Streaming Misconceptions - Best OBS Settings & NVENC vs. X264, ft. EposVox _ LTX

# Common Misconceptions in Streaming: A Comprehensive Guide

## Introduction

Welcome back to another episode of our live stream at LTX 2019. We’re here with Adam from "a postbox," a channel known for excellent work in streaming and streaming education. Our topic today is all about common misconceptions regarding streaming settings, and how you might be doing it wrong.

Before diving into the discussion, we’d like to thank our sponsor, Thermal Grizzlies, for their contribution to the conversation. Their innovative thermal interface solutions have significantly improved CPU cooling by enhancing thermal conductivity without sacrificing performance. If you want to learn more about their products, feel free to check out the link in the description below.

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## Starting with OBS: Bitrate and Resolution Settings

Let’s begin by assuming a baseline software solution like OBS for streaming. One of the most frequent mistakes we see people making is aiming for the highest possible numbers right away—such as jumping straight into 1080p and 60fps—without considering whether their system can handle it. This is especially true for those streaming from laptops, where performance limitations are more pronounced.

The key takeaway here is that streaming quality isn’t just about resolution or frame rate—it’s about balancing these factors to ensure a stable and high-quality stream. Most people should start by streaming at 720p instead of jumping straight into 1080p, as this will allow you to allocate your bitrate budget more efficiently. Even if you set a high bitrate (like 8 Mbps), it’s unlikely to support a smooth 1080p stream, especially on slower encoders like x264.

Another critical point is the importance of testing. Adam recommends creating a test profile in OBS that mirrors your live stream settings. Record for a few minutes and observe how it performs. If the frame rate drops or artifacts appear, you know it’s time to adjust your settings.

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## Frame Rate and Game Performance

When discussing streaming settings, we can’t ignore the importance of frame rates. Many console streamers are unaware that their games run at 30fps by default. Pushing for 60fps might seem tempting, but if your game or webcam can’t handle it, you’re not only wasting resources but also potentially reducing image quality.

For example, if your game runs at 30fps and your webcam is capable of 60fps, it’s better to drop the webcam frame rate to match the game’s performance. This allows for a slower shutter speed, which results in better lighting and overall video quality. Remember, your webcam doesn’t care about frame rates—it cares about how much light it can capture.

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## Encoding: CPU vs. GPU

The next major topic is encoding, where we explore both CPU and GPU options. Adam emphasizes that AMD’s encoder, as of now, is in a poor state. While it works for recording at high bitrates, it’s not reliable for streaming due to ongoing issues. If you’re using an older Radeon card (like the X480), expect similar problems.

On the Intel side, Quick Sync is often touted for its performance benefits, but Adam advises avoiding it whenever possible. While it can handle the load, the quality isn’t up to par with other options. NVIDIA’s newer generations, however, are making strides with their GPU encoding capabilities, especially with x264 and VP9 support.

For most streamers, especially those on mid-range systems, sticking with CPU-based encoding using x264 is a safer bet. However, Adam recommends testing your setup thoroughly before going live. Create a test profile in OBS, record for a few minutes, and observe how it performs under real-world conditions.

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## Common Misconceptions: Quality vs. Quantity

One of the most persistent myths in streaming is that GPU encoding always produces lower quality output. While this might have been true in the past, NVIDIA’s fine-tuned optimizations for game streaming are starting to change the narrative._GPU encoders are designed with a specific purpose in mind: handling game streams._ This means they can often outperform CPU-based alternatives when it comes to gaming content.

Another misconception is that higher resolution or frame rate always equates to better quality. While 1080p and 60fps might sound impressive, they’re not the right choice for everyone. Adam suggests starting at 720p and adjusting from there based on your system’s capabilities. Your audience won’t notice a difference in resolution if the stream is stable and high-quality.

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## Webcam Settings: Getting the Best Image Quality

Finally, let’s talk about webcams—a critical component of any streaming setup. Many people assume that their webcam can handle 1080p natively, but this isn’t always the case. In reality, most entry-level webcams (like the C920) produce the best image quality at lower resolutions like 640x360. Shooting for a quarter of your screen might not look as impressive on paper, but it will ensure better perceived quality during live streams.

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## Final Tips

- **Test Everything**: Before going live, test your settings thoroughly. Use OBS to create a test profile and record a short clip. If you notice any issues like dropped frames or artifacts, adjust your settings accordingly.

- **Focus on Audio Quality**: Many streamers overlook the importance of audio quality. Invest in a decent microphone and use a separate audio interface if possible.

- **Use a Second Twitch Account**: If you’re hesitant to test new software or settings on your main account, consider streaming on a secondary account first. This allows you to experiment without risking your hard-earned reputation.

