Looking for some help from the live streamers out there; wasn’t sure which section this fitted best under, so please feel free to move. I’m looking for some advice on getting high quality video streams out to twitch.tv. I don’t mind dropping to 720p in order to get good quality, but I’d prefer 1080p. I’ve just upgraded to the following specs: Core i5 4670K (stock speed) Asus Z87-K 8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz MSI GTX 760 2GB “Twin Frozr Gaming Edition Overclocked” I streamed some Black Mesa last night as a bit of a test and although I could get a 30FPS 1080p stream running without a hitch I was pretty disappointed with the quality; it still looks quite blocky and blurry to me (you can see a replay here). I’m using Open Broadcaster Software and I’ve set the video data rate to 3500kbps – my connection can probably handle up to about 8000kbps or more (upload speed is around 11mbit), but apparently twitch.tv freaks out above 3500kbps and people have trouble viewing the stream (OBS even warns me if I go over 3,500). I’m using Intel QuickSync to encode the video (“Balanced” settings), as I read some very positive comments on the performance impact - i.e., none at all. It certainly makes sense in theory: QuickSync is a feature of the iGPU, but if you’re using a dedicated GPU card then the iGPU is sat there not being used – why not let it take over video encoding duties? I’ve also got NVENC available to me, but that does apparently carry a GPU performance penalty (Nvidia reckon up to 15%). Of course there is also software x264 encoding that’s part of OBS as standard, but that carries a heavy CPU penalty. Ideally I’d like a much higher quality stream, preferably with little or no visible artefacts, and I’d like to try and work out a “one-size fits all” config that I don’t need to adjust/tweak for each game I want to play. I’m going to try using NVENC, “high quality” QuickSync and software x264, but I’d welcome any advice that people have.
Ok, the quality also comes from the Bit Rate you are using to stream with. Higher the bit rate the better quality the stream but also depends on your upload speed. Bit Rate of 3500 is the max that Twitch really uses. But with that being said any viewers will have an issue if they have poor internet. As the higher the bit rate the more data each viewer has to download/stream. Using OBS myself as well as Dxtory. Dxtory captures the video from my screen and can then send it to OBS as a Video Capture Device, this in my opinion is the better option that using OBS game capture. 720p is better for streaming,unless you are partnered you wont be able to display any higher quality than 720p anyway.
Cheers; I'll give Dxtory+OBS a shot, see if the quality is any better - I didn't know you could use Dxtory as a capture source in OBS... I've just been streaming Black Mesa again and 1080p 60FPS kept dropping out - for no apparent reason OBS would just hang with the message "Taking too long to encode...etc..." - when I restarted the stream it worked fine, no dropped frames at all, so clearly my rig can handle it. 720p@60FPS seems to be a good compromise (replay here), so I'll see if using Dxtory to capture makes a difference to the quality. To be honest an FPS probably isn't the best thing to show off the quality due to high-motion scenes, but that's exactly why I'm testing with it
Under file output there is DirectShow Output that enables it as a Video Capture Device, also the Yellow Button at the bottom is where you can change the output settings. 720p etc.
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=231402&highlight=dxtory I found this very handy to setup dxtory etc. The Lagless Codec is pretty awesome for streaming or recording. My upstream is too rubbish to be a decent streamer Bloody hurry up an get fibre to my cabinet BT!!!
Cheers, I'll give that a read when I get chance. Thankfully I'm lucky enough to live in central Cardiff, and that means I get access to a pretty hefty internet connection; currently I'm on 120Mbps down and 12mbps up, but my downstream will be getting bumped to 150Mbps later in the year. There's BT fibre here too (one of their main offices is literally a couple of hundred yards away, and there's a fibre cabinet 20 yards down the street), but it's so expensive compared to Virgin Media. It's actually quite frustrating; I can stream reliably at up to about 6/7Mbps (possibly 8Mbps), but twitch goes mental if you go over 3.5Mbps...
