Question / Help Setting up Stream for Fallout 4 etc.

[BlueByte]

Hi guys,

likewise there are thousand of other posts with a tiny bit of information concerning this topic - but to put it blunt, I need infos for my own speccs etc. to confirm I do everything right, for I am a total newcomer to streaming.

Recently I bought a new computer and started streaming, following speccs:

i7- 5820K
GTX 980 Palit Super Jetstream
32 GB RAM DDR 4 2133 Mhz

I use 2 Monitors and have a about 7-9mbit/s upstream.

I usually try streaming on twitch and i use downscale to 720p.
I assume my speccs should be pretty powerful since it all was very expensive (xD f#ck logic).


I tried out different settings in OBS, I use 2,2mb bitrate, but thats not the problem here. I tried different filters and presets like veryfast or fast etc. .I do not have it at hand right now, but I will include it in the weekend.

I even have an old Elgato HD (not the 60fps newer version). So I tried streaming Fallout 4 with and without the Elgato.

I only tried the Elgato via OBS. I installed it normally and it kinda works I assume even so whenever i start streaming in OBS the main screen (elgato connected) turns black for a second before the Elgato seems to be rdy. I turned off V-Sync in nvidia settings globally as i read, that it caps the fps overall. I get 60fps (fallout cap?) when I play without streaming, whenever I start streaming with the Elgato or without it - i get about 15 - 35 fps, but likely most the time 25 fps ...ingame and in obs too.

I was surprised becoz I assumed, that the Elgato takes off all the pressure on the CPU (so I thought - for streaming in 30/60 fps), I might have configured it wrong - not sure how so.

Overall it makes no difference if stream with or without it...I havent tried out many other games yet, but I felt h1z1 had low fps too, whenever i started streaming. I feel something is off...

I hate to not understand what is going on. I hope you can lend me a helping hand and put it simple so I can understand what is behind any configuration. I know this might be a bit time-consuming, but please bear with me :).

Thx in advance. God bless you.

BlueByte

 

[Xphome]

I was surprised becoz I assumed, that the Elgato takes off all the pressure on the CPU (so I thought - for streaming in 30/60 fps), I might have configured it wrong - not sure how so.

This is only the case if you're using the hardware encoder on the Elgato, which can't be done in OBS. A capture card doesn't help with performance on a one-PC setup with OBS.

I hate to not understand what is going on. I hope you can lend me a helping hand and put it simple so I can understand what is behind any configuration. I know this might be a bit time-consuming, but please bear with me

https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/problem-make-sure-to-post-a-log-and-or-crash-dump-howto.97/

 

[BlueByte]

oh ok, : ) thanks ok. I will apply the log at the weekend when i try it for another time. So OBS doesnt support the elgatos hardware encoder - alrighty.

Does "recording" in OBS improve streaming in any way? Thats mysterium I read somewhere on the internet. I usually do not record while streaming - sorry if this is a dumb question.

Greetings
BlueByte

 

[BlueByte]

Hey,

so I finally found some time to get back to this...

I just bought an Elgato HD60Pro PCIe but I assume this does net help with this matter at all.

So I guess my GTX 980 might be limiting my frames somewhere...

What I did till now was turning Aero off and playing with presets, encoders and downscale...Fallout 4 and Blade and Soul, h1z1 at some points - they all seem to not run that great ...means i have very low frames in game and stream.

I still run a two monitors setup - 1 for gaming 1 for surfing and stuff.

Here my log...

https://gist.github.com/a87fd3a10a68b599fed1

I appreciate your support. Thanks

Blue

 

[FerretBomb]

A capture card will not reduce CPU or GPU load with OBS, in a 1 PC setup. In fact, it will cause MORE load due to the additional capture overhead. The on-card encoders tend to be proprietary, so no one but the cap card manufacturer can use them. The only thing a capture card is useful for in a 1 PC setup is if you plan to play console games, are using an HDMI camcorder instead of a webcam, or are playing a game that refuses to whitelist OBS's game capture module in their anticheat.

Do NOT turn off Aero. It makes OBS work much more smoothly and efficiently. Turning off Aero is a bit of bad information, still lingering from the Vista days when it actually was bad. Now, it has no significant negative performance impact in general, and allows OBS to simply grab the offscreen texture buffers to capture a window/game (which is very fast, just copying the image data from one spot in the video card's VRAM to another). Turning Aero off will make OBS run worse.

...actually, you're on Windows 8. Aero can't be disabled under that, so I'm not sure exactly what you've done.

2200kbps is not enough for 720p@60fps video. Drop to 30fps.

You appear to be running multiple captures of Fallout 4 in that log, as well as your Elgato capture card at the same time. Disable any unused captures/devices; they will add overhead.
Also, oddly it appears you're running three captures on the Elgato, too. Which isn't going to work for a lot of reasons, and I'm wondering if it's a log error or something. If you DO have two game captures and three Elgato captures set up and active all at the same time, the next bit won't be a surprise.

13:11:05: Total frames encoded: 20488, total frames duplicated: 8185 (39.95%)
13:11:05: Total frames rendered: 12363, number of late frames: 6496 (52.54%) (it's okay for some frames to be late)
13:11:06:
13:11:06: Profiler time results:
13:11:06:
13:11:06: ==============================================================
13:11:06: video thread frame - [100%] [avg time: 21.052 ms] [children: 95.3%] [unaccounted: 4.66%]
13:11:06: | scene->Preprocess - [2.64%] [avg time: 0.555 ms]
13:11:06: | GPU download and conversion - [92.7%] [avg time: 19.516 ms] [children: 0.451%] [unaccounted: 92.3%]
13:11:06: | | flush - [0.399%] [avg time: 0.084 ms]
13:11:06: | | CopyResource - [0.0333%] [avg time: 0.007 ms]
13:11:06: | | conversion to 4:2:0 - [0.019%] [avg time: 0.004 ms]
13:11:06: Convert444Threads - [100%] [avg time: 0.153 ms] [children: 98.7%] [unaccounted: 1.31%]
13:11:06: | Convert444toNV12 - [98.7%] [avg time: 0.151 ms]
13:11:06: encoder thread frame - [100%] [avg time: 0.652 ms] [children: 0.307%] [unaccounted: 99.7%]
13:11:06: | sending stuff out - [0.307%] [avg time: 0.002 ms]

You're duplicating a MASSIVE number of frames for some reason, and have a very high video thread. Video thread needs to stay under 16ms to be able to run 60fps at all, so this is somewhat expected.
I can only imagine that the encoder is waiting on video frames from the (30fps) Elgato. Again, disable it (or unplug it, preferably) when you aren't using it for console games. This would be my most likely culprit, at the moment, aside from a bunch of things all trying to capture the same stuff and gridlocking.

 

[BlueByte]

Mh,

I have the PCIe Card plugged in shes between graphicscard and monitor but its just a passthru as I guess right now when I do not use it for capturing.

Ive had this frame drops even before i tried working with capture cards...

https://gist.github.com/bb21e67f03c1c523c1d1

oh wait ill drop down to 30 fps

but still should be able to record at 60 fps, right?

I got like 200-300 fps when i turn OBS off and 25 when i turn it on....

 

[BlueByte]

I unplugged HDMI from capture card and plugged it directly to monitor. Yet I do not know which encoders waiting on frames when I start OBS...=(