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## Conclusion

In conclusion, streaming is all about balancing bitrate, resolution, and frame rate to achieve the best possible quality within your system’s constraints. Avoid chasing higher numbers like 1080p or 60fps if they don’t work for you. Instead, start with 720p and adjust from there based on testing.

Thank you for joining us today. Make sure to check out Adam’s channel, "a postbox," for more excellent content on streaming and related topics. If you have any questions or want to share your own streaming tips, feel free to leave a comment below. We’ll see you all next time!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enevery one so we're still at LTX 2019 giving align us yet another shout out I think at this point it's becoming a bit absurd but he didn't fly us out here and make it happen so thank you - and I'm joined now by Adam from a postbox as the channel yep I Adams done some really good work on streaming and streaming education I think is the correct way to describe it so our topic today is common misconceptions on streaming or streaming settings and in general streaming you're doing it wrong so there's a lot of that before that this video is brought to you by Thermal Grizzlies conduct a not liquid metal conductor not as what we've used in all of our liquid metal and delayed thermal tests capable of dropping TV thermals significantly and replacing the stock thermal interface over CPU thermals don't just allow better overclocks but also lower noise levels because the transfer efficiency is increased the mix of gallium and indium makes for a thermal conductivity of 73 watts per meter Kelvin outclassing traditional pastes significantly learn more at the link in the description below where do we want to start with this let's I guess let's assume a base software solution may be OBS or something right narrow it down a bit so from there what do you commonly see people either they need the most help with to start streaming or they most frequently get incorrect with the setup I mean the big thing I see and this has been the case even with just making youtube videos not even just streaming but people want to jump in and regardless of what they're doing they want to be the highest number so they want 1080p they want 60fps even if they're streaming from a laptop they can barely run the game in our is it 1080p but they want the biggest number even if they can't stream the bitrate for it and streaming getting like a good image quality is all about balancing everything and so most people should be streaming at 720p and you know using reason instead of just jumping for the higher numbers that's with something like twitch - or you really do have a bitrate right budget you've got a cap you can't - even if you go above to the 8 megabits per second which is a great area at the moment that's not really enough for a great 1080p image even on slow on x264 or any of that like it is not enough and you will literally just see a direct image quality spike by just lowering your resolution be at 720p all the weird options OBS gives you for 864 whatever just don't aim for the biggest numbers because you can't support it yeah I guess if you think of it as a budget you're burning budget on increasing to 60fps facing to 1080p and as you increase those things I guess it's a even if a stream comes out as 1080p 60 like it's fluid there's still image quality loss rightfully yes excellent artifacting intermittent stutters that you may not notice or aren't reported and a big thing that I recorded a video for but I haven't figured out how to format because it sounds so obvious is a lot of games especially for console streamers are running at 30fps oh yeah so don't spend your streaming budget on running it at 60fps because your game isn't running there your webcam is probably not running there aiming for 60fps is not deep fix all four but everyone wants the highest frame rates now and 30 FPS is fine for a lot of K so if you have a webcam in the corner that can do 60 and you've got the game that can do maybe 30 max for the console you recommend just running everything already absolutely smashing it and you can honestly you can probably get better quality of your webcam by dropping that to 32 if your games running at 30 because it'll write up the slower shutters or shutter speed and get more light in and webcams do better at 30 than 60 like your webcam does not matter in terms of frame rate right so other other than budget of bit rate and resolution frame rate what are the next suggestions we've got we have a lot of options for encoding mm-hm like an insane amount of options for encoding and there's CPU side encoding GPU side encoding envy encoder h.264 on CPU where do you start with that like let's let's let's list maybe by component I guess because if you have too low end of a GPU right you probably shouldn't do envy encoder or something I don't know assume like a mid-range system maybe you have like a thirty six hundred and fifty seven hundred or something or a thirty six hundred and a twenty sixty if you're on the twenty sixty well okay here's the thing at the moment AMD's encoder is hella broke it is really bad i've spoken with people it's being worked on don't know when it's being fixed but it's not really usable period unless you're streaming to youtube it like 10 15 megabits per second for our further Radeon cards right yes so you know any Radeon card gone back to our X 480 like all of them are it's it's literally broken there is something literally wrong with it okay that simplifies that part of the equation right that you can use it for recording at high bitrate but for streaming it's not an option in terms of x264 in and quick sink avoid quick sync at all cost as well it works it actually runs performance wise really amazing image quality a shame its quality is pretty port there newer generation stuff starting with ninth gin and some of the stuff they're working on is actually doing some really cool stuff and they have the only GPU accelerated vp9 encoder by the way okay not useful right now but really cool but when it comes x264 you there is a balance of what resources you have versus what you're actually trying to achieve performance wise with your live stream and the big common misconception I guess miss or not is you want to use x264 because it's better quality but if you're on say if we hear that a lot if you're on like an APU or a lower end processor you're not running your stream at anything slower than very fast or