I don't know the best term to describe what's happening. The game will be streaming smoothly and then suddenly for about half a second to sometimes three or four seconds the framerate will take a massive dip. Well that's what it looks like anyways because on OBS it still says it is running at 30 FPS with no frames dropped. I've spent the last two days searching and it looks like a few people might be having this problem but all the videos they link were already deleted from twitch so I can't be sure.
My relevant hardware:
AMD Phenom II X4 955 CPU
Radeon HD 6850 1GB GPU
Avermedia Live Broadcaster HD capture card
I have every driver updated. I've uninstalled and reinstalled everything that came with my capture card and my graphics card. Nothing is being overclocked or running hot or being overloaded. My CPU never goes above 30% while streaming. I've tried running OBS x86 and x64. I've set the priority to high in my task manager. I've tried every affinity combination just to see if that would do anything (I'll try anything no matter how silly). I've even tried the TLB disable (it's a Phenom-related thing with Windows). I've plugged in my capture card in all three different PCI-E slots. I've tried just one of my monitors plugged in (tried both monitors). I've tried at least five different versions of OBS, one of them going all the way back to a November build.
As for OBS settings I've tried every quality from 0 to 10. I've tried keeping my resolution matching my capture card's resolution. I've tried downscaling. I've even tried changing the resolution to something ridiculously small and unwatchable. I've tried both 30 fps and 60 fps. Anything below 30 fps and the entire stream looks choppy since it's such a low framerate to begin with. I've tried just about everything in the advanced settings other than custom x264 encoder settings. I've even tried having aero enabled and disabled.
No luck at all. Here's what I know:
-It has nothing to do with my bitrate or connection to twitch. How do I know this? Because I don't even have to be streaming. It will occur in the preview window.
-It may be related to either x264 or just OBS. It doesn't do this on FME where it uses H264. But FME is a horrible piece of software that consumes almost all my CPU (I've tried FME 2.5 with command line execution) and still streams at some choppy 15 FPS. I can't tell if it does it on that other popular streaming software that uses x264 because it limits me to 25 fps and already runs really poorly to begin with.
-It has nothing to do with my capture card by itself because I can run the game with the Avermedia software that came with the card and with AmaRecTV and it will run smoothly.
-If I do a software capture while I'm running one of the previously mentioned pieces of software it will do the stutter again but only on OBS.
It would seem strange if my computer somehow isn't strong enough to handle this considering I've tried the absolute lowest settings and the fact that 95% of the time it runs really smooth at some pretty high settings. Here's a video (so it won't get deleted). If you want I can even record the game at some really low resolution with quality set to zero and the x264 CPU preset set to ultrafast with a bitrate of 200/200. It would be a big blurry mess but it will still stutter.
http://www.justin.tv/mazulii/b/371150491
Stuttering occurs at 0:17 and 0:51
And of course here's my log.
My relevant hardware:
AMD Phenom II X4 955 CPU
Radeon HD 6850 1GB GPU
Avermedia Live Broadcaster HD capture card
I have every driver updated. I've uninstalled and reinstalled everything that came with my capture card and my graphics card. Nothing is being overclocked or running hot or being overloaded. My CPU never goes above 30% while streaming. I've tried running OBS x86 and x64. I've set the priority to high in my task manager. I've tried every affinity combination just to see if that would do anything (I'll try anything no matter how silly). I've even tried the TLB disable (it's a Phenom-related thing with Windows). I've plugged in my capture card in all three different PCI-E slots. I've tried just one of my monitors plugged in (tried both monitors). I've tried at least five different versions of OBS, one of them going all the way back to a November build.
As for OBS settings I've tried every quality from 0 to 10. I've tried keeping my resolution matching my capture card's resolution. I've tried downscaling. I've even tried changing the resolution to something ridiculously small and unwatchable. I've tried both 30 fps and 60 fps. Anything below 30 fps and the entire stream looks choppy since it's such a low framerate to begin with. I've tried just about everything in the advanced settings other than custom x264 encoder settings. I've even tried having aero enabled and disabled.
No luck at all. Here's what I know:
-It has nothing to do with my bitrate or connection to twitch. How do I know this? Because I don't even have to be streaming. It will occur in the preview window.
-It may be related to either x264 or just OBS. It doesn't do this on FME where it uses H264. But FME is a horrible piece of software that consumes almost all my CPU (I've tried FME 2.5 with command line execution) and still streams at some choppy 15 FPS. I can't tell if it does it on that other popular streaming software that uses x264 because it limits me to 25 fps and already runs really poorly to begin with.
-It has nothing to do with my capture card by itself because I can run the game with the Avermedia software that came with the card and with AmaRecTV and it will run smoothly.
-If I do a software capture while I'm running one of the previously mentioned pieces of software it will do the stutter again but only on OBS.
