Question / Help Recommended settings for Doom 2016 1080p@60 fps for YouTube?

[Colt]

Hello, Ive been experimenting on what would be the optimal settings for recording and uploading to YouTube my video footage of Doom 2016 at 1080p and 60 frames.

GOAL: A fast paced, responsive and well detailed video sequence of about 7-10 minutes duration of a multiplayer match in Doom, similar or equal to the quality of this video (watch it on 1080p@60 fps):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=737Gl1sm0rE​

ISSUE: What I see in my screen (100% quality) is very different from my video output record (about 85% quality) and very different from what YouTube compresses (about 70% quality). I havent been satisfied with the end result quality from my attempts so far, this 2 and a half minute video show my best attempt so far
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d1oq45dYl0​

It was looking ok in the beggining with slow moving objects but as soon I started walking and my camera movements began the quality in the Youtube video got choppier and overall not similar enough to the original recording source, Seeing those beautiful 1080p@60fps videos out there like the one linked above makes me think I can do better with my settings since I should have more than enough PC to do the job.

TECH DETAILS:
- I run the game at a steady 200 frames in multiplayer (120'ish against bots, they seem to stress CPU a lot more)
- Im using Display capture (since game capture didnt work) with OBS Studio 21.0.1 64 bits with the codec NVENC H264
- Recording I did was on an advanced output, format used is mp4, Used VBR and 25,000 Bit rate, Profile:high, NV12 color format and YUV color space of 709, YUV Color Range: Partial
- 2 and a half minute footage weighs 440MB in the hard drive.
- Recording with a Geforce GTX 1080 founders edition and an overclocked Ryzen 7 CPU ​

RESOURCES:
-I attached the log file of all my video recording experiments that day (some attempts failed hard), if you want to find the one that created my final youtube vid search the document for the keyword llhq which stands for the preset recording for Low Latency High Quality.

- I used the general youtube encoding guidelines as a base reference:
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en​

 

[Colt]

Please, let me know if theres something I have been missing or any info on how I can squeeze more quality out of my recordings and into YouTube

 

[T0XiiC]

The example video you linked is 4k. That means youtube gave their video way higher bitrate than your 1080p 60FPS video. If you do everything like I said, your video will get the same bitrate in 1440p.


What you could do for best possible quality on youtube is the following:

1. Your raw video should be lossless.

My PUBG Games (~28mins) are 118gb big that video. After encode 15-25GB.

If you dont want your filesize to be that big, you could also use "QCP" in OBS and set it to like 14, that should be pretty lossless and way smaller filesizes. But I wouldnt recommend that if you really want the best quality.

Theres a picture of my OBS Settings below

2. If you want the highest possible bitrate on youtube use 3200x1800 as resolution. That will give the best possible result. encode the video usin x264. You can do that with a free program called Staxrip, if you dont want to do any big editing / cutting of your video.

2048x1152 instead of 3200x1800 can be used too, but that will be worse bitrate (quality) than in your example 4k video and will be 1080p 60fps in the end.

My staxrip settings in the left field:

Filters: Source, and Resize using Hardware Encoder

And in the right field I choose "NVIDIA H264" and configured it like in the picture below. I forgot to change the format on the right from MKV to MP4. Just Change it to MP4.

Audio Settings screen is also below.


This way your GPU will encode the video, but it will be a bit bigger than the standard x264 CPU encoding while its like 50-70% faster.


Thats pretty much the best possible quality you can get on youtube,

 

[Colt]

Thank you Dustin your feedback is amazing, Im excited to try this workflow out!

Out of curiosity how did you come up with the 3200x1800 resolution target? since Youtube 4k supposely is slightly bigger at 3840x2160

 

[T0XiiC]

I found out about it in a german lets play forum. With 3200x1800 youtube will unlock their 4k bitrate for the video while it will be shown as 1440p on youtube. Apparently it also looks better than Real 4k, but I cant personally comment on that.

You can check it after you uploaded the video in 3200x1800. Right click on the video, click on "statistic for nerds" and if you see Codecs VP(315) it means 4k bitrate with 1440p.



I also tried to directly record in 3200x1800 few mins ago, with QCP of 15 and then directly upload it. But somehow OBS broke so it didnt actually record :( I will record another video and then upload it and compare the quality of it. But I feel like recording in 1920x1080 then upscaling to 3200x1800 through staxrip will be better

 

[T0XiiC]

So I just tried recording in 3200x1800. And imo it does look worse than recording your native then upscale with spline36 resizer.

 

[Colt]

Another quick question, how does your Avanced settings for OBS looks like? do you use NV12 as color format?

Also, when you said "encode the video usin x264" you mean the OBS recording or the StaxRip upscaling? , if you meant to do this in OBS then NVEC H.264 is no good for the lossless RAW footage?

 

[T0XiiC]

NV12


x264 in staxrip. In obs choose NVENC Lossless.

 

[Colt]

NV12


x264 in staxrip. In obs choose NVENC Lossless.

Ohh Im a little bit confused then, you mention x264 codec for staxrip but that none of your Staxrip instructions or screenshots seem to reflect that enabled anywhere, In staxrip you seem to use NVIDIA H.264 for the right side settings and under the encoder options it says NVENC Native as decoder and H.264 as Codec, no trace of the word x264.

Am I missing one step here?

 

[T0XiiC]

Sorry, my bad. NVIDIA H264 is right. I just called it x264.

So, use Nvenc Native and H264.

 

[Colt]

-Update-
Thanks to Dustin's tips I headed in the right direction, after a short clip test I was able to get a very satisfiying result in Youtube, gonna upload a proper video later on!

Thanks man! you were very helpful.

 

[T0XiiC]

That sounds great! Im happy it worked out so far :). Youtube is just really trash when it comes to good quality, its sad. So we just gotta make the best out of it.

If you want you can try to lower the QP I, QP P, QP B values. Lower = even better quality but bigger filesize. But 16-19 is really decent already. 15 on all prob. will look really good but also noticeable in the filesize. If you have fast internet, go for it.

 

[T0XiiC]

Hey I changed the settings of my staxrip a bit (for even better quality)

The video encoder command line:

--cqp 15:18:18 --codec h265 --preset quality --output-depth 10 --bframes 2 --gop-len 30 --max-bitrate 0 --colormatrix bt709 --colorprim bt709 --transfer bt709 --vpp-resize spline36 --cabac -i -o _out.h265_out.h265

The audio encoder command line:

ffmpeg -b:a 384k


You can just open your profile and then at the bottom you will see the command line, just copy mine and you have the settings.

 

[Alex_^]

Damn T0XiiC this the the best straight to the point-no bullshit answer there is on the internet.
I signed up just so i can say thank you.

 

[T0XiiC]

Damn T0XiiC this the the best straight to the point-no bullshit answer there is on the internet.
I signed up just so i can say thank you.

Sorry I havent seen the post / notification sooner cause I havent used OBS in a bit and wasn't on the forum on the bit. Glad I helped you out. Nowadays if I record I use Adobe Premiere with Voukoder Plugin. The Voudkoder Plugin basically can encode like staxrip does. Really nice and lets you edit / cut videos compared to staxrip.

Link to it incase you interested: https://www.voukoder.org/

 

[Alex_^]

Appreciate it