Live streaming - confused as hell & quality sucks

[Kc7vwc]

First, not sure which topic to put this in - not quite software, & not quite gaming...

So, I'm trying to live stream to Youtube (or possibly twitch, but having more issues there) and my quality is hell. And it seems to do this no matter what my settings are.
I've got a premium copy of Xsplit, which came w/ my mobo so I'm mostly using that. Both Gamecaster & Broadcaster. I know x264 gives me better quality, so I started there with the default settings. 
While streaming, I get a little 'rubber banding' in game, but it's not bad. 
I'm on a 60 Down / 4 Up Mbps cable connection, and the only other traffic on the line is my wife watching a movie. I've tried setting XSplit's bitrate to anything from 1800 - 3800 & it all looks the exact same. There's blurring artifacts & there's no 'crispness' to any surface or edge. (Reminds me of the original Starcraft cinematics!) An example can be found in this video HERE. (its not monetized or anything, just a copy of the stream. That's the best one I've done yet, for quality, so yeah...)

I've tried Adaptive vs Constant bitrate. (I've tried downsampling from 1080p to 720p & that made it 100x worse!) Trying to go from 30 to 60 FPS, Youtube just seemed to ignore & kept everything at 30. 
Using AMD VCE as the encoder makes the quality even worse. 
Just a few minutes ago, I tried using Gamecaster & just set every setting I could find to AUTO. I'm still waiting for that stream to process to see the results, but the glimpse I got of the live stream itself wasn't any better than what I've already done. 
After that, I tried doing a local recording using the same settings that I've been trying to use (720p, x264, 30FPS, 2800 Bitrate) and that recording came out perfect. 

So, yeah, it seems to be something with the stream, but this drop in quality happens regardless of settings, time of day or traffic on the network.
When I tried streaming to twitch, the audio would be perfect but the video would only be 5FPS. At first I thought maybe my i5 wasn't powerful enough, but using AMD VCE was just as bad. So I've concluded twitch hates me. 
I'm completely at a loss for what I can do to improve any of this. I've already got the best consumer internet available in my area, so I posted this hoping someone can give me some software tips.
My nephew streams WoW, using XSplit broadcaster & default settings using the same ISP as me, and his comes out great at 720p. (AMD A10-6800K, 16GB RAM, GTX 970 using NvEnc. Not sure what bitrate)

 

HELP!

UPDATE: THIS video is of that stream just a bit ago, and just about anything after 1:30, you can hear the audio is still good & smooth, but the video goes to hell. (This is just AUTO for everything - not sure which encoder it used, but I think AMD VCE)

[babadoctor]

4 minutes ago, Kc7vwc said:

First, not sure which topic to put this in - not quite software, & not quite gaming...

So, I'm trying to live stream to Youtube (or possibly twitch, but having more issues there) and my quality is hell. And it seems to do this no matter what my settings are.
I've got a premium copy of Xsplit, which came w/ my mobo so I'm mostly using that. Both Gamecaster & Broadcaster. I know x264 gives me better quality, so I started there with the default settings. 
While streaming, I get a little 'rubber banding' in game, but it's not bad. 
I'm on a 60 Down / 4 Up Mbps cable connection, and the only other traffic on the line is my wife watching a movie. I've tried setting XSplit's bitrate to anything from 1800 - 3800 & it all looks the exact same. There's blurring artifacts & there's no 'crispness' to any surface or edge. (Reminds me of the original Starcraft cinematics!) An example can be found in this video HERE. (its not monetized or anything, just a copy of the stream. That's the best one I've done yet, for quality, so yeah...)

I've tried Adaptive vs Constant bitrate. (I've tried downsampling from 1080p to 720p & that made it 100x worse!) Trying to go from 30 to 60 FPS, Youtube just seemed to ignore & kept everything at 30. 
Using AMD VCE as the encoder makes the quality even worse. 
Just a few minutes ago, I tried using Gamecaster & just set every setting I could find to AUTO. I'm still waiting for that stream to process to see the results, but the glimpse I got of the live stream itself wasn't any better than what I've already done. 
After that, I tried doing a local recording using the same settings that I've been trying to use (720p, x264, 30FPS, 2800 Bitrate) and that recording came out perfect. 

