Question: How does one determine hardware requirements for their OBS usage?

[FrankReality]

Am now using OBS as a church streaming solution to YouTube for Sunday morning and special services. Have 2 cam sources, 2 audio sources, an NDI source which pulls slides from another PC and 5-6 scenes, sometimes up to 8.

Currently am using an archaic general-purpose Mac laptop with an i5 chip (specs below) - it is no surprise that the best we can do for streaming after lots of setting adjustments is 720p at 30 fps - anything better generates buffering, loss of packets, video stuttering and poor audio. Activity monitor shows heavily loaded and we diligently try to keep unnecessary stuff from running on the laptop.

Specs: (taken from barely legible handwritten note)
Mac Pro 16,2
Quad Core i5
2GHz, 1 proc, 4 cores
L2 cache 512Kb
L3 cache 6Mb
Hyperthreading on
32 Gb memory
FW - 2022.140.5.0..0
OS Loader version 580.M0.1-8
Storage 489.96Gb, 100Gb free
GPU Intel ???? + graphics
(unreadable line)
Metal 3
Version 14.6.1

We would like to go to at least 1080p at 60 fps or better. How much better and future needs, we don't know and can't predict.

Given that and that Mac is preferred by others, how do I determine hardware requirements for a replacement machine? I know having a solid GPU is a very big deal for the video processing.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

The problem with your spec list above... no idea which CPU that is (though with some research I *might* be able to figure out which generation and model). that is an i5-xxxx with the xxxx being important to understanding its age and capabilities

Issues for you to consider
- MacOS walled garden not great with focus on new M-series CPUs, on older Intel CPU-based Macs. Latest M-series CPU based systems can be great at some things, and terrible at others (nature of CPU architecture). Getting a last generation Mac with Intel CPU puts you on a path to needing to replace system earlier (though a lot cheaper). And those Macs tended to have AMD GPUs, which didn't always have a good H.264 encode offload capability (but I'm not sure, do NOT take my word for that)
- OBS Studio and other free, open-source software will struggle naturally as open-source components mature and are optimized for an entirely new CPU architecture.
- flip side is that Windows OS audio sub-system is NOT good, and can cause its own issues/problems.
- Laptops (and Mini PCs), being thermally constrained, will always struggle more than a corresponding desktop when it comes to the computationally demanding workload of real-time video encoding

With that said, as for your requirements:
- 60FPS is usually a nice to have for faster action, and not typically associated with a House of Worship service (unless evangelical band/music performance style??). For our church services, my NDI PTZ camera runs at 60FPS (natively) but we only stream at 30FPS, as no reason to stream at higher rate... ymmv
- Those future requirements are critical to understand, otherwise you acquire something now, and may need to promptly replace. Example, upgrading to 4K cameras. If you don't know and can't predict, your choice is A.) overspend now (possibly by a little, or maybe or lot) to avoid upgrade cost of even more later... ), or B.) cover current needs and expect to replace if requirements increase ...
pick one
- other impactful considerations
color range you'll operate in? default, or ?/
will you Record locally? I Record locally at ~3X Streaming bitrate as all CDNs (including YouTube) heavily compress video, lowering its quality... if you ever want/need a video snippet (or share Wedding/Baptism, etc service) and want quality video, the CDN version won't be that good (ok, maybe.. at best, but that is all). Recording at a higher quality means a 2nd Encoding stream, which my system can handle fine
- The GPU issue is called video encode offload (ie, remove video encode (and decode) from CPU to GPU)
- Check this forum for threads on MacOS messing up GPU encode offload on Intel based systems (not sure if resolved now)
- what are those cameras sources? Beware USB Root Hub overload if USB attached

For reference, I'm using a business class Windows PC, still running Windows 10 for the time being... upgrade later this year... probably
System has an i7-10700K, 16GB RAM, nVidia 1660 Super GPU and a SATA SSD (not even NVMe)... and my resource utilization is under 20% GPU, and around 10% CPU with a single NDI PTZ camera, plus PowerPoint for service bulletin (and a decently optimized Operating System to reduce background processes/workloads). During COVID_19 lockdown, playing pre-recorded 4K videos and intermixing with live video also was a low utilization scenario. This PC can easily handle 4K cameras and streaming, and 4K video editing (being the most powerful PC onsite)

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Also, OBS Studio plugins can make a material difference on hardware resource utilization, so be aware/careful if/when using an under-powered computer

 

[FrankReality]

