Question / Help Stream is low quality

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Irlandskii

New Member
Hi everybody, having some issues with the quality of my twitch stream. I streamed the other night and didn't encounter any issues when I went back to check my previous broadcasts, but on today's it's pretty easy to see that the quality isn't at the 720p I would like it to be at. When I found out I read a few others post stating to increase the bitrate, lower stream FPS down to 30, but unfortunately these didn't quite seem to fix the problem. Running an FX8350, 16GB ram, GTX 970, and my upload speed averages around 600Mbs. Is there anything in OBS's settings I might no have properly configured?

Here's a link to the stream, everything is fine until I start moving around and the quality gets a little blocky: https://www.twitch.tv/irlandskii/v/66532129

Here's the OBS log too: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/1e47bd284e7e3c7bec7f9e788d8d7c30
 
FerretBomb

FerretBomb

Active Member
23:45:50: fps: 60
23:45:50: width: 1364, height: 768
...
23:45:50: max bitrate: 1800
Click to expand...

Yep, what you were told before is accurate. You're trying to run too high a resolution + framerate on a low bitrate setting.

Set it to 1280x720 (720p) at 30fps, and if possible bring the bitrate up to 2000kbps.

You're trying to run at a higher resolution and twice the framerate while also using notably less than the recommended bitrate for 720p@30. No wonder it's blocky.
 
FerretBomb

FerretBomb

Active Member
No. Non-partnered casters are advised to stay at or below 2000kbps to maintain widest potential viewerbase. Even going to 2500 will cause a significant portion of the Twitch viewing public to increasingly buffer. You do not have the bitrate available to run 720p@60fps. If you NEED 60fps for a technical reason (to capture sprite blitting in retrogames properly, for example) then you can drop to 480p to free up the bitrate needed.

You only have so much bitrate realistically usable, no matter how much your connection can support. Learning to come to peace with finding the best tradeoff within that rate limit is one of the harder things for new streamers to accomplish.


Mcrozny, that calculator has a few incorrect elements. 3500kbps is the max bitrate the ingests are rated to support without errors, not the 'non-partnered maximum'. Non-partners are advised not to exceed 2000kbps, per the viewer metrics Twitch released a year or two ago showing that as one of the big breakpoints.
30 vs 60 is a nonlinear bpp density calc, due to how i, p and b frames are handled. 60 doesn't require double the bitrate to maintain the same density. It's a good rule of thumb, but if you're going for accurate calculation, it should probably be addressed.
NVENC is a significantly worse encode than x264, and a reasonably worse one than QSV. It really is local-recording-only.
Local recording with x264 is actually quite low-impact, as you can just use Ultrafast and throw bitrate at it to handle the poor quality.
0.1 bpp density is regarded as a good average target, but for high and extreme motion games, 0.2 and higher may be needed. There is an eventual reducing rate of returns, but that point gets higher the more motion you have to deal with.
 
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Irlandskii

New Member
Yeah, I just found that out for myself as well. Admittedly I should have done a little bit more of my own research into it and I'm sure I would've found that information about the non-partnered bit rate, but thanks for the help regardless.
 
Mroczny_Gustaw

Mroczny_Gustaw

Member
@FerretBomb Yes hardware encoders results in worse quality than x264, Im not stating otherwise.
Regarding 3500 cap - official OBS manual on Twitch suggests 3300 for video leaving this 200 for audio in a unspoken way. And 2000 today? Yes maybe year or two ago. But try to stream 2k today, you will get few "garbage quality" comments and no audience in most cases.
yes local CRF recording is less demanding, I will correct this
0.1 seems to be golden middle point between resolution and bitrate. Trying 0.2 will lock you out of any acceptable resolutions at today allowed bitrates. For now 0.2 looks like local recording quality only.
Thank you for suggestions
 
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