Streaming Issue with SLOBS x264

Technical Support
1

It won’t let me put links in here, but you can see the video that I have this all in the description on my twitch handle Falkon11

Heroes of the Storm Streaming Lag Testing

Tested same encoding settings with 4 different games

  • Heroes of the Storm (At beginning up to 2:43)

  • Overwatch (From 2:52 to 5:00)

  • Apex Legends (From 5:00 to 12:00)

  • Deep Rock Galactic (from 12:00 to End)

Original Stream

(Yes I know my microphone wasn’t working, dealing with weird Voicemeeter issues too)

Specs (Computer and Network)

  • AMD Ryzen ThreadRipper 1950x (32 virtual cores)

  • Nvidia GTX 1080Ti @ 144hz (Primary Gaming Monitor)

  • Nvidia GTX 1080 (For other 4 Monitors)

  • Corsair CMR32GX4M4C3000C15 RAM (32GB)

  • 2x 1TB SSDs in RAID0 (2TB total)

  • Wired Network over Gigabit Ethernet to Dedicated Comcast Business (150Mbps/20Mbps)

Advanced Output Mode: Streaming Settings

  • Encoder : Software (x264)

  • Rescale Output: 1920x1080

  • Rate Control: CBR

  • Bitrate: 6000

  • Keyframe Interval: 2

  • CPU Usage Preset: fast

  • Profile: main

  • Tune: (none)

  • x264 Options:

>nal-hrd=cbr deblock=1:0 trellis=0 me=dia force-cfr=1 rc-lookahead=20 ref=1 chroma-qp-offset=0 bframes=2 subme=1 b_adapt=1 mixed-refs=0 cabac=1 qpstep=4 b_pyramid=2 mbtree=1 chroma_me=1 psy=1 8x8dct=1 fast_pskip=1 lookahead_threads=6

Video Settings (if they matter)

  • Base (Canvas) Resolution: 2560x1440

  • Output (Scaled) Resolution: 1920x1080

  • Downscale Filter: Lanczos (Sharpened scaling, 32 samples)

  • FPS Type: Common FPS Values

  • Common FPS Values : 60

Discussion

I was previously using NVENC encoding, but I wanted to actually utilize my Threadripper as I noticed OBS never went over 10% utilization on the CPU during stream and I was having some issues trying to push 2K at 144FPS in Apex. I wanted to offload the streaming encoding to the CPU so I can dedicate the GPU to the game. Therein lies the testing.

I found myself playing Heroes of the Storm last night and tried to stream with these new settings. Almost immediately I started experiencing crashes and the entire stream would just lock up and stop broadcasting. Looking at my CPU utilization it never went over 30% and Heroes of the Storm was doing something interesting that I hadn’t seen the other games do. While I was monitoring my CPU, GPU, bitrate, network traffic, etc, HotS would use 4 cores + 1 random core further down.

When I would open HotS, the stream would start choking. As soon as I closed it, it would level out. Opening Overwatch, Apex Legends, and Deep Rock Galactic all did just find on the settings listed above. Therein, why is HotS the troublemaker? Is it becasue it’s now a #dedgame? :stuck_out_tongue:

update
Just wanted to update that I posted this to reddit as well and I posted some additional information and ran some additional tests there. Nothing has fixed it that was recommended on the thread as of 20190307 1400MT.

I ran a troubleshooting stream with some of the KPI windows overlayed about half way through the stream. Twitch