The problem with your spec list above... no idea which CPU that is (though with some research I *might* be able to figure out which generation and model). that is an i5-xxxx with the xxxx being important to understanding its age and capabilities

Issues for you to consider
- MacOS walled garden not great with focus on new M-series CPUs, on older Intel CPU-based Macs. Latest M-series CPU based systems can be great at some things, and terrible at others (nature of CPU architecture). Getting a last generation Mac with Intel CPU puts you on a path to needing to replace system earlier (though a lot cheaper). And those Macs tended to have AMD GPUs, which didn't always have a good H.264 encode offload capability (but I'm not sure, do NOT take my word for that)
- OBS Studio and other free, open-source software will struggle naturally as open-source components mature and are optimized for an entirely new CPU architecture.
- flip side is that Windows OS audio sub-system is NOT good, and can cause its own issues/problems.
- Laptops (and Mini PCs), being thermally constrained, will always struggle more than a corresponding desktop when it comes to the computationally demanding workload of real-time video encoding

With that said, as for your requirements:
- 60FPS is usually a nice to have for faster action, and not typically associated with a House of Worship service (unless evangelical band/music performance style??). For our church services, my NDI PTZ camera runs at 60FPS (natively) but we only stream at 30FPS, as no reason to stream at higher rate... ymmv
- Those future requirements are critical to understand, otherwise you acquire something now, and may need to promptly replace. Example, upgrading to 4K cameras. If you don't know and can't predict, your choice is A.) overspend now (possibly by a little, or maybe or lot) to avoid upgrade cost of even more later... ), or B.) cover current needs and expect to replace if requirements increase ...
pick one
- other impactful considerations
color range you'll operate in? default, or ?/
will you Record locally? I Record locally at ~3X Streaming bitrate as all CDNs (including YouTube) heavily compress video, lowering its quality... if you ever want/need a video snippet (or share Wedding/Baptism, etc service) and want quality video, the CDN version won't be that good (ok, maybe.. at best, but that is all). Recording at a higher quality means a 2nd Encoding stream, which my system can handle fine
- The GPU issue is called video encode offload (ie, remove video encode (and decode) from CPU to GPU)
- Check this forum for threads on MacOS messing up GPU encode offload on Intel based systems (not sure if resolved now)
- what are those cameras sources? Beware USB Root Hub overload if USB attached

For reference, I'm using a business class Windows PC, still running Windows 10 for the time being... upgrade later this year... probably
System has an i7-10700K, 16GB RAM, nVidia 1660 Super GPU and a SATA SSD (not even NVMe)... and my resource utilization is under 20% GPU, and around 10% CPU with a single NDI PTZ camera, plus PowerPoint for service bulletin (and a decently optimized Operating System to reduce background processes/workloads). During COVID_19 lockdown, playing pre-recorded 4K videos and intermixing with live video also was a low utilization scenario. This PC can easily handle 4K cameras and streaming, and 4K video editing (being the most powerful PC onsite)

Thanks for your reply. Understand the dilemma and lack of information. It appears that the current Mac doesn't have a GPU and requires driving the CPU use heavier to handle the video processing. You've given me an idea from your machine's specs. Thanks.

Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately?) we don't have the $$, have many higher priorities, have an extremely vague/foggy future and have many tactical needs (like replacing the failed parking lot lights for safety reasons) that take precedence over thinking strategically. So, we're doing the best we can with what we have.

Just for gee-whiz info, your i7 specs aren't a whole lot different than my 5 year old Thinkpad. The new ASUS laptop I bought for my wife for Christmas has more power than mine and that one was about $800. Might be a good excuse to get me a new laptop, and donate my old one to the church.

I'd be considering a Windows deskside unit if for no other reason than the ease of bumping memory and upgrading GPUs, but space is a premium and everybody else around here knows Mac.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Totally get budget issues, other much more pressing priorities, and lack of Operating System sophistication amongst most volunteers...

As for GPU, The GTX 1660 Super works well due to the newer (at the time) NVENC encoder offload chip on it (vs prior gen) for 1080p

If using a laptop, I'd advise keeping an eye on thermals and if need be getting an external supplemental fan (can make enough of a difference when directed/funneled direct into laptop's air intake ports) to avoid thermal throttling

In our case, OBS operators seated upstairs in choir loft with pipe organ. PC is downstairs in sound closet with audio mixer. A 50ft DisplayPort MST fiber optic cable from PC to upstairs dual monitor livestream station, plus an active USB cable for keyboard mouse works fine for a remote setup. I wanted to avoid a IP KVM scenario due to video implications.