Question / Help Some help optimizing please.

[Tylermon]

First, one of my biggest problems is a rather high delay in my stream. 40+ seconds usually.
I dont think this is normal, but I could be wrong, and there might be nothing I can do.

Other than that, some streamers have perfect crisp clean streams and mine never seem to reach that same level of quality. I am admittedly jealous! And would love tips to get great looking video.

I have tried just about everything I can think of. Even streaming with very slow encoding haha. (Uses less than 50% cpu usage for the most part) but I havent noticed it doing much and general stay on medium.

Specs:
CPU: i7 3930k 6 core @ 4.6ghz
GPU: Gtx 780
Dont imagine anything else is needed.


download is 30mb/s and upload is 5mb/s.
Ping to server: 20ms average

I have been trying to stream at 720p as I do not know if 1080p is viable with my upload speed.

ENCODING
Encoding: x264
CBR: Yes
Padding: yes
Quality: 7
My bitrate for 720p is at 3020 with audio at 80.

BROADCAST SETTINGS
auto reconnect: 15
Delay: 0
Minimize Net Impact: no
Save to file: no

VIDEO
resolution: 1920x1080
Downscale: 1.5 (1280x720
Filter: Bilinear
FPS:30
Disable aero: NO

ADVANCED
Multithread: yes
Priority: above normal
Scene buffer: 700
CPU Preset: medium
Profile: high
Keyframe:2


I'm not getting dropped frames. Just incredible delay.

Furthe rhelp and optimizations from you guys would be VERY appreciated

 

[DryRoastedLemon]

The delay is normal. 40 Seconds sounds about right. You could try using other servers, but it's generally advised to use the one that's geographically closest to you. The ping seems to indicate you're using the correct server.

What you're uploading is essentially your video data + audio data. This is set using the video and audio bitrates. In other words, it's separate from the resolution you stream at. Whether or not you can stream in 1080p is not dependent on your upload capacity; it's dependent on if your CPU can handle it. Without having looked up benchmarks it seems like you have a high-end CPU. Give it a try. If you experience your system choking up, it might have trouble with the resolution.

Your encoding settings seem alright. You could try experimenting with a higher bitrate, but be aware of that Twitch recommends using a bitrate of 3500 at max (for 1080p footage). Past that bitrate Twitch doesn't seem to handle the video very well.

Regarding your video settings, try using a different filter method. Bilinear has a low performance impact, but also produces the least visually attractive result. Try Bicubic Sharper or Lanczos. I reckon your CPU should be able to handle it.

Twitch actually recommends a Main profile (as opposed to a High profile), but this is mainly in regards to device compatibility. It also recommends a Scene buffering time of 400ms. Your keyframe setting is correct. I would personally change the priority back to 'normal'. Also, kudos on using the medium preset. I wouldn't go slower than that, as it's been repeatedly reported that the extra CPU investment of going from medium to slow(er) does not result in a very noticeable change in visual quality. You could give it a try, but I think it's CPU time gone to waste.

Could you perhaps also link to a previous broadcast of yours? That way we can assess the quality. Just know that since we're dealing with realtime footage here, the quality of a livestream is never going to reach the quality of a video that was processed 'offline'.

 

[Jack0r]

First, one of my biggest problems is a rather high delay in my stream. 40+ seconds usually.
I dont think this is normal, but I could be wrong, and there might be nothing I can do.

On Twitch, 20-30 seconds is normal, 40+ is a bit much, but you did not meet all twitch settings, as DryRoastedLemon also pointed out, try changing your profile to main. To get a smaller delay you will have to probably use a different service. For example on hitbox.tv you normally can reach a delay below 10 seconds.

Other than that, some streamers have perfect crisp clean streams and mine never seem to reach that same level of quality. I am admittedly jealous! And would love tips to get great looking video.

This seems to be a problem of many new streamers. In general, we can only help you get the best settings for your system, if you want "the exact same" quality, as another streamer, you will have to kill him and from then on use his body as a skin for yourself and his settings of course.

...
Dont imagine anything else is needed.
...

