Question / Help Stream is pixelated with these settings that are supposed to be good...

[Stormer829]

Hi, my stream gets pixelated during high game movement. I have an i7 4790k and a GTX 1060 FE. My upload speed is around 15mbps. Here are my settings:

https://gyazo.com/b0a41dd5e1181155a8ad7faf643583b4

I am just confused because those are supposed to be good settings.
Please help, thanks!

 

[Stormer829]

Here is an example of what a stream looks like with these settings for me... https://www.twitch.tv/videos/147837818

 

[wallrik]

Settings honestly look good. It's normal to see the kind of compression artifacts you're seeing. I think it looks good.

At this point you can try upping bitrate. Twitch allows up to 6000 kbps. Start 4000-4500 kbps and see how it looks, and if your connection can handle it.

But please be advised that higher bitrates may cause buffering for some viewers. I would not recommend maxing it out at 6000 kbps unless you're partnered and have guaranteed transcode options ("quality options").

Also, if you want to experiment, you can try the film tuning option. It will try to preserve some more edges, but you'll get more blocks elsewhere instead. I ultimately decided against using it myself, but you can give it a go.

 

[Stormer829]

Thanks dude!

 

[Stormer829]

Settings honestly look good. It's normal to see the kind of compression artifacts you're seeing. I think it looks good.

At this point you can try upping bitrate. Twitch allows up to 6000 kbps. Start 4000-4500 kbps and see how it looks, and if your connection can handle it.

But please be advised that higher bitrates may cause buffering for some viewers. I would not recommend maxing it out at 6000 kbps unless you're partnered and have guaranteed transcode options ("quality options").

Also, if you want to experiment, you can try the film tuning option. It will try to preserve some more edges, but you'll get more blocks elsewhere instead. I ultimately decided against using it myself, but you can give it a go.

do you think a better cpu would help it?

 

[wallrik]

do you think a better cpu would help it?

To some extent, yes. The CPU preset is set to veryfast by default in OBS. You already lowered it to faster.
You can try changing it to fast. But Overwatch is already a fairly CPU intense game, so I suspect you will start dropping a lot of frames.

A slower setting means the encoder will work the video more to optimize the compression. In practice that means your stream will look better at a faster preset than a veryfast preset at the same bitrate.

Each step down is quite a big step up in CPU power, and may not give a very big improvement. But of course if you want to maximize quality you're going to want a really beefy CPU :) That's also why some professional streamers have dual PC setups - to have one PC 100% dedicated to encoding.

You can try the NVENC encoder as well, which will use your GTX 1060 instead of the CPU. It doesn't have the same options, but it does a decent job. However, it is generally agreed upon that x264 is the best H.264 encoder out there.

 

[Stormer829]

So would the new ryzen 7 1800x be a good pick. I was thinking that or an intel i7 6850k.

 

[wallrik]

So would the new ryzen 7 1800x be a good pick. I was thinking that or an intel i7 6850k.

Both of those are excellent choices, but I couldn't tell you the exact difference between your current CPU and these. You should Google some x264 benchmarks. Between the two, I think the 1800x is better at multi-thread workloads tho.

But personally I wouldn't make the upgrade unless I was sure it's worth it. If it's only for streaming then my personal recommendation would be to test first, buy later.

You could record a high quality video and convert it at different CPU presets to see the difference, with ffmpeg or Handbrake. That way you don't have to worry about CPU power, since it doesn't matter if it takes a long time to do it. That way you can see the difference between veryfast, faster, fast and medium on the same clip.

However, I think that may be outside the scope of these forums - unless someone else wants to help. You should look it up online :) Best of luck.

 

[Stormer829]

Thanks for all the help man, I'll look into it, I was allready planning to upgrade my pc this summer with an i7 6850k and an Asus strix 1080ti pre OC.