It would seem strange if my computer somehow isn't strong enough to handle this considering I've tried the absolute lowest settings and the fact that 95% of the time it runs really smooth at some pretty high settings. Here's a video (so it won't get deleted). If you want I can even record the game at some really low resolution with quality set to zero and the x264 CPU preset set to ultrafast with a bitrate of 200/200. It would be a big blurry mess but it will still stutter.
http://www.justin.tv/mazulii/b/371150491
Stuttering occurs at 0:17 and 0:51
And of course here's my log.
Code:
Open Broadcaster Software v0.472b - 64bit ( ^ω^)
-------------------------------
CPU Name: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 955 Processor
CPU Speed: 3214MHz
Physical Memory: 4094MB Total, 2694MB Free
stepping id: 3, model 4, family 15, type 0, extmodel 8, extfamily 0, HTT 1, logical cores 4, total cores 4
monitor 1: pos={0, 0}, size={1920, 1080}
Windows Version: 6.1 Build 7600
Aero is Disabled
------------------------------------------
Adapter 1
Video Adapter: AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series
Video Adapter Dedicated Video Memory: 1064005632
Video Adapter Shared System Memory: 1878257664
=====Stream Start=====================================================================
Multithreaded optimizations: On
Base resolution: 1280x720
Output resolution: 1280x720
------------------------------------------
Loading up D3D10...
Playback device Default
------------------------------------------
Using desktop audio input: Speakers (2- Logitech USB Headset)
------------------------------------------
Using auxilary audio input: Microphone (2- Logitech USB Headset)
------------------------------------------
Audio Encoding: AAC
bitrate: 320
------------------------------------------
device: AVerMedia HD Capture,
device id \\?\pci#ven_1a0a&dev_6202&subsys_620c1461&rev_01#4&14e6547d&0&0038#{65e8773d-8f56-11d0-a3b9-00a0c9223196}\{ede957b0-eaa5-4bf4-acf3-6e10cb4836c3},
chosen type: UYVY, usingFourCC: false, res: 1280x720 - 1280x720, fps: 50-50, fourCC: 'UYVY'
device audio info - bits per sample: 16, channels: 2, samples per sec: 48000, block size: 4
Using directshow input
x264: using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast FastShuffle SSEMisalign LZCNT
x264: profile High, level 3.1
------------------------------------------
Video Encoding: x264
fps: 30
width: 1280, height: 720
preset: veryfast
CBR: no
CFR: no
max bitrate: 2000
buffer size: 2000
quality: 7
------------------------------------------
Using RTMP service: Twitch / Justin.tv
Server selection: rtmp://live-lax-backup.justin.tv/app
bufferTime: 1400, outputRateWindowTime: 1000, dropThreshold: 1900
Total frames rendered: 2254, number of frames that lagged: 0 (0.00%) (it's okay for some frames to lag)
RTMPPublisher::SocketLoop: Aborting due to bStopping
Number of b-frames dropped: 0 (0%), Number of p-frames dropped: 0 (0%), Total 0 (0%)
x264: frame I:9 Avg QP:25.39 size: 70504
x264: frame P:1123 Avg QP:28.80 size: 12724
x264: frame B:1084 Avg QP:33.93 size: 3257
x264: consecutive B-frames: 5.1% 86.6% 7.4% 0.9%
x264: mb I I16..4: 4.2% 40.1% 55.7%
x264: mb P I16..4: 2.8% 3.2% 0.6% P16..4: 43.4% 23.3% 7.5% 0.0% 0.0% skip:19.2%
x264: mb B I16..4: 0.6% 0.2% 0.0% B16..8: 24.9% 7.1% 0.4% direct: 1.2% skip:65.7% L0:35.9% L1:55.0% BI: 9.0%
x264: 8x8 transform intra:45.5% inter:31.8%
x264: coded y,uvDC,uvAC intra: 47.2% 42.3% 16.2% inter: 7.5% 6.3% 0.6%
x264: i16 v,h,dc,p: 21% 60% 15% 4%
x264: i8 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 16% 34% 25% 2% 5% 4% 4% 4% 5%
x264: i4 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 15% 28% 20% 3% 9% 5% 7% 4% 8%
x264: i8c dc,h,v,p: 56% 29% 13% 3%
x264: Weighted P-Frames: Y:0.0% UV:0.0%
x264: kb/s:1998.66
=====Stream End=======================================================================
Profiler results:
==============================================================
frame - [100%] [avg time: 8.12 ms] [avg calls per frame: 1] [children: 95.9%] [unaccounted: 4.13%]
| scene->Preprocess - [29.3%] [avg time: 2.378 ms] [avg calls per frame: 1]
| video encoding and uploading - [66.6%] [avg time: 5.407 ms] [avg calls per frame: 1] [children: 19.2%] [unaccounted: 47.4%]
| | CopyResource - [0.135%] [avg time: 0.011 ms] [avg calls per frame: 0]
| | conversion to 4:2:0 - [0.0616%] [avg time: 0.005 ms] [avg calls per frame: 0]
| | call to encoder - [18.8%] [avg time: 1.529 ms] [avg calls per frame: 0]
| | sending stuff out - [0.135%] [avg time: 0.011 ms] [avg calls per frame: 0]
==============================================================