Streaming PHG to Twitch (Recommendations)

#1

This game usually looks horrible on Twitch compared to other games. After a lot of testing and trying here are my recommended settings for what I personally think, looks best.

First and foremost, if you are using CPU encoder (because your CPU is capable of) using x264 fast or medium will yield the best picture results. On the other hand if you want to take advantage of your Nvidia card and use NVENC, here are what I consider the best settings.

Encoder: NVENC H.264 (new)
Bitrate: 6500 Kbps (maximum allowed by Twitch)
Preset: Max Quality
Profile: High
Look Ahead: check
Psycho Visual Tuning: Check
Max B-frames: 2
Resolution: 720P
Framerate: 30

The reason for the lower resolution and lower framerate is because, unlike other games, the foliage on this game is massive. It is also a very fast paced game. Because of that, using higher resolutions and/or higher framerates results in a visual “blockiness” of the foliage, which IMO, looks horrible. There’s just too many color variations happening too fast and even the best encoders struggle to keep everything looking sharp. By turning these settings down, while the gameplay doesn’t look that smooth, the colors and sharpness does. For me, is better, but everyone has different opinions of what is better to them, so if you prefer smoothness over visual quality, you might prefer higher resolutions and framerates.

Anyway, just a recommendation for those who, like me, have been struggling for a while trying to make this game look good on Twitch.

YouTube allows for higher bitrates, which massively help with the “blocky” problem. Facebook live on the other hand is probably the worst streaming platform when it comes to quality (they literally re-encode your already encoded video). The visual quality there is so bad that is not worth trying to look for an optimal configuration.

Anyway, hope some of you give it a try. Who knows, maybe can even be applied to console streaming settings, though I have no idea how that works on console and if settings are even customizable (at least resolution, framerate and bitrate)

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#2

Meh

#3

I can stream at 6000kbs 1080p60 and it looks amazing with minimal blockines.

You can stream at over 8k bitrate on twitch, there’s no set bitrate per say, but during high streaming hours theyll limit the bitrate unless you’re a partner with thousands of viewers. I’ve streamed at 7.5k bitrate before with no issues.

#4

🤢🤮 it literally looks like vomit.

1 Like
#5

Missed the stream. Did you face any good preds? I watched the clip and all those got melted

#6

Here you go, 1080p60 at 6000kbs

There are instances where my connection drops a little because I was using WiFi but for the most part is a clean image with very little blocking.

So, 6000kbs is enough, but 8000kbs is of course way better for 1080p60

By the way, I’m using encoding options for x264 and not a specific preset.

#7

yeah x264 is better than NVENC for anything other than 3000 series RTX. I just don’t like using it because I use my main rig just for gaming and another PC for streaming. That secondary PC has an older 3rd gen i7 and a 700 series GTX and it just can’t handle the stream with all the shit I have running in the background (overlays, automatic scene switcher, webcam, network audio/video, clean source recording). It can encode 1080P@60FPS but it just looks horrible to me.

#8

PS5 streaming looks really good to me. Nobody else?

#9

At 720 it does. At 1080 I see a lot of blockyness in the foliage

#10

Okay. Interesting. I’ll start looking for that. What causes the blockiness exactly?

#11

Too much color variations in the same areas combined with fast screen movement

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#12

Do those have a different encoder than the 2000 series?

I don’t like NVENC unless you use high bitrate, even on my 2000 series card NVENC new is just not even close to x264 at the same bitrate.

#13

I’m looking into just capturing. Any tips on HD alocation? I know @Samhain13 does alot of this and the results are fantastic…I find his captures to be very zen as it’s usually 1080p 60fps. any suggestions on HD space?

#14

same encoder, but less dedicated cores

for recording I use NVENC h.265 via FFW

lossless looks beautiful and is much smaller file size than h.264 losless

#15

for recording you can go lossless or very high quality. problem is with streaming because there’s bandwidth limits. For uploads it really doesn’t matter if you don’t care about a gig per minute

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#16

Oh yea for recording I go lossless using GPU I don’t lose a single frame when playing, but yea for streaming nvenc just sucks at low bitrate. They need to come up with better and more efficient encoder. There’s no reason to have a choppy pixelated image at 6000kbs with today’s technology.

#17

When you do vids do you capture then upload to youtube or do you only stream?

#18

How many gigs of HD space should i save up just to capture? Im looking to do one match of less than 15minutes.

#19

NVENC H.265 is about a gig per minute on indistinguishable high quality

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#20

I got a 1,81 TB disk where I set to save all the recordings, I usually use the Amd Radeon Software I have to record. Depending on how long you are recording and quality you want it to be… for me an 1 hour recording of PHG is like 12-15 GB with the settings I have.

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