Bug Report Stuttering, rarely getting actual picture, some games crash

[MordeaniisChaos]

I heard a few really good things about this software, in particular the impact on the experience when streaming being pretty much 0, which is very useful to me because of the games I want to stream, especially ArmA 2.
However, I've had hell trying to get the software to work properly. Generally, it was just giving me black screens with audio. When I finally got it to work, there was a low framerate and a lot of stuttering, and apparantly very low quality until I turned downsampling on (from 1920x1200 to 1280x800)

I didn't really do a whole lot of tweaking settings for the stuttering so I'm sure that's something I've overlooked, but the rest of this stuff is really damn frustrating. There seems to be some "trick" to getting games to actually ut anythign out, instead of just working when enabled, because sometimes it works, othertimes it doesn't. I tried it with multiple games. Battlefield 3 eventually got it, Witcher 2 eventually got it, Dark Souls crashes as soon as I enable, and so does Call of Duty 4.

I have a pretty potent PC and a decent upstream. It's nothing amazing, but it's usually around 10 up. I've been able to stream 1080p at 60fps and 30fps through xsplit in the past, but Xsplit rarely keeps my games above 30, let alone 60, so I'm looking for another option.

http://www.twitch.tv/mordeaniis/b/397623253 That's an example of how bad the "stuttering" is. I guess it's more like "stopping dead for a few seconds, now that I've seen it for my own two eyes.

I don't really feel like troubleshooting this myself, so if anyone knows common solutions to this, I'd really appreciate the help. I don't really spend enough time streaming to put a ton of time into it, but I'm curious to see if I can get the quality of the output high enough to potentially replace fraps for youtube videos when performance is an issue such in larger community missions and maps in arma, which tend to already be tough on framerates.

Log:

Open Broadcaster Software v0.51b - 32bit (´・ω・｀)
-------------------------------
CPU Name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770K CPU @ 3.50GHz
CPU Speed: 3492MHz
Physical Memory:  4095MB Total, 4095MB Free
stepping id: 9, model 10, family 6, type 0, extmodel 1, extfamily 0, HTT 1, logical cores 8, total cores 4
monitor 1: pos={0, 0}, size={1920, 1200}
Windows Version: 6.2 Build 9200 
Aero is Enabled
------------------------------------------
Adapter 1
  Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680
  Video Adapter Dedicated Video Memory: 2087387136
  Video Adapter Shared System Memory: 2147479552
=====Stream Start: 2013-04-30, 01:41:59===============================================
  Multithreaded optimizations: On
  Base resolution: 1920x1200
  Output resolution: 1920x1200
------------------------------------------
Loading up D3D10...
Playback device Default
------------------------------------------
Using desktop audio input: Speakers (Sound Blaster Recon3Di)
Using 5.1 speaker setup
------------------------------------------
Using auxilary audio input: Microphone (Sound Blaster Recon3Di)
------------------------------------------
Audio Encoding: AAC
    bitrate: 128
------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------
Using Monitor Capture
Using graphics capture
------------------------------------------
Video Encoding: x264
    fps: 30
    width: 1920, height: 1200
    preset: veryfast
    CBR: no
    CFR: no
    max bitrate: 1000
    buffer size: 1000
    quality: 8
------------------------------------------
Using RTMP service: Twitch / Justin.tv
  Server selection: rtmp://live-3c.justin.tv/app
SO_SNDBUF was at 65536
SO_SNDBUF is now 65536
Using graphics capture
SharedTexCapture hooked
Total frames rendered: 6163, number of frames that lagged: 9 (0.15%) (it's okay for some frames to lag)
RTMPPublisher::SocketLoop: Aborting due to bStopping
Number of times waited to send: 0, Waited for a total of 0 bytes
Number of b-frames dropped: 0 (0%), Number of p-frames dropped: 0 (0%), Total 0 (0%)
=====Stream End: 2013-04-30, 01:45:26=================================================

Profiler results:

==============================================================
frame - [100%] [avg time: 3.928 ms] [avg calls per frame: 1] [children: 84.6%] [unaccounted: 15.4%]
| scene->Preprocess - [6.34%] [avg time: 0.249 ms] [avg calls per frame: 1]
| video encoding and uploading - [78.3%] [avg time: 3.074 ms] [avg calls per frame: 1] [children: 77.8%] [unaccounted: 0.433%]
| | CopyResource - [0.407%] [avg time: 0.016 ms] [avg calls per frame: 0]
| | conversion to 4:2:0 - [0.382%] [avg time: 0.015 ms] [avg calls per frame: 0]
| | call to encoder - [76.7%] [avg time: 3.013 ms] [avg calls per frame: 0]
| | sending stuff out - [0.331%] [avg time: 0.013 ms] [avg calls per frame: 0]
==============================================================

 

[WayZHC]

Re: Stuttering, rarely getting actual picture, some games cr

Take that Monitor Capture away from the scene. Unchecking it doesn't remove it from the scene. It's still there although not visible. That's 90% surely the problem.