A log file of OBS would have answered us pretty much all questions that might be open at this point. This is why we always ask to upload one: https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/problem-make-sure-to-post-a-log-and-or-crash-dump-howto.97/

The delay is normal. 40 Seconds sounds about right. You could try using other servers, but it's generally advised to use the one that's geographically closest to you. The ping seems to indicate you're using the correct server.

I cannot agree, sry. The server location and ping has just about nothing to do with the connection speed or quality at all. It just says the test package took X ms to go through. Jitter can maybe slightly give a little information about connection quality, but to really find out which server is the best, you have to test the connection to different ones.
By ping I would always stream to frankfurt, but half of the time I drop up to 50% frames trying to do this. London and Amsterdam are the solution for me to get a perfect stream.

Regarding your video settings, try using a different filter method. Bilinear has a low performance impact, but also produces the least visually attractive result. Try Bicubic Sharper or Lanczos. I reckon your CPU should be able to handle it.

Well, it depends a lot on the footage, Lanczos often gives the smoothest picture, but not necessarily the sharpest, so he should just test that out. For more comments on your video settings we would have to see a logfile.

It also recommends a Scene buffering time of 400ms.

I cannot recommend doing this. Twitch apparently still uses the old default value of 400 in their guide. But in too many cases this leads to sync problems and other errors. So I can really only recommend to keep it at 700.

 

[DryRoastedLemon]

I cannot agree, sry. The server location and ping has just about nothing to do with the connection speed or quality at all. It just says the test package took X ms to go through. Jitter can maybe slightly give a little information about connection quality, but to really find out which server is the best, you have to test the connection to different ones.
By ping I would always stream to frankfurt, but half of the time I drop up to 50% frames trying to do this. London and Amsterdam are the solution for me to get a perfect stream.

That's cool. I've seen it happen often and I've not experienced it as very troublesome, hence my reponse.

I cannot recommend doing this. Twitch apparently still uses the old default value of 400 in their guide. But in too many cases this leads to sync problems and other errors. So I can really only recommend to keep it at 700.

Ahh, this is good to know. Perhaps this could also be put into the OBS estimator, as apparently the Twitch documentation is wrong. Additionally, it probably needs to be updated in the OBS manual as well, as that states the old value.

 

[Tylermon]

Thank you guys for the feedback.

I should add I have recently switched to streaming on youtube. I tried twitch for a while, but I dont stream games in a traditional sense and youtube seems like a potentially better audience. I have also tried Justin.
To avoid confusion, a good deal of the time I stream games I have made myself/am working on. Twitch does not really provide the best audience if I am streaming more than just playing games.

Despite the different services all continue to have that 40 second delay.
You mentioned Jitter-my jitter is between 1-2.
My location is also in Washington, United States.
The servers I am using now are YouTubes main digest servers

I switched to the main encoding profile and am going to play with some 1080p streaming to see if results are the same or any different.
It does seem this eliminates that question of changing the filter. So maybe I might actually see some better results?
I have also changed audio from mp3 to aac codec.
Format to 44.1kHz
Audio Bitrate is 80
Bumped up my max bitrate to 3300

 

[Tylermon]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/58392676/2014-04-23-1708-12.log

There was my logs. I did notice some decent quality increase with increasing frames to 60.
Played with 1080p and 720p with the 60 frames.
Had to drop down from medium to fast encoding at 1080p @60frames because I noticed the encoding couldn't keep up. That was kind of sad to me...but not much one can do right? And I doubt there is much of a difference between medium and fast.(odd thing is my cpu was not getting maxed out...any thoughts? it was 80% but not dropping frames)

Problem I came across now was unless the screen is still, quality drops to a blurry mess. But when Things are still they look pretty great!

Still have very high and annoying delay.But if I get this quality/appearance thing sorted out I can at least make things work.
Contacted my service provider and they did a signal reset. Didnt do anything sadly.


EDIT:
Some extra ideas.
have 144hz monitors. A good portion of the time I am playing games at 60+fps.
My thought is. Would my streams have any benifit of me lowering my refresh rate to lets say 60hz. enable vsync so games are playing at 60fps. And stream at 60fps.

Or is there no difference in quality if I play at 60+fps at 144hz and stream at 30-60fps