Question / Help Ultra Twitch Quality?

[•cC• Bear]

I've been playing around with OBS for a few months, but don't have the knowledge to maximize my twitch stream quality.

I am not at all concerned with losing views due to viewers' poor bandwidth, I'm simply looking for the best possible quality that OBS can achieve via twitch.

I have the horsepower and the bandwidth, so assuming my rig will handle it, what are the settings necessary to achieve the absolute maximum quality while streaming to twitch using OBS 19.0.2?

Rig details are as follows:
Windows 7 Pro 64
CPU: i7-4790K (8thread) @ 4.8GHz
RAM: 16GB DDR3 @ 2400MHz
SSD: Samsung 850 PRO 512GB
VGA: 2x GTX 1080 in SLI with HB Bridge
Bandwidth: 400Mb down / 40Mb up

I am currently streaming with the following settings:

OUTPUT
Encoder: NVENC H.264
Enforce streaming service encoder settings=true
rescale output=false (1920x1080)
Rate Control: Lossless
Keyframe: 0
Preset: Default
Profile: Main
Level: Auto
2-pass encoding=true
GPU: 0
B-frames: 2

AUDIO
sample rate: 44.1KHz
Channels: Stereo

VIDEO:
Base res: 1080
Output res: 1080
Downscale filter: Lanczos
FPS: 60
disable aero=true

ADVANCED:
Process Priority: Normal
Render: Direct3d 11
Color: NV12
YUV Color: 601
YUV Range: Full

audio monitoring: Default
Disable windows audio ducking=true

Thanks in advance for your help!
-Bear

 

[Fenrir]

x264 encoder, 760p60fps output, 6k bitrate is the best you'll get with Twitch's bitrate limitations.

Also, streaming lossless is never going to work and is a really, really terrible idea.

 

[•cC• Bear]

Thanks for the super-quick reply. While streaming lossless OBS reports a bitrate of 6150-6250, so 6000 sounds right on the money. I'll give the x264 encoder a shot, I typically view my stream while streaming (ha) on a second rig, and was just a little disappointed in the quality, and figured that I could get it a little sharper.

So does twitch not allow 1080@60 at all? That is surprising to me.

 

[•cC• Bear]

Also, if I wont be streaming lossless, which rate control do you suggest I use? And which CPU usage preset will create the best quality? And how about buffer size?

 

[Sapiens]

You will never stream lossless to Twitch. It is an option only for local recording, and even then is complete overkill for 99% of the user base. Even if you flipped your upload/download speeds and could stream at 400 Mbps it wouldn't be nearly enough. The "Enforce stream service encoder settings" prevented you from actually streaming losslessly, which is why your bitrate topped out at 6000.

1080p60 is certainly possible but given Twitch's bitrate limitations it isn't going to look very good unless you're streaming a very low-motion game. 720p60 on the veryfast or faster x264 presets should be fine.

 

[•cC• Bear]

Thanks a lot y'all, this is super good info, and is exactly what I needed to know!