Question / Help Pixelation with 4000 Bitrate?

[CPhospheneK]

Would be awesome if someone could help me. Thank you.

Hey.. so.. I tried streaming with my CPU as the encoder, but because I get fps drops in-game I use NVENC instead. I'm streaming a high-motion game (Call of Duty) with 4000 Bitrate and NVENC at 720p 60FPS and the stream looks pixelated. What settings should i consider using for less pixelation? I don't wanna lose in-game FPS because I'm a competitive player. I want to figure out my best settings so I can stream Battalion 1944 with no pixelation.

Sidenotes:
*This is how pixelated the stream looks -> https://www.twitch.tv/videos/208405411
*I don't want to use more than 4000 Bitrate.
*Changing Preset to High Quality doesn't seem to change anything.
*I don't have so much pixelation when I stream Overwatch.
*Will 30FPS cause less pixelation? If yes.. won't 30FPS cause a high-motion game to look laggy and awful when streamed?
*If i lower my FPS to 30 and use my CPU as the encoder, will my CPU run less intensive rather than 60 FPS?

PC SPECS:

• CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4770 CPU @3.90 GHz
• GPU: GeForce GTX 1060 OC Windforce 3 GB
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance [4x4 Gb] 16 GB 1600MHz

Internet Speed:

• 50 Mb - Download Speed
• 5.5 Mb - Upload Speed

CPU Encoding Settings: =(Good quality but frame drops in-game)
Encoder: x264
CPU Usage: Veryfast
Profile: Main
Stream Resolution and FPS: 720p 60FPS
Bitrate: CBR - 4000 Bit-Rate

NVENC Encoding Settings: =(Pixelation but no frame drops in-game)
Encoder: NVENC H.264
Preset: Default
Profile: Main
Stream Resolution and FPS: 720p 60FPS
Bitrate: CBR - 4000 Bit-Rate

 

[sam686]

*This is how pixelated the stream looks -> https://www.twitch.tv/videos/208405411

Shadow pixelation at 8:10, your in-game shadow quality might be set too low.

Try x264 with custom option: threads=6 (or lower) to leave some CPU available for game.
Encoder overload? Try x264 SuperFast preset. Too little threads may overload encoder.

You can set profile to high for better quality.
Main profile is only for limited 720p 30fps on outdated mobile devices that is unable to handle high profile, like iPhone 4 (not 4s).

 

[BK-Morpheus]

High motion games with high details will eat up so much bitrate that 720p 60fps will look blurry some times, even with >4000kbit/s.
NVENC and other GPU based encoders will be even less efficient on those bitrates than x264 very fast, but of course they reduce CPU load.

You could reduce stream fps to 30 for less pixelation. For viewers 30fps is not as bad, as it sounds.
Simply do a test recording with 720p 30fps and see, if you like the footage or not (also try x264 again, as it will produce better quality than NVENC and with 30fps, the CPU load will be much lower, than on 60fps).

When you check your test recording, I recommend to stop playing for a while, before you do so.
As the player who was experiencing the game in best quality and high framerate (I hope you didn't forget to limit ingame FPS), you won't be satisfied with a 30fps recording when watching it directly after you played the game.

 

[CPhospheneK]

High motion games with high details will eat up so much bitrate that 720p 60fps will look blurry some times, even with >4000kbit/s.
NVENC and other GPU based encoders will be even less efficient on those bitrates than x264 very fast, but of course they reduce CPU load.

You could reduce stream fps to 30 for less pixelation. For viewers 30fps is not as bad, as it sounds.
Simply do a test recording with 720p 30fps and see, if you like the footage or not (also try x264 again, as it will produce better quality than NVENC and with 30fps, the CPU load will be much lower, than on 60fps).

When you check your test recording, I recommend to stop playing for a while, before you do so.
As the player who was experiencing the game in best quality and high framerate (I hope you didn't forget to limit ingame FPS), you won't be satisfied with a 30fps recording when watching it directly after you played the game.

Well, i've tried to stream with x264 and custom option: threads=4 but the streams stutters.
When I'm in-game obs shows 30% cpu usage. I didn't really noticed fps drops with the custom option, but after 2 hours the game felt a bit laggy (input lag) but the stream was stuttering from the beginning.
How does the option thread=x work?
From what I'm thinking is.. I have 4 Cores so 8 Threads. If i use threads=4 doesn't that mean I have 4 threads left for my game?

 

[BK-Morpheus]

Sure, the stream might stutter, when you cut the x264 threads down to 4.
Remove that custom option, as it only makes sense to reduce max threads this way, if you run some thing like a Thread Ripper with 32 Threads.

@Default x264 will create 1.5 times your CPU Threads as x264 encoder threads and having slightly more encoding threads than CPU threads, is good for balancing the load.

When I use custom option threads=4 on my R7 1700x 16Threads CPU, I will get very choppy Video as well.

 

[CPhospheneK]

Sure, the stream might stutter, when you cut the x264 threads down to 4.
Remove that custom option, as it only makes sense to reduce max threads this way, if you run some thing like a Thread Ripper with 32 Threads.

@Default x264 will create 1.5 times your CPU Threads as x264 encoder threads and having slightly more encoding threads than CPU threads, is good for balancing the load.

When I use custom option threads=4 on my R7 1700x 16Threads CPU, I will get very choppy Video as well.

Okay, thanks for that.
I'll try streaming without the option and let you know how it goes.
For NVENC now.. do you maybe know the difference between the presets? I can't see a quality difference between High Quality and Default.
Will High Quality use more gpu performance/less in-game fps?