So, yeah, it seems to be something with the stream, but this drop in quality happens regardless of settings, time of day or traffic on the network.
When I tried streaming to twitch, the audio would be perfect but the video would only be 5FPS. At first I thought maybe my i5 wasn't powerful enough, but using AMD VCE was just as bad. So I've concluded twitch hates me. 
I'm completely at a loss for what I can do to improve any of this. I've already got the best consumer internet available in my area, so I posted this hoping someone can give me some software tips.
My nephew streams WoW, using XSplit broadcaster & default settings using the same ISP as me, and his comes out great at 720p. (AMD A10-6800K, 16GB RAM, GTX 970 using NvEnc. Not sure what bitrate)

 

HELP!

UPDATE: THIS video is of that stream just a bit ago, and just about anything after 1:30, you can hear the audio is still good & smooth, but the video goes to hell. (This is just AUTO for everything - not sure which encoder it used, but I think AMD VCE)

thats not hell. thats lagging.

it looks like lots and lots of dropped frames.

[Kc7vwc]

2 hours ago, babadoctor said:

thats not hell. thats lagging.

it looks like lots and lots of dropped frames.

Just did a full AUTO stream using Gamecaster & got this: (Stream link) at these settings:

Spoiler

I tried watching the stream a bit, but it was a really fun game & didn't wanna alt+tab much. ;D But what I did see looked the same as past vids. While watching, YT auto-set my viewer to 480p. I manually selected 720p to see what that would do, and it still looked the same & there wasn't any buffering at all. When I told it to use AUTO, it kept me at 720p. So, whatever that's worth. 
Now I know AMD VCE is less quality than x264, but at 2.3K bitrate & 720p, shouldn't it look a little better than 480p from 10 years ago? My in-game ping was 185ms most of the game, and I didn't notice any 'rubber banding' during the match. 
Would it have anything to do w/ the CPU load adding up to 136%? 73% System, 5% Xsplit & 58% Overwatch... Or it that the max value used for each proccess? 
Temps never got above 68c CPU & 73c GPU. CPU is OC'd using MSI Genie to 4.1GHz at 1.2v, I think. GPU is stock. 

Any other ideas, or am I just sh*t outa luck for streaming?

Edited January 26, 2017 by Kc7vwc
including stream video link

[babadoctor]

erm.

what cpu?

what gpu?

 

[babadoctor]

try recording something with OBS and streaming something with obs and see if there is a difference in quality

also what is your monitor res

[Kc7vwc]

42 minutes ago, babadoctor said:

try recording something with OBS and streaming something with obs and see if there is a difference in quality

also what is your monitor res

i5 4690K @ 4.1GHz, 16GB @ 1866MHz 
R9 390 @ stock

1920x1080@144Hz 

Found something with Gamecaster. If I tell it to use a custom encoder (say VCE) then switch back to AUTO, then the AUTO preset tries to use VCE as well, it just decides which bitrates.
So I just did a stream with the AUTO set to use x264, and the 'rubber banding' came back in-game, and I'm back to choppy video in the stream & local recording. So x264 is out for me, it seems. 
This is odd cause I did a little Rocket League streaming this last summer with the kids & that came out smooth. The in-game rubber banding was there, but the stream was at least watchable. Maybe Overwatch vs Rocket League is too much load on the CPU at the same time as encoding...

Will try OBS. 

[Kc7vwc]

OBS was pretty much the exact same. 
So I'm thinking:
1) I just can't push enough data over my 4Mbps upstream

2) I need to test VCE on another GPU (waiting for Vega)

2.5) VCE just might really suck at streamable vs recording bitrates

3) Maybe a complete system rebuild w/ fresh software will help (registry conflicts...?)

[babadoctor]

53 minutes ago, Kc7vwc said:

OBS was pretty much the exact same. 
So I'm thinking:
1) I just can't push enough data over my 4Mbps upstream

2) I need to test VCE on another GPU (waiting for Vega)

2.5) VCE just might really suck at streamable vs recording bitrates

3) Maybe a complete system rebuild w/ fresh software will help (registry conflicts...?)

change encoding settings

make it less internet intensive and more CPU intensive

you have a nice CPU so it should handle very nicely

all drivers installed?

check your cpu usage w. streaming

[Bsmith]

what bitrate and resolution are you using to upload? if your 4mb/s upload speed is not capable of keeping up with the bitrate you get similar issues, dropping frames and lower quality.
Also check your gpu/cpu usage when streaming, if it suddenly spikes around the time the issues occur then that might be the problem.

[Kc7vwc]

Stream bitrate was either Auto, 2800, or 3300. Tried both CBR & adaptive.

I game at 1080p, and try to stream at 720p.

