OBS Streaming Problem

[Szentii]

Hi There! I hope it is not a problem that I am posting this here.

I have a problem with OBS/Streaming (I think.)I use 720p60Fps for streaming. When I stream, OBS is not doing 60 Fps, it jumps between 30-58 Fps, and I cannot seem to fix it. I tried going down to 360p but it's the same. I even tried 1080p60fps and same, 30-58fps, but no 60 constant fps.

I tried using Advanced, and Simple settings. My streamer friend sent me his settings, tried those, same problem. My temperatures never go over 50°C. The card is in the PCI-E 16x slot too. And the GPU Load is not really under heavy load, most of the times. I use NVENC to stream, but with x264 I have the same issue. I tried reinstalling OBS, even fully clearing my previous profiles,settings. I had a fresh Windows reinstall since the last big Windows 10 update. The games which I have problems with are almost all the games. For example, Nioh, Destiny 2, NBA2K18. In these games I always have 60Fps, since I cap/lock it. If I uncap it it goes way above 60, and OBS still struggles to stream with 60Fps.

I tried setting V-SYNC on too, not much results. I also tried turning off NVIDIA ShadowPlay, so it wouldn't even run in the background. I attempted ShadowPlay to stream too, the same issue occours.

Also, I have audio delay too(tried adding Audio Output Capture, didn't fix it.)which is like an 0,5s delay, which I can't seem to fix, but I hope it is caused by my headset, which I'll be switching soon(Or maybe the new audio drivers for the current headset? Soon I'll see to that when the new one arrives.)

My PC specs:
-MSI Z170A Gaming M5
-Intel Core i5-6600K (3.9Ghz)
-NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB (MSI GAMING X)
-Samsung EVO 960 250Gb SSD
-Seagate Barracuda 7200Rpm 1TB
-2x HyperX 8GB Savage DDR4 2133MHz CL13
-Corsair VS550 ATX Power Supply
-Windows 10
-Primary monitor (1920x1080)
-Secondary monitor (1440x900)
All my drivers are up-to-date.

My internet speed is: 120Mbps download ; 12Mbps Upload. I stream with 5500 bitrate.

Also, OBS isn't dropping frames(Its 0% when I stop the stream). The upload speed is always green. I cannot find the problem on the internet, and my friends have no idea what could be the problem.

Sorry for my English, and thank you for the help!

Yours sincerely,
Szentii

 

[RCoon]

Are you recording to the same drive the game is running from? (OBS will create a temp file it uploads from a drive)

 

[Szentii]

Thank you for the reply!
NBA2K18, and Destiny 2 are installed on the same drive as OBS, and it still drops the FPS.

 

[R00kie]

What's your CPU usage when streaming? Destiny can be quite taxing sometimes.

 

[Szentii]

Thank you for the reply!
I attached a picture with the CPU / GPU Load / temps. I played, and test streamed NBA2K18 just now for the picture.

 

[R00kie]

Can you try and stream with CPU encode instead of NVENC, just to exclude that as a potential problem?

 

[RCoon]

Thank you for the reply!
NBA2K18, and Destiny 2 are installed on the same drive as OBS, and it still drops the FPS.

Can you confirm a few things for me?

- You're using OBS 20.1.3 (64bit)
Settings
- Under the "Stream" tab your server is set to your nearest
- Under the "Output" tab your Output Mode is set to Advanced
- Under the "Streaming" sub tab within "Output" your encoder is x264 or NVENC H.264 (NVENC is tricky to set up properly, standard x264 is preferred but will crush you in CPU orientated games)
- Your Rescale output is set to 1280x720
- Your Rate Control is CBR
- Your Bitrate is 3000-4000 (Twitch's limit for new users is 3500), anything higher is tough on phones and Twitch will cap it anyway.
- Your Buffer Size is 80% of your Bitrate (Tick the custom buffer box to do this)
- CRF is between 18 and 24. Anything lower is more strain than worth for the quality, anything higher starts to get trashy
- Your CPU Usage Preset is "Fast"or "Faster"
- Your Profile is "main"
- Your Tune is "none"
- Under the "Video" tab, your Base Res is set to your native game resolution (1080p?)
- Your Output Resolution is set to 1280x720p
- Your Downscale filter is Lanczos
- Test Common FPS values between 30 and 60 FPS. Sometime 60 FPS is simply not attainable.
- Cap your game's FPS to 60FPS. I prefer caps to VSync

Streaming at 60FPS is hard on the machine while playing demanding titles. I'm not at all surprised you're having difficulty maintaining 60FPS while streaming Destiny. 30FPS is perfectly okay for twitch viewers on a startup channel. Increasing FPS and thus increasing bitrates will narrow your potential audience, because their broadband speeds need to be as fast as your bitrate.