Secondly, What is your upload speed? Test with: http://www.speedof.me/
E: Oh you already said its around 10M

 

[Lain]

Re: Stuttering, rarely getting actual picture, some games cr

This is unfortunately the wrong section to be posting this (would probably be better to ask in the questions forum as they're usually quick to help out with the ideal settings/resolutions/etc), though I can understand the confusion.

1200p resolution is probably higher than you need, though your system should theoretically be able to handle it at 30fps, but still it's fairly high resolution and could cause some lag in games on your system. Best suggestion would be to do at least a 1.25-1.5 downscale, it reduces CPU usage and system bandwidth a fair amount, and still keeps it quite high def, and will reduce overall strain on your computer and other applications.

Second, your bandwidth is way too low. If you do 1.25 or 1.5 downscale for 864p or 720p, you probably want around 3000 to 4000 for the video bitrate.

 

[MordeaniisChaos]

Re: Stuttering, rarely getting actual picture, some games cr

Take that Monitor Capture away from the scene. Unchecking it doesn't remove it from the scene. It's still there although not visible. That's 90% surely the problem.

Secondly, What is your upload speed? Test with: http://www.speedof.me/
E: Oh you already said its around 10M

Eh, those settings I already played with, and I usually never had more than one source actually there when I was actually streaming. Plenty of times when I had no sources other than the monitor trying for windowed mode at least (which always worked, but stuttered horribly on the stream. It was flawless on my end)

This is unfortunately the wrong section to be posting this (would probably be better to ask in the questions forum as they're usually quick to help out with the ideal settings/resolutions/etc), though I can understand the confusion.

1200p resolution is probably higher than you need, though your system should theoretically be able to handle it at 30fps, but still it's fairly high resolution and could cause some lag in games on your system. Best suggestion would be to do at least a 1.25-1.5 downscale, it reduces CPU usage and system bandwidth a fair amount, and still keeps it quite high def, and will reduce overall strain on your computer and other applications.

Second, your bandwidth is way too low. If you do 1.25 or 1.5 downscale for 864p or 720p, you probably want around 3000 to 4000 for the video bitrate.

I figured this'd just be the "tech support" area.
And considering games regularly wouldn't give video unless I ran them windowed and captured with monitor, I'd say at least part of this is a technical problem not simply a settings issue.
I was never having performance problems on my end. It was only the stream that was stuttering. Even playing Witcher 2 at pretty much max settings and native resolution I didn't have any troubles with performance, it was only the stream.
I'll try playing with the bandwidth more, I could have sworn I pumped it up to the appropriate settings but it was late so maybe I forgot.
Oh, I also at some point tried downsizing to 1280x800, which apparantly still have stuttering according to my buddy who was watching the stream to help me troubleshoot.
Is there a chance it's just not using enough of my power? I've got a very good PC, i73770K and a GTX680 16GB of RAM. I could stand to lose some performance in games because as I said, they didn't feel any different even when I was managing to stream out at 1200p. I do want to be able to keep that resolution however, if I can get it to work. At the very least for ArmA which I do youtube videos of (or used to before Fraps started destroying my performance) and I need all the resolution I can get there.
What'd I need to set bandwidth to for 1200, or at least 1080? I'd be fine with going down to 1080 as it'd still be native pixels, but I want to avoid downsampling if at all possible as it tends to make text difficult to read and the like, unless I actually run at 720p which isn't preferred either, obviously :p
I can't imagine I shouldn't be able to do at least 1080p at 30fps. I've done it with xsplit, at least that, I'm pretty sure I've even managed to get easier to run games to stream at native and 60.

 

[dodgepong]

Re: Stuttering, rarely getting actual picture, some games cr

I have never had a problem with game capture myself. Using the new Game Capture hotkey feature has made it easier than ever: set a hotkey in the Game Capture properties, go into the game you want to capture, and hit the hotkey, and OBS starts capturing right away.

Do you think you could do a stream and then post the log that corresponds with that stream? Because the kinds of stuttering I'm seeing in that example video don't appear to line up with what I would expect to see in the log.

Also, I recommend selecting a Twitch server near you, rather than the Global Load Balancer.

And just for the sake of completeness, can you run a speed test on http://testmy.net or http://speedof.me and posting the results?