Question / Help Streaming and recording on a laptop

[divinity995]

I have a Hp laptop with 8 gb of ram, intel i7 4510u and nvidia 840m, i was trying for a while to set up a stream or to record gameplays but i always got encoder overloads. By some magic after i installed OBS today after reinstalling windows i can somehow stream without too many issues.

Id be grateful if someone could recommend me some settings to use so I can pull out the most i can out of the computer. I tried out the NVENC encoder and it sorta works better than the x264 without too many hickups in the stream and these are the settings but quality is really bad. i kinda got it working but i wanna build up from there, im also rescaling to 980x540ish resolution in the video tab. upload speed is 7.6 mbps but idk if the computer would be able to encode over 1000 bitrate

Thanks in advance

 

[Narcogen]

500 bitrate is extremely low. There's no way a 720p30 stream at that bitrate will be watchable. NVENC encodes in hardware that reduces load on your CPU, but generally produces lower quality at the same bitrate as x264.

Try running the Auto-Configuration Wizard from the Tools menu. But a good streaming bitrate for 720p30 is 2500-4000.

Also I think you're better off doing your scaling in the Video tab rather than in the output tab.

 

[divinity995]

i noticed that 500 looks horrible, i started using the quicksync because NVENC decided not to work out of a sudden and it fairs better results, but the problem with x264 is that it bottlenecks my CPU, i upped the bitrate to 1000 but i dont know how far i can bring it up before i get encoder overload.

my upload is around 6-7mbps so i can figure the internet can push around 4000 bitrate max before games start lagging but it still depends on the hardware.

if you know, considering im trying to use a crappy laptop, should i use x264 or quicksync for streaming and quicksync or the fast x264 for recording ? i turned off that scaling and switched it to the video tab.

 

[Narcogen]

Depends on what you're trying to capture and what your goals are. Generally speaking, QSV and NVENC function better at higher bitrates and so are more appropriate for recording, whereas x264 is capable of producing better quality at the same bitrate as the hardware encoders.

 

[divinity995]

i wanna stream overwatch but i'll kinda worry about the quality later, i wanna get it working as smooth as possible first of all. Speaking about raw performance, id rather stream a stable 1mb 540p stream than a choppy 3mb 720p stream. I was fiddling around with everything to see how much i can pull out of my latop but its kinda hard nailing that sweetspot. i read that best solution would pretty much be NVENC because it offloads it all to the Nvidia card which renders faster than the CPU but the problem is that 840m card doesnt have the encoder inside of it.

now im annoyed becase even thought OBS doesnt say encoder overloaded, the stream chops from time to time...also should i turn on or off stuff like vsync in the game or nah ? since the game runs 45-60 fps with it on, while the stream is locked to 30

 

[Narcogen]

If you're getting chop without the "encoder overload" message, then it may be rendering lag rather than encoder lag, which means OBS is competing with whatever you are capturing for GPU resources.

The usual solutions for that are reducing quality and FPS options in the captured application and/or reducing frame size / frame rate for capture in OBS.

Turning on vsync does help as it enforces a 60fps cap on your game.