Question / Help Warning high encoding cpu usage? Frame drops?

D

Donald Hixson

New Member
Hello, I'm sort of new to the whole streaming thing and could use some help, I have my bitrate and buffer size both set at 2500, downscale to 720p 60fps, filter to Lanczos (best detail 36 samples), scene buffering time to 400ms, everything else left at default. I'm getting crazy frame drop. Also have a 60/6 connection. I'm running an i7 4790k with 16gb ram, a lower end video card sadly (gtx 580), and a Corsair h100i gtx liquid cooler. I feel like I'm not too far off and my build should be able to handle streaming. I wouldn't think my video card plays a huge role. Any suggestions would be appreciated thank you.
 
Your scene buffering time needs to be set longer than the mic time offset, and then some. Preferably also longer than your Elgato buffering time (which should be 0 or 1ms, not 10000) and mic(/cam, if applicable) compensation.

Set your elgato buffer to 0 or 1, set your scene buffering time to 2000ms (the 1550ms mic comp plus 400ms old-standard buffering margin, rounding up). It's waiting to sync everything and running out of buffer, I believe, causing the large number of late/duped frames that are causing your issue.
Video and encoding thread look to be low enough to run 60fps acceptably, from a technical standpoint.

Speaking of which, unless you're a Partnered caster, 60fps is strongly advised against. 720p@30fps, x264 Veryfast or lower, 2000kbps is the "golden point". If you're playing retrogames that use sprite blitting and so have an actual technical NEED for 60fps, downscale further to 480p. The further you go past 2000kbps, the more viewers will buffer and leave. Audio rate also counts; you could shave a bit by dropping to 96kbps AAC which no one would notice quality-wise.
 
All right sweet, I'll give all that a try tomorrow. I appreciate the detailed response. Just one more question. I'm also trying to have the song title from Spotify on the stream. I've gotten it to show up for a few songs using the window capture but it eventually just hangs there and doesn't update the song title. What can I do there?
 
FerretBomb said:
Your scene buffering time needs to be set longer than the mic time offset, and then some. Preferably also longer than your Elgato buffering time (which should be 0 or 1ms, not 10000) and mic(/cam, if applicable) compensation.

Set your elgato buffer to 0 or 1, set your scene buffering time to 2000ms (the 1550ms mic comp plus 400ms old-standard buffering margin, rounding up). It's waiting to sync everything and running out of buffer, I believe, causing the large number of late/duped frames that are causing your issue.
Video and encoding thread look to be low enough to run 60fps acceptably, from a technical standpoint.

Speaking of which, unless you're a Partnered caster, 60fps is strongly advised against. 720p@30fps, x264 Veryfast or lower, 2000kbps is the "golden point". If you're playing retrogames that use sprite blitting and so have an actual technical NEED for 60fps, downscale further to 480p. The further you go past 2000kbps, the more viewers will buffer and leave. Audio rate also counts; you could shave a bit by dropping to 96kbps AAC which no one would notice quality-wise.
Click to expand...


Okay so I tried what you suggested and it seemed to work. I didn't get any dropped frames. Now I just need viewers lol but here's the log from today https://gist.github.com/a7d3062f42c38d5550bc
 
FerretBomb said:
Elgato buffering time (which should be 0 or 1ms, not 10000)
Click to expand...
1ms buffer is read as 10000 in OBS for some reason. This is set properly.


Donald Hixson said:
Okay so I tried what you suggested and it seemed to work. I didn't get any dropped frames. Now I just need viewers lol but here's the log from today https://gist.github.com/a7d3062f42c38d5550bc
Click to expand...
Code: 
14:47:09: profile: high

your log looks fine besides your profile needs to be set to main, not high. High will rule out mobile viewers from being able to view your stream.
 
dping said:
1ms buffer is read as 10000 in OBS for some reason. This is set properly.



Code: 
14:47:09: profile: high

your log looks fine besides your profile needs to be set to main, not high. High will rule out mobile viewers from being able to view your stream.
Click to expand...


Yeah I noticed the log says it's set to 10000 when it's set to 1ms lol but okay I changed it to to main. So regarding Spotify, is there another way to show the song title and stuff other than window capture? When I use that it eventually stops updating the song title.
 
Donald Hixson said:
Yeah I noticed the log says it's set to 10000 when it's set to 1ms lol but okay I changed it to to main. So regarding Spotify, is there another way to show the song title and stuff other than window capture? When I use that it eventually stops updating the song title.
Click to expand...
I couldn't tell you for sure but I would attempt to remake the window capture as a global source.
 
dping said:
I couldn't tell you for sure but I would attempt to remake the window capture as a global source.
Click to expand...




All right. Is there anything else you would suggest? I assume even with me getting increased to 300/20 with TWC Maxx won't make a difference as long as I'm not partnered with Twitch correct? Overlays and stuff seem pretty simple, just need to design one first. I've noticed the only way I can get good mic quality is to have my Astros plugged straight into my pc. But that also prevents me from party chatting with people on ps4, and not everyone used Skype. So I guess that's my next question, is there anything I can do about that?
 
Donald Hixson said:
All right. Is there anything else you would suggest? I assume even with me getting increased to 300/20 with TWC Maxx won't make a difference as long as I'm not partnered with Twitch correct? Overlays and stuff seem pretty simple, just need to design one first. I've noticed the only way I can get good mic quality is to have my Astros plugged straight into my pc. But that also prevents me from party chatting with people on ps4, and not everyone used Skype. So I guess that's my next question, is there anything I can do about that?
Click to expand...
you can increase bitrate a little later and experiment. notice that what @FerretBomb is correct that viewer will not always tell you that they are buffering, they will instead just leave. Even some partnered streamers keep their stream below twitch's max of 3500 since it really isn't needed for something like 720@30. as where you stand, you can experiment with dropping the preset to faster which will give you better quality per bitrate, just watch those duplicates frames. if you see them getting above 1% for a 5 minute stream, put the preset back to veryfast.

some presets are game dependent so expect results to vary.

Lastly, remember that video quality isn't everything and viewers will stay longer with better content and interaction.



a few more things:
don't watch your own stream while streaming. just use a popout chat instead or a mobile device to view chat.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top