Question / Help Streaming PC having encoding issues. (W/ Avermedia Live HD Gamer)

[DaCrazyCageMan]

Hey guys, so I recently built my streaming pc and am having issues with the encoding, my friend has a very similar setup except he has the AMD FX8320 cpu and I have the AMD FX8350 cpu which of course is more powerful, I've tried using the same settings as him even lower as I want to stream at 720p60fps which he also does with seemingly perfect quality despite also being a small streamer, he also has 20MB/s while I only have 5.5MB/s however the problem I'm having is OBS warns me that I have High encoding cpu usage, consider turning down your settings, the problem seems to still happen whether I'm at a massive bitrate of 4500KB/s @ fast preset as it does at 2500KB/s @ veryfast preset. It makes no sense to me as to why this is happening, especially when my overall cpu is only at 40% in task manager, so I thought I would post my latest log file in the attached files in the hopes that someone can find the issue better than my friends and I.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Edit: Uploaded new log, I tried changing the bit rate several times to reduce the choppy lag on my stream.

 

[D2ultima]

This is a long shot, but try looking up how to unpark your cores and do so.

Also, what else are you running on the system? Is your CPU at stock and your friend is overclocked?

 

[DaCrazyCageMan]

This is a long shot, but try looking up how to unpark your cores and do so.

Also, what else are you running on the system? Is your CPU at stock and your friend is overclocked?

Okay I may as well take a look, the only other thing I am running is teamspeak to speak with my friends which isn't intensive in any way at all. I also have teeboard open which is a program within OBS and I also use moobot. Both our CPU's are stock btw. I Also forgot to mention that my overall cpu is only at 40% in task manager during all of this so I edited that in.

 

[D2ultima]

Yeah you shouldn't be having any issues with CPU encoding at all. I don't know why you are getting it, unless you're forcing OBS to two CPU cores or something.

 

[DaCrazyCageMan]

Yeah you shouldn't be having any issues with CPU encoding at all. I don't know why you are getting it, unless you're forcing OBS to two CPU cores or something.

How would I even know if that was somehow happening? I think I remember trying to do something similar on my gaming pc back when I was testing out streaming pc from the same pc, however I use OBS on my streaming pc which I installed fresh recently.

 

[D2ultima]

you would need to check the load across your cores in real time, using a monitoring program. Windows Task manager in Win 8 and 8.1 isn't all that good of a tool. I suggest HWiNFO in Sensor's only mode. Another decent tool would be MSI Afterburner, but I dislike the graphs it has personally (your mileage may vary).

If you are streaming and your CPU load is high on some cores and low on others, there is a problem that shouldn't be there. OBS' CPU load is generally same-level across all cores.

 

[DaCrazyCageMan]

OK so I checked affinity and OBS is allowed to use all cores, so I downloaded HWinfo and it seems that the load is distributed evenly across the first 6 cores and then the last 2 pick up any slack every now and again.
I think it's also worth mentioning that during preview I have never had the warning message about high encoding, it's only appeared while I have been streaming.

 

[Boildown]

Your log file is for a stream only around 13 seconds long. Not statistically valid to draw any conclusions. Get a log file for a stream of at least 5 minutes of the highest action gameplay your game has to offer, and post that. Try to get the same from your friend.

 

[DaCrazyCageMan]

Your log file is for a stream only around 13 seconds long. Not statistically valid to draw any conclusions. Get a log file for a stream of at least 5 minutes of the highest action gameplay your game has to offer, and post that. Try to get the same from your friend.

Ah ok didn't realize, I just took the latest log file after I streamed, I'll make sure to post a new log and get one from my friend too.
Edit: Replaced the log for the correct one from my stream yesterday & also going to try process priority class on high in advanced for next stream, since I have seen others with the same issue fix it this way. I don't know maybe it will focus on encoding more efficiently and not lag if it sees encoding as a top priority, it is, after all what I built the streaming pc for.

 

[Boildown]

21:05:41: Video Encoding: x264
21:05:41: fps: 60
21:05:41: width: 1280, height: 720
21:05:41: preset: veryfast
21:05:41: profile: main
21:05:41: keyint: 120
21:05:41: CBR: yes
21:05:41: CFR: no
21:05:41: max bitrate: 4000
21:05:41: buffer size: 4000

But now you have Constant Frame Rate turned off, so your percentages are going to be understated. Always keep CFR turned on, i.e. "yes".

That said,

23:44:25: Total frames encoded: 571414, total frames duplicated: 17219 (3.01%)
23:44:25: Number of frames skipped due to encoder lag: 12758 (2.23%)
23:44:25: Total frames rendered: 557775, number of late frames: 1084 (0.19%) (it's okay for some frames to be late)

Your duplicated and skipped frames are too high. Try lowering your framerate from 60 to 30, and if that doesn't get both your duplicated and skipped frames under 1% (the highest allowable IMO for a good looking stream), then change your preset to SuperFast.

 

[DaCrazyCageMan]

Nevermind just did a test stream, putting the process priority class to High in advanced seemed to fix the issue, in 30 minutes I had no encoding issues whatsoever on 2 different games on Veryfast preset. However I shall still turn CFR back on.
Thank you so much, both of you, for your help!