 

[Szentii]

Can you try and stream with CPU encode instead of NVENC, just to exclude that as a potential problem?

My CPU goes up to 100%, OBS eats up 50-60% CPU, and streams still with around 25-30fps. Even on UltraFast setting.

Can you confirm a few things for me?

- You're using OBS 20.1.3 (64bit)
Settings
- Under the "Stream" tab your server is set to your nearest
- Under the "Output" tab your Output Mode is set to Advanced
- Under the "Streaming" sub tab within "Output" your encoder is x264 or NVENC H.264 (NVENC is tricky to set up properly, standard x264 is preferred but will crush you in CPU orientated games)
- Your Rescale output is set to 1280x720
- Your Rate Control is CBR
- Your Bitrate is 3000-4000 (Twitch's limit for new users is 3500), anything higher is tough on phones and Twitch will cap it anyway.
- Your Buffer Size is 80% of your Bitrate (Tick the custom buffer box to do this)
- CRF is between 18 and 24. Anything lower is more strain than worth for the quality, anything higher starts to get trashy
- Your CPU Usage Preset is "Fast"or "Faster"
- Your Profile is "main"
- Your Tune is "none"
- Under the "Video" tab, your Base Res is set to your native game resolution (1080p?)
- Your Output Resolution is set to 1280x720p
- Your Downscale filter is Lanczos
- Test Common FPS values between 30 and 60 FPS. Sometime 60 FPS is simply not attainable.
- Cap your game's FPS to 60FPS. I prefer caps to VSync

Streaming at 60FPS is hard on the machine while playing demanding titles. I'm not at all surprised you're having difficulty maintaining 60FPS while streaming Destiny. 30FPS is perfectly okay for twitch viewers on a startup channel. Increasing FPS and thus increasing bitrates will narrow your potential audience, because their broadband speeds need to be as fast as your bitrate.

I can confirm all these, except for the Advanced settings, my streamer friend set those up for me, for NVENC and still had the same problem so I went back to use Simple settings. At the moment I was testing on YouTube, so with the Bitrate I didn't have to mess around. I cap my games, if it has VSync usually that. And yes I'm using OBS 20.1.3 (64bit). I tried Advanced x264 just now, with the settings you have written, same problem occurs. For Stream Server's I use (Auto), and never had upload/(re)connect issue since that. Now I know streaming 60 is really hard. I guess a dedicated streaming PC would be the best for it, but that'd be really expensive at the moment. Sadly, 30FPS for most of the PC people I think is a skip when watching streams. Atleast if I speak for myself, my eyes got used to the 60FPS.

Should I overclock my CPU to 4.5Ghz? Would that be enough? I know 6600K is made for OC purposes, and I'm running it on 3.9GHz (Motherboard's XMP profile). I'm a bit scared that OC-ing it would decrease lifespan.

 

[RCoon]

My CPU goes up to 100%, OBS eats up 50-60% CPU, and streams still with around 25-30fps. Even on UltraFast setting.



I can confirm all these, except for the Advanced settings, my streamer friend set those up for me, for NVENC and still had the same problem so I went back to use Simple settings. At the moment I was testing on YouTube, so with the Bitrate I didn't have to mess around. I cap my games, if it has VSync usually that. And yes I'm using OBS 20.1.3 (64bit). I tried Advanced x264 just now, with the settings you have written, same problem occurs. For Stream Server's I use (Auto), and never had upload/(re)connect issue since that. Now I know streaming 60 is really hard. I guess a dedicated streaming PC would be the best for it, but that'd be really expensive at the moment. Sadly, 30FPS for most of the PC people I think is a skip when watching streams. Atleast if I speak for myself, my eyes got used to the 60FPS.

Should I overclock my CPU to 4.5Ghz? Would that be enough? I know 6600K is made for OC purposes, and I'm running it on 3.9GHz (Motherboard's XMP profile). I'm a bit scared that OC-ing it would decrease lifespan.

