Question / Help Trying to set up a stream

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Matt Springate

New Member
Basically i am trying to figure out what bitrate to put my stream at I only have like 6mgps upload speed so i have tried at 1k but the stream looks really fussy and bad any tips for improving this i would upgrade my internet but i have like the best for my area any tips or ideas of how i can improve this i will do a internet speed test now and post it.

41.19 Download
6.44 Upload
24.25 Ping

http://speedtest.btwholesale.com/

I stream wow and league btw mainly and wow especially looks terrible at 1k really fussy and hard to see

Specs: I have a I7 3770 @3.40 and a MSI GTX 970
 
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FerretBomb

FerretBomb

Active Member
Use the downscale. It's simpler that way, and looks mostly as good.

For best possible quality, you'd need to set the base resolution to 720p, play the game at 720p, and resize all of your assets to 720p-scale in Photoshop or whatever, as resizing anything in the preview window uses a low-quality rescaling method that definitely looks substandard (just look at any webcams). But it works in a pinch for a quick graphic that you won't use often, even if it doesn't look the best.
Having everything running at native streaming resolution will eliminate the downscale and look the best for your viewers. But at the same time... then you have to game at a non-native resolution (720p on likely a 1080p monitor... 1440p actually would look fine running at 720p as it's a power-of-two, meaning every one pixel would just be mapped to four on the monitor).
Also, if you plan to run native and use multiple resolutions (going to 1080 for very-low-motion games where you may be able to get away with it) you'll have to keep multiple copies of all of your assets, and version control, and it's a massive frickin' headache. I get to deal with this, and it really isn't worth it unless you regularly use both.
 
M

Matt Springate

New Member
FerretBomb said:
Use the downscale. It's simpler that way, and looks mostly as good.

For best possible quality, you'd need to set the base resolution to 720p, play the game at 720p, and resize all of your assets to 720p-scale in Photoshop or whatever, as resizing anything in the preview window uses a low-quality rescaling method that definitely looks substandard (just look at any webcams). But it works in a pinch for a quick graphic that you won't use often, even if it doesn't look the best.
Having everything running at native streaming resolution will eliminate the downscale and look the best for your viewers. But at the same time... then you have to game at a non-native resolution (720p on likely a 1080p monitor... 1440p actually would look fine running at 720p as it's a power-of-two, meaning every one pixel would just be mapped to four on the monitor).
Also, if you plan to run native and use multiple resolutions (going to 1080 for very-low-motion games where you may be able to get away with it) you'll have to keep multiple copies of all of your assets, and version control, and it's a massive frickin' headache. I get to deal with this, and it really isn't worth it unless you regularly use both.
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This sounds really complex i downscaled the resolution earlier and just kept my stuff all the same and it did not look too bad playing wow, i don't have access to Photoshop or anything like that so is there anyway around that but im not sure what it would look like through a viewers perspective it might look really bad idk
 
FerretBomb

FerretBomb

Active Member
GIMP is free, and would work for resizing images. But yeah, it can be. Having art assets at a native size fitting your stream layout (eg: not resizing them in the preview window) will look significantly better.
 
M

Matt Springate

New Member
FerretBomb said:
GIMP is free, and would work for resizing images. But yeah, it can be. Having art assets at a native size fitting your stream layout (eg: not resizing them in the preview window) will look significantly better.
Click to expand...

I will look into it thanks for the help btw im still dropping frames when playing league and streaming though and idk why i never seem to drop frames when playing wow only when playing league i dropped 161 frames and ive been streaming league for 1 hour i streamed wow for over an hour and never dropped a frame any ideas why this might be happening? thanks in advance also ive noticed the green square is flashing yellow a lot does this indicate i should lower the bitrate a bit and i guess it would explain why im dropping frames, still does not explain why it only happens on league and not on wow though weird
 
FerretBomb

FerretBomb

Active Member
League may use more bitrate than WoW. It's known for being a bandwidth hog (and increasing its own ping significantly while streaming, for many people). Yes, dropped frames indicate that your connection had a problem to the ingest. Could be your computer, your LAN, your ISP, the routing between your ISP and the Twitch ingest, or the ingest server.

It's a good idea to grab and run the Twitch Bandwidth Tester off the teamliquid site, and try to use the best server from the scan. You want something with a Quality ranking above 90 though, higher being better, and then lowest ping if they're all at 99.

Flashing yellow/red just means that your buffer is filling up... that your stream can't be sent out fast enough over your connection. It can indicate that you are running close to your realistic throughput minimum max potential, and network variances/overhead/game throughput may be choking the connection just a little too much. It's why it's recommended not to stream at more than 2/3 of your max theoretical upstream for singleplayer games, and half for multiplayer/network-heavy games. It's just saying to dial it back a little further. Which, due to League's hoggish nature, might have to happen.
 
M

Matt Springate

New Member
FerretBomb said:
League may use more bitrate than WoW. It's known for being a bandwidth hog (and increasing its own ping significantly while streaming, for many people). Yes, dropped frames indicate that your connection had a problem to the ingest. Could be your computer, your LAN, your ISP, the routing between your ISP and the Twitch ingest, or the ingest server.

It's a good idea to grab and run the Twitch Bandwidth Tester off the teamliquid site, and try to use the best server from the scan. You want something with a Quality ranking above 90 though, higher being better, and then lowest ping if they're all at 99.

Flashing yellow/red just means that your buffer is filling up... that your stream can't be sent out fast enough over your connection. It can indicate that you are running close to your realistic throughput minimum max potential, and network variances/overhead/game throughput may be choking the connection just a little too much. It's why it's recommended not to stream at more than 2/3 of your max theoretical upstream for singleplayer games, and half for multiplayer/network-heavy games. It's just saying to dial it back a little further. Which, due to League's hoggish nature, might have to happen.
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Just done the test and eu London which i am closest too seems to be quality of 72 while all the others are higher which makes no sense since the ping is the lowest weird idk what to do tbh should i try and lower the bitrate did it again and the quality is 84 for London so i will keep it at London i guess as none of the EU ones are higher than 84 im not sure what to do to fix the dropping frames though any ideas
 
FerretBomb

FerretBomb

Active Member
Only option is to lower your bitrate further, or yell at your ISP. Normally that means it's a routing issue though, so there may not be anything they can do to help.

If you have some geek-level technical expertise, one option I've used in the past when my ISP was dropping the ball badly on their backbone routing (since fixed) was to get myself a virtual server with an unmetered 10Mbit connection at a close-by colo host (there are *many* in Kansas City) for about $20/mo. Then I just set up an RTMP repeater on it. Since it was close-by the ISP's routing screw-up didn't matter as much. And since it was a proper datacenter, they had a few direct backbone connections. Think of it as making a short surface-streets hop to get past an accident on a freeway. It likely won't work with something like DigitalOcean or Linode though, unless they offer a hosting location which is physically close to you.

Being fair, I've seen a few people with similar scattered-frame-drop problems on the EU Twitch ingests recently. One guy's fix might be worth a shot; though it sounds stupid, try using an east coast US server. Miami or Ashburn. He was having problems with the FR ingest, but could stream to either of those just fine.
 
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