x264 vs AMD HW H.264 (AVC)

[danno84]

Hi guys,

I'm new here and I just started streaming on Twitch using OBS. One thing I noticed was that my webcam is very pixelated when I'm moving around and I'm wondering what video settings are best for my current setup.

I don't want to jump ship to buy a Nvidia GPU just yet.

PC Info below

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600x
GPU: Radeon RX 5500 XT
Upload speed: 78.8 MBPS
The resolution I'm using is 1920x1080.
1080p x 60FPS

I compared the two encoders I had available x264 and AMD HW H.264 (AVC).
The AMD encoder looked more pixelated than the x264...so I chose to use x264.

My current settings is

Do you need my OBS log? If so, do I just go to Help > Log Files > View Current Log?

Any advice is much appreciated.

Thank you!

 

[koala]

There is not much more to say about this, you already found out the relevant details. This is the quality you will get. x264 has better quality than the AMD hardware encoder.
You can improve the quality for x264 by choosing a slower preset, but this will increase your CPU usage, which might impact the thing you intend to stream. Nvenc, the encoder Nvidia GPUs provide, produces similar quality to that of x264 with a preset between medium and slow (with RTX 2xxx) and slightly better, up to slow, with the newer nvenc generations with RTX 3xxx and 4xxx cards).

I'm not familiar with the current Twitch ingest policies, but my last information is that Twitch supports up to 6000 and not 8000. 8000 might be too high.

In general, reduce graphical complexity of the thing you stream. Foliage, snowflakes, fast moving high detail textures kill quality with the rather low bitrate Twitch supports.

 

[danno84]

There is not much more to say about this, you already found out the relevant details. This is the quality you will get. x264 has better quality than the AMD hardware encoder.
You can improve the quality for x264 by choosing a slower preset, but this will increase your CPU usage, which might impact the thing you intend to stream. Nvenc, the encoder Nvidia GPUs provide, produces similar quality to that of x264 with a preset between medium and slow (with RTX 2xxx) and slightly better, up to slow, with the newer nvenc generations with RTX 3xxx and 4xxx cards).

I'm not familiar with the current Twitch ingest policies, but my last information is that Twitch supports up to 6000 and not 8000. 8000 might be too high.

In general, reduce graphical complexity of the thing you stream. Foliage, snowflakes, fast moving high detail textures kill quality with the rather low bitrate Twitch supports.

Thanks for the response!

Do you know what the "Profile" setting is and should I use High? or should I leave it as "None"

Also, I read somewhere to put "bframes=2" in the x264 Options field. Needed?

 

[danno84]

Should I also be streaming at 720p 60FPS vs 1080p 60 FPS?

 

[koala]

The "profile" setting defines encoder internal compression features. "High" allows your video to be encoded with all encoder features, so it's compressed best, so quality is best. If you expect viewers using ancient devices, so they're unable to decode this video, use main or even base, but in 2024 every computer and every mobile player will support "high".

About other settings, keep them at their default unless you know what they do and you have a requirement and a reason to change them. The defaults are the best settings in general, they don't need to be changed. There is no setting that just unconditionally increases quality. If there was, it would be the default setting.

Using 720p instead of 1080p makes your video slightly blurry but the general quality increases. You have to experiment and see where the sweet spot is. This also depends on the kind of video you will show.

 

[danno84]

The "profile" setting defines encoder internal compression features. "High" allows your video to be encoded with all encoder features, so it's compressed best, so quality is best. If you expect viewers using ancient devices, so they're unable to decode this video, use main or even base, but in 2024 every computer and every mobile player will support "high".

About other settings, keep them at their default unless you know what they do and you have a requirement and a reason to change them. The defaults are the best settings in general, they don't need to be changed. There is no setting that just unconditionally increases quality. If there was, it would be the default setting.

Using 720p instead of 1080p makes your video slightly blurry but the general quality increases. You have to experiment and see where the sweet spot is. This also depends on the kind of video you will show.

Thank you so much!

I used the High profile, faster, and 1080p for my stream and it seems to be pretty good for my set up.