30FPS streams are fine as long as the FPS never dips. If its a constant 30FPS stream it still looks smooth. If you're still experiencing the FPS variation between 30 and 50 then I'm afraid you're probably at an impasse. The issue doesn't lie with OBS (you said it's not dropping frames), it's down to the fact that your PC is probably not pushing the games at the framerate you want to record at. Try running an FPS monitor overlay while you play games and stream. It'll tell you what FPS your games are running at as opposed to relying on what OBS is outputting.

 

[Szentii]

I guess I have to accept the fact then, that I cannot stream the latest games I'd like to. Or I'll try them with 30. A few months time and maybe I'll be able to build another PC dedicated to streaming, just that feels like a waste currently, since I'm not a full time streamer, it is just a hobby currently which I really enjoy. Those few regulars accept my stream's quality(I hope) so that's something atleast I can be happy about.
I will be testing around, but I don't think there's really much left I can do. It's a bit hard to accept that my rig is not enough for HD streaming, and feels bad that I rushed to build this setup. Should have spared a little more money for a few more months and built a stronger one. Sadly, my laptop pretty much burnt down (GPU,CPU,Motherboard,Cooling), and had no computer back then. Now I see that I should have REALLY bought an 6GB or 8GB GPU, and atleast an i7.

Thank you guys once again for the help! I really appreciate it!
Have a great day!
Szentii

 

[RCoon]

I guess I have to accept the fact then, that I cannot stream the latest games I'd like to. Or I'll try them with 30. A few months time and maybe I'll be able to build another PC dedicated to streaming, just that feels like a waste currently, since I'm not a full time streamer, it is just a hobby currently which I really enjoy. Those few regulars accept my stream's quality(I hope) so that's something atleast I can be happy about.
I will be testing around, but I don't think there's really much left I can do. It's a bit hard to accept that my rig is not enough for HD streaming, and feels bad that I rushed to build this setup. Should have spared a little more money for a few more months and built a stronger one. Sadly, my laptop pretty much burnt down (GPU,CPU,Motherboard,Cooling), and had no computer back then. Now I see that I should have REALLY bought an 6GB or 8GB GPU, and atleast an i7.

Thank you guys once again for the help! I really appreciate it!
Have a great day!
Szentii

Out of curiosity, do you get similar stream quality at 1080p@30FPS? Downscaling fudges the image quality a bit.
Given the GPU you're using, I'd recommend using x264 instead of NVENC H.x264

 

[Szentii]

Out of curiosity, do you get similar stream quality at 1080p@30FPS? Downscaling fudges the image quality a bit.
Given the GPU you're using, I'd recommend using x264 instead of NVENC H.x264

So I tested now 1080p30Fps with x264, it is stable, didn't go below 30FPS. Just my CPU usage is totally on maximum, and OBS says encoding overloaded. 720p60FPS struggles really hard to reach even 50 with H.x264 and x264.
I also tried 1080p30Fps with H.x264, that is nice, stable too, and my CPU usage by OBS is not 50%, but 4-5%.

EDIT1: Also, 1080p is overkill, isn't it? I mean in my country having internet connection which can load 1080p quality isn't really a thing.
EDIT2: On Twitch I'm not a partner, so my viewers don't have the option to choose quality.

 

[RCoon]

So I tested now 1080p30Fps with x264, it is stable, didn't go below 30FPS. Just my CPU usage is totally on maximum, and OBS says encoding overloaded. 720p60FPS struggles really hard to reach even 50 with H.x264 and x264.
I also tried 1080p30Fps with H.x264, that is nice, stable too, and my CPU usage by OBS is not 50%, but 4-5%.

EDIT1: Also, 1080p is overkill, isn't it? I mean in my country having internet connection which can load 1080p quality isn't really a thing.
EDIT2: On Twitch I'm not a partner, so my viewers don't have the option to choose quality.

Fair enough, stick with 720p on H.x264 if that gets best results. You don't just want smooth FPS for viewers, you want a stable gameplay FPS for you as well.

 

[R00kie]

From my own streaming experience, doing it on a non-HT quad core is a very painful one, so for you @Szentii , either a capture card, or an i7 could give you the results you would want, whichever is more affordable to you.

 

[Szentii]

From my own streaming experience, doing it on a non-HT quad core is a very painful one, so for you @Szentii , either a capture card, or an i7 could give you the results you would want, whichever is more affordable to you.

I've been keeping an eye on the Elgato capture cards. Just its below the price(about 55-65$) of an I7-6700K. So I don't really know yet.