While streaming I've always had game going so usage is always 100% on CPU & GPU.

Even at 2800 & 720p, x264 feels choppy in-game throughout match, and stream & local recording are only getting about 15fps, but audio is completely smooth. 

Think my next option is system rebuild with fresh software installs & latest drivers.

[Kc7vwc]

Update, streaming at 480p using x264 produces a choppy as hell & pixelated stream. Audio is still perfectly in sync though, and the local recording is an exact copy of the stream. Bitrate was 2200 - 2700. In-game latency was 150ms.

720p x264 had rubber banding in-game. 480p x264 did not, but both streams look like hell. 

 

Windows reinstall, here I come. 

[Kc7vwc]

So after a fresh Windows install, I'm a little better but still basically stream-less.

x264 @ 480p is playable, and mostly watchable, but quality sucks b@lls. Any higher res & the stream goes to 5FPS.

VCE still looks like garbage, no matter the res, but is fluid to play & mostly fluid to watch. 

Using ReLive Instant Replay to record gameplay looks great. I have tried streaming with ReLive off & hasn't made a difference. 

 

So I'm thinking I'll have to wait for a Vega GPU or go back to Nvidia...

[Mihle]

On 2.2.2017 at 0:28 AM, Kc7vwc said:

So after a fresh Windows install, I'm a little better but still basically stream-less.

x264 @ 480p is playable, and mostly watchable, but quality sucks b@lls. Any higher res & the stream goes to 5FPS.

VCE still looks like garbage, no matter the res, but is fluid to play & mostly fluid to watch. 

Using ReLive Instant Replay to record gameplay looks great. I have tried streaming with ReLive off & hasn't made a difference. 

 

So I'm thinking I'll have to wait for a Vega GPU or go back to Nvidia...

Dont think it have anything to do with your GPU.

[oldaccount117]

H

[Kc7vwc]

7 hours ago, elitekills999 said:

I've done 1080p live streaming, no lag and my specs are garbage compared to yours. So the problem must be software or internet based in my opinion. I can help you out one on one if you want(shouldn't take more than a few minutes.) Us youtubers should stick together

I'm using Charter spectrum cable (only other option here is 7mb centuryLink DSL). 

I actually got an OK stream going the other day using the iGPU & Quicksync to encode. But I'm stuck at 720p@30 and around 2900 bitrate. Game is playable & stream is watchable, tho it does have a bit of video 'blocking" around the edges of objects when moving. 

I just think it's weird that x264 seems to overpower my system somehow. (Even the local recording is ~5 FPS, but with perfect audio)

A couple months ago I was using wife's GTX 970 and NvEnc worked flawlessly, Quicksync was OK and x264 was good. But I wanted less stress on CPU so I used NvEnc. 

Now the only think I can use is Quicksync, even after multiple system rebuilds.  

The other odd thing, is I can barely watch ANY twitch stream. WAN show I have to watch at high quality or less. Luke's stream I can't watch at anything over medium without constant buffering. My nephew's stream is the same. But I can watch all the 1080p YT content I want, and barnacules & Jay's stream comes in perfectly.

ISP preference?

Any thoughts? (At work right now)

[Kc7vwc]

13 hours ago, Mihle said:

Dont think it have anything to do with your GPU.

Just odd that the GPU encoding looks like hell. NvEnc was perfect and if anyone else using AMD vce was getting same as me, there'd be plenty of talk. So maybe something on my card went wonky is all I can think. 

[Mihle]

Are you sure you are getting the speed you are supposed to (like that it doesnt randomly drop or something) or you arent getting packet loss of some sort?

[Kc7vwc]

10 hours ago, Mihle said:

Are you sure you are getting the speed you are supposed to (like that it doesnt randomly drop or something) or you arent getting packet loss of some sort?

 Been using both testmy .Net and speedtest & it's all normal.

But local recordings are just as bad. The only quality video is using the instant replay feature of ReLive. 

[Mihle]

Well, I can just say I and one I know (and partly me, I havent really done it much at all) havent had that kind of problem with videos /live streaming on AMD cards.

[oldaccount117]

So did you find out what the problem was and fix it? Update plz

[Kc7vwc]

19 hours ago, elitekills999 said:

So did you find out what the problem was and fix it? Update plz

Kinda fixed, but no idea what issue is.

Even went back to Windows 8.1. x264 encoding still produces garbage streams, and low fps in the steam. GPU encoding is worst quality but smooth.

Using Quicksync seems to work, but it's not the quality I remember.