At some point every streamer has dealt with it.
Pixelated, blurry, grainy, low quality streams that just look unpleasant to watch. If you're not
a tech wizard it can be extremely frustrating to try and fix these types of issues especially
when you look at OBS and it looks okay, but then you load up your Twitch page and bam-
it's unwatchable. Today in this big bad video I'm going to show you some ways to fix these types
of problems, and make your streams look as sharp as some of the top streamers on the platform with
just a few simple OBS changes. Let's get started. Firstly let's talk about the pixelation or
the blurriness you might see on your stream. It could happen only when you're moving around or
panning the camera really fast, or it could be a consistent issue. Now I'll be honest, I struggled
with this issue myself. Some of my earliest streams, especially my Skyrim ones, suffered from
really poor visuals and these weird artifacts, especially when moving the camera fast or entering
forest areas of the game. Now the issue that I was experiencing and the issue you're likely facing
is directly related to your bitrate. Now when you stream to YouTube or Twitch, your bitrate is what
dictates how much data you are sending to their servers. In essence, the higher your bitrate, the
nicer the stream will look. The lower the bitrate, the worse your stream could look. In OBS the data
that you're transmitting is measured in kilobits per second and if the value you enter is too
low, this can result in the blurriness or the pixelation that you see in your streams. That's
why on your OBS preview window it looks perfectly fine, but when you go to Twitch you see the issue.
It's because you're transmitting that data- it's the bitrate. Now here you can see what this stream
of Fortnite looks like at just 1,000 kilobits per second. At 1080p 60fps, this stream is basically
unwatchable to me. You can barely make out anything as I run around and blow up some cars,
and it just doesn't look good. However you'll notice that if I stand still in a pretty calm
environment, the visuals improve slightly. This is because when there's nothing happening on screen,
your encoder doesn't need to transmit extra data. It can simply tell Twitch to hold on to the
current frame it has and just make tiny tweaks if necessary. That's what the keyframe setting
in OBS relates to. Every time a keyframe occurs, regardless of on-screen content, the encoder
will generate a brand new frame to send Twitch. This is to prevent smearing and the guessing game
algorithm garbage that can occur if you don't properly reset every once in a while. You can
even see the keyframes popping up in this example. So in OBS if I raise my bitrate by entering the
output settings menu, you can see a significant improvement in the quality of the stream.
And when I run around? No more pixelation- or at least significantly reduced
pixelation. So great, problem solved, we should all just crank our bitrate up to a
million and just have crystal clear streams right? Well no and it's for a couple reasons. Firstly
you need to take your network's upload speeds into consideration. If your upload speed
is too low and you set your bitrate way too high this can cause a lot of issues that are
annoying for your viewers, like stuttering, dropped frames, or complete disconnections.
Additionally Twitch and YouTube actually have caps for how high you can set your bitrate in
OBS. For non-partners on Twitch this value is kind of low at 6,000 kilobits per second, and
while you can technically go past this value, it's really not recommended unless you're a
partner and it can cause some issues for you in the long run. For YouTube however the bitrate
limit is much much higher at a staggering 51,000 kilobits per second. Now if you want to make
sure that the bitrate you set is perfect for you, you're gonna need to determine your network speed.
Now there are many websites for determining this- you can use speedtest.net, that's typically the
simplest one- but there are many other options out there. On my network my upload speed tops
out at about 20 megabits per second, Next up check what your streaming platform recommends
you use for your encoder settings. I typically stream on Twitch, which by the way, if you'd
like to watch me live on Twitch, you can check out my twitch channel TechnoBeaver, link in the
description. Now Twitch recommends that if you're going to be streaming at 1080p 60fps that you use
a bitrate of 6,000. Now since I know my network can handle that and I have so much headroom
for Discord and the game to actually operate I should have no problem. I'll set my bitrate
to that, I'll leave my rate control at constant, and I should be all set. Now I've left resources
in the description below that you can check out to see what YouTube and Twitch recommend for your
encoding settings for specifically what resolution and frame rate you're targeting. If your network
upload speeds aren't high enough for the bitrate, resolution, and frame rate that you're targeting,
you're going to need to drop your settings. Especially if you want to maintain a solid
connection that won't result in dropped frames or disconnects. Again, refer to the provided
documentation in the description below. You can additionally help yourself by keeping your
stream overlay simple and static, especially if your network requires you to push your bitrate
pretty down hard. The less detailed and animated that your overlay is the less harder your encoder
needs to work, and the less data it needs to transmit. It's not going to be a huge help but any
improvement is an improvement. If you're looking to really boost your stream quality up however,
there are a few other tips I would recommend you take a look at. Firstly if you aren't streaming
at your base resolution but you're actually down scaling to a lower resolution like 720p for
example, you might want to consider experimenting with what downscaling filter that you use. Without
getting very technical a downscaling filter will take groups of pixels and map them into
one singular pixel for a downscaled resolution. The two most widely used filters are bicubic
and lanxos- lux- longxos- link- hold on. Lanczos. Up on the screen now is a comparison
of these two filters zoomed in 175%. Now if you pixel peep on the lanczos filter you can
definitely notice some shimmering on the little tentacle hair of the character, and especially
on the shovel as well. But personally to my eye I personally think the lanczos filter looks a bit
sharper, especially on the roof where you can see some more fine details there. In the end however
the filter that you end up using is going to be highly dependent on what game you're playing,
how low you're lowering your resolution, and what looks best to you. I would really
recommend taking some time to experiment and see which filter is right for you and if you're
using a low end pc that you're streaming on, it is important to note that lanczos is the most
demanding of the downscaling filters to use. So might be something to keep in mind. Lastly
depending on your system specs and your stream setup you may want to consider using an entirely
different encoder. Now if you use an NVIDIA GPU, NVENC can deliver spectacular visual results using
specialized chips on your GPU. The great thing is that using NVENC only has a very minor if any
really performance impact on your games because again it's using those specialized encoder
chips on the board. This means it's great for a one pc setup where you're streaming and
playing the game on the same computer like I am. In my machine I use an RTX 2070 for both streaming
and playing my games. I use it all the time on max quality preset and I've gotten some really good
feedback from viewers about how my stream looks- it's mainly positive. It's important to note that
if you have an AMD GPU you probably also have a similar hardware encoding solution on your card.
Now if you have an absolute beast of a machine or you're using a two pc setup, where one computer is
gaming and one computer is streaming, you may want to consider using x264. x264 typically gives you
better results but at the cost of increased CPU load. Again I would not recommend this for most
people on a one pc setup, especially if you have a NVIDIA GPU with NVENC available, but if the
games you're streaming aren't really demanding, or you're only doing webcam streams, or you really
just want to prioritize quality, then x264 is a great choice. Now if you're using x264, make sure
you take note of your CPU usage preset. There are tons of options you can pick from but the slower
you go the nicer your stream will look, but also the higher the CPU load will be. I personally
would steer clear of the Intel quick sync encoder, especially if you have an older Intel CPU because
honestly you'll just get better visual quality and performance by utilizing NVIDIA or AMD offerings
instead. Now I hope these tips helped you out a lot in improving your streams and your streaming
setup. If they did a like and a subscription would help me out immensely. Now if you have any
questions feel free to leave a comment or you can join my Discord server and hang out with me in
there. The link to that along with all of the other educational resources are in the description
below. That's all for this video but goodbye.
