How much UPLOAD speed do I need to stream on these resolutions?

[WhiteSkyMage]

Hey guys,

Next month I will have a connection of 30mbit/s up/down-load.

How much do I need to stream gameplay at 1080p and 1440p?

 

Does YouTube or Twitch allow streaming at 3440x1440p/60FPS? Or just 2560x1440p/60FPS?

[TreesMadeOfTanks]

2 minutes ago, WhiteSkyMage said:

Hey guys,

Next month I will have a connection of 30mbit/s up/down-load.

How much do I need to stream gameplay at 1080p and 1440p?

 

Does YouTube or Twitch allow streaming at 3440x1440p/60FPS? Or just 2560x1440p/60FPS?

30Mbs should be fine.. Lag spikes may accrue. 40-50 would make the stream more ''comfortable''

[AlwaysFSX]

There's a Google page for this.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2853702?hl=en

[LiamardoHD]

2 minutes ago, WhiteSkyMage said:

Hey guys,

Next month I will have a connection of 30mbit/s up/down-load.

How much do I need to stream gameplay at 1080p and 1440p?

 

Does YouTube or Twitch allow streaming at 3440x1440p/60FPS? Or just 2560x1440p/60FPS?

I'd say that's enough for 1080p streaming. You can use this website to calculate stuff like this: https://obsproject.com/estimator

[mikat]

11 minutes ago, WhiteSkyMage said:

Hey guys,

Next month I will have a connection of 30mbit/s up/down-load.

How much do I need to stream gameplay at 1080p and 1440p?

 

Does YouTube or Twitch allow streaming at 3440x1440p/60FPS? Or just 2560x1440p/60FPS?

pretty sure twitch caps your bitrate at 3500 kbit/s

edit: maybe not a cap, but it's abuse if you set your bitrate higher than 3500 kbit/s, so with those resolutions your stream will not look good

[WhiteSkyMage]

1 minute ago, mikat said:

pretty sure twitch caps your bitrate at 3500 kbit/s

So YouTube bitrate is higher? Looks like 9000 kbit/s to me.

[mikat]

Just now, WhiteSkyMage said:

So YouTube bitrate is higher? Looks like 9000 kbit/s to me.

http://help.twitch.tv/customer/portal/articles/1262922-open-broadcaster-software

twitch 3500 kbit at all resolutions

 

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2853702?hl=en

at 1440p60 it can go up to 18000 kbit/s

[failblox]

Are you planning to stream to Twitch and YouTube simultaneously?

[WhiteSkyMage]

12 minutes ago, mikat said:

http://help.twitch.tv/customer/portal/articles/1262922-open-broadcaster-software

twitch 3500 kbit at all resolutions

 

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2853702?hl=en

at 1440p60 it can go up to 18000 kbit/s

Hmm wait a second. Some people say that if I am not partnered with Twitch.tv, I should be going over 3500 kbit/s. And also that people wont be able to view my stream even at that. So like, maybe 2,000 kbits just cuz of buffering.

 

But if i stream on YouTube, does it really matter? Can they change the quality of stream so they could watch live with no buffering?

[mikat]

1 minute ago, WhiteSkyMage said:

Hmm wait a second. Some people say that if I am not partnered with Twitch.tv, I should be going over 3500 kbit/s. And also that people wont be able to view my stream even at that. So like, maybe 2,000 kbits just cuz of buffering.

 

But if i stream on YouTube, does it really matter? Can they change the quality of stream so they could watch live with no buffering?

yeah, you can watch in lower quality, just like with twitch and youtube videos i would assume

[WhiteSkyMage]

2 minutes ago, failblox said:

Are you planning to stream to Twitch and YouTube simultaneously?

No. I will stream on whichever gives me a chance to go for higher bit rate (higher quality streams). Unfortunately, not many people are using good internet, so some would buffer, which its bad. If they could change quality to match their internet dl speed to watch live, that would be great.

[WhiteSkyMage]

3 minutes ago, mikat said:

yeah, you can watch in lower quality, just like with twitch and youtube videos i would assume

I heard something about partnership with Twitch in order to allow your viewers to change to lower quality...but idk how it is on youtube though...

[failblox]

3 minutes ago, WhiteSkyMage said:

No. I will stream on whichever gives me a chance to go for higher bit rate (higher quality streams). Unfortunately, not many people are using good internet, so some would buffer, which its bad. If they could change quality to match their internet dl speed to watch live, that would be great.

