bitrate increase only marginally improves quality, and doesn't seem to be the issue.
Apologies for audio cutting out here and there, was speaking too quietly.

Spoiler: Streams & Log

Example of Problem: https://www.twitch.tv/banticstv/clip/SplendidKindKathyHoneyBadger
3500k Test Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/427233105
6000k Test Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/427234090

Below is log file for the two above streams.
Log File: https://obsproject.com/logs/lj7Yy2rW4fmhke-C
I don't see any major frames loss in encoding or uploading.

Overall a frustrating issue, because I would like to start making Youtube content, and system isn't capable of streaming and recording at same time. Would like decent Twitch clip quality so I can use Clips instead.
Am I being a derp and missing something obvious?

Thank you in advance for assistance. I would love, LOVE to get this rectified. Really the only major issue I'm having.

 

[Deleted member 121471]

A slight drop in quality is to be expected in high motion sequences, specially with such a high particle count on screen. If I recall correctly, only since the 10x0 NVIDIA series of cards did hardware encoding become on par with "very fast" CPU encoding and viable for streaming at the lower bitrates, as recommended by Twitch guidelines.

If you want to use NVENC(new), set "Quality" preset and disable "Lookahead" and "Psycho Visual Tuning", to avoid potential performance issues. You can also try increasing B-frames again to 3 and test a few times.

x264 CPU encoding is better but not sure if you won't be resource starved given it's a 4 core CPU with no hyperthreading.

 

[banticstv]

A slight drop in quality is to be expected in high motion sequences, specially with such a high particle count on screen. If I recall correctly, only since the 10x0 NVIDIA series of cards did hardware encoding become on par with "very fast" CPU encoding and viable for streaming at the lower bitrates, as recommended by Twitch guidelines.

If you want to use NVENC(new), set "Quality" preset and disable "Lookahead" and "Psycho Visual Tuning", to avoid potential performance issues. You can also try increasing B-frames again to 3 and test a few times.

x264 CPU encoding is better but not sure if you won't be resource starved given it's a 4 core CPU with no hyperthreading.

Hi Volfield,
Thank you very much for your response. Really appreciate it.
Yeah I'm starting to think it may just be me being super nitpicky over the quality, and in actual fact its likely fine for most viewers.

I shall give your recommendations a try and see what the result is, thank you! When I initially started streaming, I was using x264, and like you mentioned, it was fairly resource intensive. Doable, but I feel Nvenc gives in and around the same, without paddling my CPU.

If you were to have this system, would you upgrade the GPU or CPU/Moba/Ram next out of interest?

Once again, thank you for your help!

 

[Deleted member 121471]

If you were to have this system, would you upgrade the GPU or CPU/Moba/Ram next out of interest?

Once again, thank you for your help!

Depends on how much money you're willing to spend and your use specific case. Upgrading the graphics card to any NVIDIA 10x0 or 20x0 series would be the cheapest upgrade with the most direct benefit for streaming, as long as the power supply can handle it.

That being said, I wouldn't bother upgrading that system, at all, since it's still fairly capable and just save up for a proper full tower upgrade, at some point, especially now that AMD is shaking up the market.