Question / Help Stream is not crisp/clear

[speaker1264]

Hello, I just started streaming (diablo 3 if you were wondering). The problem I am having is when I go back and look at the recordings of my stream they do not appear as crisp or clear as the actual gameplay. It looks very grainy. I am streaming 1080p with no downscale and even turned the quality all the way up to 10. Neither my GPU nor CPU seem to be at full load, but I think I am capping my upload.

Here is an example video: http://www.twitch.tv/speaker1264/b/387604719

My computer Specs are as follows:
i5-3570k @ 4.5 Ghz
gtx 660 TI @ stock
12 gigs of ddr3 ram
Resolution is 1920x1080p at 1600
Download is 19 to 20 Mbps
Upload is 4 to 4.5 Mbps

OBS settings:
Quality Balance: 10
Max Bitrate: 3800
Buffer Size: 3800
Base Resolution: 1920x1080p
Resolution Downscale: None
FPS: 30

If anyone can explain to me why this is happening and what I can do to fix it, that would be greatly appreciated. Also if someone could explain to me what the max bitrate does. I know it is the upload speed, but what does it mean if I am capping it? And can anyone explain to me the benefits of a capture card? Thanks.

 

[Krazy]

That's about as clear as you are going to get it, really. Look at the spell icons/text. They are very clear. The slight blurriness is just due to the fact that livestreaming is not really perfect for high motion/high action no matter how much bitrate you throw at something.

The only way to really improve here is to use a 2 PC setup with and lower the preset quite a bit on the encoding PC, if you are dead set on 1080p, that is. You could try the latest test build, and use a 1.25 downscale with Lanczos filter. This cuts down on the amount of data that needs to be encoded by a pretty significant margin, without really impacting clarity due to downscaling.

Your stream looks very good, though.

 

[TriAtlasGaming]

Your stream looks perfect.

Nothing wrong with it.

 

[speaker1264]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I agree it looks good. I just thought I could get the quality to be as clear as the actual gameplay. Oh well, thanks again though. :)

 

[Krazy]

Well, you could try adding rc-lookahead=30 or 60 to your custom encoder settings. That will help the encoder better assign bits to the image. Note that this will introduce delay to the live stream. Since your FPS is 30, rc-lookahead=30 will add 1 second before stuff starts broadcasting. 60 would add 2 seconds, etc etc