In that case, I think the bare minimum you should have for Twitch is ~8Mb/s, and for YouTube, ~20Mb/s upload. These are rough estimates I've based on the max possible upload bitrate for Twitch and YouTube streaming @mikat has previously listed. However, these speeds will likely only allow you to stream without dropping any frames - if you want a more optimal experience, I recommend getting at least 10Mb/s above each of the listed speeds.

[WhiteSkyMage]

38 minutes ago, failblox said:

In that case, I think the bare minimum you should have for Twitch is ~8Mb/s, and for YouTube, ~20Mb/s upload. These are rough estimates I've based on the max possible upload bitrate for Twitch and YouTube streaming @mikat has previously listed. However, these speeds will likely only allow you to stream without dropping any frames - if you want a more optimal experience, I recommend getting at least 10Mb/s above each of the listed speeds.

I said, I will have 30 mbit/s upload and download on a fiber optic. It will be 30 mbit/s clean and stable. I just realize that many streamers don't go above 3500 kbit/s while at the same time, im looking into streaming 1440p video at 60FPS in 9000 kbit/s quality. I just hope the stream does not lag...id have to tweak it.

[Scruffy90]

I feel that everyone tackles this issue the wrong way. 1440p and 4k are out since they are grueling on the machine and it would also require that your viewers have said resolution to be able to see it in the first place. You should stream at the highest resolution the bulk of your audience would watch it at. Your target for streaming should be 720p/60 and do a mastered recording at higher resolution.

[WhiteSkyMage]

2 minutes ago, Scruffy90 said:

I feel that everyone tackles this issue the wrong way. 1440p and 4k are out since they are grueling on the machine and it would also require that your viewers have said resolution to be able to see it in the first place. You should stream at the highest resolution the bulk of your audience would watch it at. Your target for streaming should be 720p/60 and do a mastered recording at higher resolution.

1080p/60 not recommended?

[Scruffy90]

Not for streaming at least that's what I notice. I've been following a bunch of major fighting game event streams for a good decade (before twitch became the norm) and the highest I've ever seen them stream is 720/60. I feel that for streaming, its a good middle ground for the machine, your upload, and your audience.

[failblox]

3 minutes ago, WhiteSkyMage said:

1080p/60 not recommended?

Right now, I wouldn't recommend 1080p60 because Twitch's bitrate for that resolution and framerate is lower than it should be. For fast paced action games, it actually looks worse than 720p60. Unless you're playing games which don't have too much on-screen movement, I recommend sticking with 720p60 unless Twitch changes their 1080p60 bitrate.

[RZeroX]

8 minutes ago, Scruffy90 said:

I feel that everyone tackles this issue the wrong way. 1440p and 4k are out since they are grueling on the machine and it would also require that your viewers have said resolution to be able to see it in the first place. You should stream at the highest resolution the bulk of your audience would watch it at. Your target for streaming should be 720p/60 and do a mastered recording at higher resolution.

They could easily just select the resolution they want to view it at?

[Scruffy90]

1 minute ago, RZeroX said:

They could easily just select the resolution they want to view it at?

That's true, but why put extra unnecessary strain on the host machine, especially when the bulk of folks watch the streams on mobile anyway?

[RZeroX]

5 minutes ago, failblox said:

Right now, I wouldn't recommend 1080p60 because Twitch's bitrate for that resolution and framerate is lower than it should be. For fast paced action games, it actually looks worse than 720p60. Unless you're playing games which don't have too much on-screen movement, I recommend sticking with 720p60 unless Twitch changes their 1080p60 bitrate.

Or just stream on YouTube which allow higher bitrate.

1 minute ago, Scruffy90 said:

That's true, but why put extra unnecessary strain on the host machine, especially when the bulk of folks watch the streams on mobile anyway?

1080P/60 or 720p/60fps would be best as not that many people have higher then 1080p.

[mariushm]

For 720p 30 fps you'd probably be fine with 1.5 - 2 mbps if configured properly. For 720p 60 fps, i'd go with about 2.5 mbps

For 1080p 60 fps, I'd say a decent bitrate would be around 5-6 mbps at least, but you also have to keep in mind what the streaming websites recommend.

