I've also had issues with Apple VT hardware encoder, and don't know much about it. I stream local smash tournaments in my city. I recently streamed the Houston Tech Rodeo FGC Tournament this past weekend. At the HTR tourney we were experiencing some weird technical issues. I'd also like to know more about it to dispel some of the "mystique" around Apple VT 264 Hardware Encoder.
• My Computer Specs - Used for all the streams I'm involved with
- macOS Big Sur - 11.3.1
- iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017)
- 3.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5 (7th gen)
- 8 GB 2400 MHz DDR4
- Radeon Pro 570 4 GB - AMD
This was a two day tournament. 1st day I did not notice anything out of the ordinary. 2nd day is when we had trouble. One point during the stream. OBS indicated that it was using 25300 kbps? We were streaming on Twitch and had set the bitrate to 5500 kbps. We also noticed the frames were dropping on stream and OBS was also indicating the 60fps were dropping to 23, 18, 43 during short bursts. Twitch chat noticed it early on.
The bottom UI of OBS did not show any "Dropped Frames" and it was sitting at 0.0 throughout the stream. But the part where it shows the 60 FPS would drop frequently and got worse as the tournament progressed.
- Total Streaming Time: 8hr 56min
We checked the box "Limit bitrate" and that helped with the first problem.
2nd problem kept alluding us. Never had this happen before.
My normal setup during the tournaments I host back in my city are, Imac, 1 dslr camera connected directly via usb 3.0 port, and the El Gato HD60 S+, and up until the "Houston Tech Rodeo" ran "flawlessly".
This tournament we added a 2nd dslr camera also connected via usb 3.0, audio mixer, and 2 player webcams. We thought bc we were using a (Powered) USB 3.0 hub to connect the El Gato, 2 dslr cameras, 2 usb webcams, and the audio mixer that it was bottle necking? so we directly connected the "El Gato HD60 S+" to the Imac's usb port. Didn't fix it. We thought maybe it was the hdmi splitter but gameplay on the Player's monitors were unaffected throughout the tourney. We also tried updating "Game Capture" and see if that would help, and neither did. We closed out of other programs too. Only thing open was 2 chrome tabs, and OBS.
Maybe there were too many OBS scenes? My cpu usage was at 90% (displayed by CleanMyMac), and OBS was indicating CPU usage was around 50% - 60%. next to that was the 60FPS and that was dropping throughout the Smash tourney. Did notice when I tried "recording" the stream through OBS, frames dropped drastically (lower 10s). We were not using any custom "Stingers", for transitions we used "fade". Currently trying to recreate the problem, but the webcams and mixer were not my equipment, but am using 2 dslr cameras and the El Gato.
Houston Tech Rodeo FGC Showcase
Maybe CPU usage was just too high and needed to optimize my files better for OBS scenes? Would a hdmi video switcher like the ATEM mini help in future productions?
I'm new to this Forum. Let me know if this post is in the wrong place. But thought the discussion about Apple VT H264 Hardware & Software Encoder was very interesting and insightful!