Question / Help Stream quality looks a bit "stretched" or "pixelated"..

I'm wondering If someone can maybe pin point what the problem might be with my stream quality on obs being a little pixelated with high motion games, such as cod or gtav? It was perfect before until i decided I wanted to have the video source size "fit to screen". Now It looks a little stretched or pixely, and I've always had my obs settings set to the same thing as always. 720p @ 30fps with a bitrate/buffer of normally of 2500. But I just lowered it to 2000 because I was told it's recommended If i want the viewers to have a better viewing experience without the stream freezing or lagging for them (which I've noticed that other people with 720p streams on twitch such as Destiny, look really great). But yeah, I'm not sure what I might've did wrong or need to change to improve the visual quality a little more. Below is my hardware specs:

Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000

i3-2370M CPU @ 2.40GHz

6GB RAM

External capture card: Avermedia LGP

Bandwidth: 5Mbps

Also, sorry If i might have included the log file via "attachment", It's my first time posting here. >_< lol
 

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  • 2014-09-12-0543-47.log
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alpinlol

Active Member
well you are forced to run superfast preset due to your weak cpu this means 720p30 with superfast preset and a 2k bitrate will just look near garbage.

i'd rather suggest downscaling to 540p using 20-25 fps and the veryfast preset and see how this goes
 

alpinlol

Active Member
*let me change my statement


i completly overread the fact that you are only streaming on this machine

you should be able to get away with 720p30 on veryfast preset and a bitrate of 2000-2500 should achieve a decent quality
 
Also, I'm not really sure why I would need to downscale it to 540p @ 20-25fps. My suggested settings in the obs estimator says that 720p @ 30fps is fine for what I have. Which, I had looked up and found for my particular cpu, I should be choosing the "Sandy/Ivy Bridge, Haswell" Option. But idk, I'm not an expert on this kind of stuff lol.
 
*let me change my statement


i completly overread the fact that you are only streaming on this machine

you should be able to get away with 720p30 on veryfast preset and a bitrate of 2000-2500 should achieve a decent quality
Hmmm I see now. That's really strange then :/
 

alpinlol

Active Member
your capturecard looks like it would be capturing 540p then again i dont see the "streched" but i do see the pixelation

you can try as already said testing 720p30 on the veryfast preset and see if the pixelation is gone if not you should double check your capture card at what resolution the in/output is set to
 
your capturecard looks like it would be capturing 540p then again i dont see the "streched" but i do see the pixelation

you can try as already said testing 720p30 on the veryfast preset and see if the pixelation is gone if not you should double check your capture card at what resolution the in/output is set to
Yeah both obs and my capture card resolutions are set the same for 1280x720. I just set it to veryfast like you mentioned, but I see no difference compared with superfast preset.
 

alpinlol

Active Member
log looks fine tbh ... but it indeed looks like before as far as pixelation goes but the framerate actually suffered a lot also some actual lags

log says only a few duplicated frames thats actually really weird result shouldnt be that bad considering the logs

do you have any source of a webcam running?

i honestly think theres something going on with your capture card but to get right of the frame drops right now i can only say go back to superfast if this fixes the problem even though the duplicated frames are mostly fine except for one time when it hit over 2%
08:35:59: Total frames encoded: 1023, total frames duplicated: 30 (2.93%)
and over 11%
08:51:23: Total frames encoded: 1191, total frames duplicated: 141 (11.84%)
thats also the moment where you skipped frames probably the moment obs said its taking too long to encode
08:51:23: Number of frames skipped due to encoder lag: 39 (3.27%)
 
log looks fine tbh ... but it indeed looks like before as far as pixelation goes but the framerate actually suffered a lot also some actual lags

log says only a few duplicated frames thats actually really weird result shouldnt be that bad considering the logs

do you have any source of a webcam running?

i honestly think theres something going on with your capture card but to get right of the frame drops right now i can only say go back to superfast if this fixes the problem even though the duplicated frames are mostly fine except for one time when it hit over 2%
08:35:59: Total frames encoded: 1023, total frames duplicated: 30 (2.93%)
and over 11%
08:51:23: Total frames encoded: 1191, total frames duplicated: 141 (11.84%)
thats also the moment where you skipped frames probably the moment obs said its taking too long to encode
08:51:23: Number of frames skipped due to encoder lag: 39 (3.27%)
I'm nervous to even think that it might be my capture card, since I didn't even have it for that long lol. But as far as webcam goes, I don't use one. So there isn't one added.
 

Sapiens

Forum Moderator
It looks like the video capture source is outputting a resolution lower than 720p (or perhaps the console itself is?). OBS can't control the AVerMedia Stream Engine software's settings. Have you opened Stream Engine and made sure the settings there are correct?
 
It looks like the video capture source is outputting a resolution lower than 720p (or perhaps the console itself is?). OBS can't control the AVerMedia Stream Engine software's settings. Have you opened Stream Engine and made sure the settings there are correct?
Yes I have. It's always been the same settings for awhile now. Here's a screenshot of what I have it set at in the stream engine currently. Sorry if it's a bit tiny to read. Is it possible for say, my PS3 or any console for that matter to output a lower resolution? If so, do you know if there is a way to set it back to it's native resolution, which in my case for PS3 would be 720p I believe?

I just tested the resolution quality on the RECentral streaming software, and the stream looks flawless at 720p. I'm not sure why it doesn't look the same in obs, when they both have the same exact settings. I wonder If it's because I've been using the 32-bit version of obs. I wasn't able to use 64-bit the last time I checked though.
 

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  • Untitled.png
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Sapiens

Forum Moderator
I just noticed that your base resolution was set to 1920x1080. Since your LGP is outputting at 1280x720 its output is being stretched out to 1080p, then shrunk back down to 720p, which can result in some quality and clarity loss. Go to Settings > Video and change the base resolution to 1280x720 and the resolution downscale to none. You'll need to select your LGP source and press Ctrl+F to resize it to the new scene dimensions. See if that helps clear up the image quality.
 
Did everything as mentioned, testing both veryfast and superfast presets, and the result of the quality from both still came out the same.
 

Sapiens

Forum Moderator
Could you double-check your PS3 system settings and make sure the console itself is configured to output at 720p?
 

Sapiens

Forum Moderator
Could you post an updated log file just so we can double-check your current settings?

Edit: Also an updated example video with the new settings would be useful for comparison.
 
Could you post an updated log file just so we can double-check your current settings?

Edit: Also an updated example video with the new settings would be useful for comparison.
Sure np. I'll need to get going shortly though, so i will post an update on this as soon as I get back this evening.
 
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