 

For example, Twitch suggests not going over 3.5 mbps - you can probably upload a higher bitrate stream but if you get a high viewer count, someone at twitch will most likely review your channel and ask you to limit your bitrate to 3.5 mbps or lower.

Also, as far as I know, Twitch recompresses what you upload and creates lower quality streams, just start a Twitch stream and you'll see there in the corner  the option to select quality :

 

 

For this particular stream above ( 720p 30fps) , Source is  2.4 -2.7 mbps , High is 1.2 mbps , Medium gives viewers a 852x480 stream (so image is resized)  at 700 kbps and Low is 640x360 at 600 kbps

Another stream's quality (something with smash brothers) was 2.8 - 3.4 mbps for 720p 60 fps, and the High option changes the stream to 720p 30 fps at 1.5 mbps

 

I think most viewers default to High when starting a Twitch stream and probably don't even think of choosing Source, so basically, for Twitch you're best uploading at 3.5 mbps or thereabouts for 720p 60Hz with the best quality settings you system can handle, because Twitch will recompress the stream anyway (so at least give Twitch something of good quality in the first place to trash)

 

Youtube probably accepts higher bitrates, but I think for 1080p 30 fps you'd be good with an average of 6-8 mbps and for 60 fps, you should go to 8-10 mbps ... more probably won't help

With a 30 mbps upload bandwidth, you shouldn't use more than 20-25 mbps of bandwidth.

 

PS. Hardware encoders like Quicksync or nvenc  aren't that great at retaining quality at low bitrates, but the benefit is they use barely any cpu resources. For this reason, most people when using these choose to go with 720p and higher bitrate than normally required for such resolution.

A software encoder like x264 would compress such a resolution and framerate at much better quality and low bitrate but the software encoder would use a lot of CPU which could slow down the system.

 

For 1080p 60 fps, I'd personally use a hardware encoder card, something in which you plug the hdmi or dvi cable that would normally go into the monitor, and from the card you'd connect a cable going to the monitor, so basically the card would be in-between the pc and monitor and capture the whole screen and send it to your computer as an already encoded stream. 

Alternatively, you can configure the second monitor as clone of the first and install  the hardware capture card as that second monitor.

 

The downside of both of these is you can't put overlays on top of the game image. Some people basically use a second computer with a hardware capture card, take inside the raw hdmi or dvi signal and put it inside OBS or other broadcast software, put overlays and dynamic stuff over the captured image and then pass it along to hardware or software encoder and then push the video online.

 

[BuckGup]

I know 700Kb/s upload is enough for 144p with dropped frames here and there at a horrible bitrate

[WhiteSkyMage]

22 minutes ago, mariushm said:

 Snip

Alright. Thanks for the long reply.

It seems as if I want quality, YouTube stream is my answer. If you can change quality on Twitch as you have shown (high, medium, low), can you change quality on YouTube stream just like when watching normal videos (1080p60, 720p60, 480p, 360p, 240p, 144p)? If yes, then I might as well do my streaming in 1080p60 with 9 mbit/s (that's maximum they seem to allow), and just ask my audience if they are able to view the stream as I natively stream it at these settings. Then based on that I could either keep it or switch down to 720p60 at lower bitrate...

 

Now about the encoding software, I was planning on using ShadowPlay. Though it is quite limited, on OBS I could make my stream looking nice and professional. You see, I have a good CPU, quite high end so not worried too much about the performance. I might just test it and see which suits me best. Clearly a 30mbit/s steady upload speed is all well enough for such stream, so not worried too much about that. I am doing this really for "the fun of gaming". Now that I know most of my friends will have no problems with viewing this video even at 1080p60, and I wanna show them games that they dont know about or are not able to play. And about Twitch, I got nobody there to follow me there anyway...

[mariushm]

You can check youtube yourself.

Go to https://www.youtube.com/live and open various channels one at a time. Right click on the image while streaming and select there "Stats for nerds" and it will show in  the top left corner the resolution, framerate and bitrate used. Switch quality from the bottom right and you should see information being updated in the top left (but wait about 20-30 seconds because Youtube seems to buffer a few seconds worth of video in advance at high speed, once it does that the bitrate in the top corner should stabilize at the natural bitrate of the video)

 

For example here's a NASA stream at 720p 60 fps, seems to be an average of 9.4-10 mbps for this format, while when switching to 480p the stream goes down to 854x480 at 6.5-7 mbps, with some periods going up to 8.5-9 mbps .