super fast at which point in Vinc is more than good enough it is gonna blow your stream out of the water performance wise or in quality wise in most cases if you're on a 3600 especially the 3900 the 3900 at the moment can work magic now I get down to x26 more medium don't ask any questions just move on yeah you're good you can run pretty much anything on it but when you're on Intel side because they have less threads at the moment and it's not it's the same or you're on a lower end system I would do tests that's the big thing no one does any streaming tests they just like I went live and it didn't work what's wrong you can literally you can make a new profile and make it to where it records the exact same settings as your stream settings and there is still some slight difference once it gets up to twitch but overall you'll get to see what your performance are your performances if it's not holding the framerate don't use that setting lauric keep you know aim aim high but start setting it back to like one minute long segments and like a training mansion overwatch or you know whatever your game you're using and just keep setting it back until you've got perfect performance and then I think one of the most common things talk about GPU and CPU encoding options one of the most common things is still the discussion that GPU is always worse quality right so just strictly talking about streaming like game stream what most people do or webcam maybe if you're on Twitch and do both how do you feel about GPU stream quality with envy encoder these days I mean like do you default to that I do okay I have been using it for and obviously with recording that's a little bit different but I have always defaulted to it for most of my setups I currently for my game streaming I actually do two PC setup but I was running into the utilization issue or that's a whole nother bottleneck foot Windows is working on that but I default to it because especially on the Turing cards which includes the 1660 and 1660 Ti at the 1650 right quality is more than good enough for most people and here's the thing is people always want like the best quality but when you're first starting streaming streaming to your friends watching on their phones they don't care they don't audio quality is far more important the the conception that are the idea that it is lower quality is from much older cards and then AMD's cards at the moment it's like super fast equivalent which is very low but it is improving and the thing is x264 is optimized for like movies TV shows there you can actually if you start fine-tuning the options enough you can see that the quality optimization is for like a single subject in the center of your frame and everything to the side starts to fall apart okay that's not how games work my aims are meant to see everything in focus and the game the GPU encoders are specifically designed for game shares they were designed with this purpose in mind and so we're gonna see over the next five or so years maybe depending on how long Nvidia drags their generations yeah that how long they can straight out that it's gonna start passing it up because of those fine-tuned optimizations because game sharing is a whole different ball park and it is built for that purpose any other major misconceptions mistakes things if you're trying to help someone get a good stream going you've given them some good advice now are there any final points you want to throw in there don't listen to the people who tell you to drop your framerate to 48 fps because frame pacing and it just turns out very poorly test test tests and focus on your audio quality if you're using a webcam just a little pointer I've been trying to like sprinkle in Nuggets than all of my videos now don't set it to 1080p the c920 of the c920 - those aren't cameras with actual 1080p native Brazil you will actually get the best image out of it at like 640 by 360 and if it's a quarter of your screen it's gonna look great now obviously you're just chatting fullscreen thing might not but again people aren't going to care you want the best perceived quality not the highest resolution number and I really want to break down that wall of I want the biggest number because yeah bigger number not necessarily better yeah so I guess the big the biggest piece of advice then is try a few of these things and genuinely try them get right then right the first time make a second twitch account if you need you to like stream for an hour and see how it goes you don't want to get live especially if you already have a following as I see people who have an established follow me and jump in and they're like I'm just gonna try this new software or like stream labs OBS like people will jump in and then the stream will fall apart and they'll just be on social media yelling at the capture card companies at the software companies like yelling at someone for Bruning their stream when they didn't bother to test it ahead of time so there's your advice from Adam some really good stuff in here do check out his channel a post box will link it below and he's got some really good streaming topics on there so you've been working with rising 3000 working with AMD 5000 series and that'll be all in the link in the description below thank you for joining me thank you we'll see you all next timeevery one so we're still at LTX 2019 giving align us yet another shout out I think at this point it's becoming a bit absurd but he didn't fly us out here and make it happen so thank you - and I'm joined now by Adam from a postbox as the channel yep I Adams done some really good work on streaming and streaming education I think is the correct way to describe it so our topic today is common misconceptions on streaming or streaming settings and in general streaming you're doing it wrong so there's a lot of that before that this video is brought to you by Thermal Grizzlies conduct a not liquid metal conductor not as what we've used in all of our liquid metal and delayed thermal tests capable of dropping TV thermals significantly and replacing the stock thermal interface over CPU thermals don't just allow better overclocks but also lower noise levels because the transfer efficiency is increased the mix of gallium and indium makes for a thermal conductivity of 73 watts per meter Kelvin outclassing traditional pastes significantly learn more at the link in the description below where do we want to start with this let's I guess let's assume a base software solution may be OBS or something right narrow it down a bit so from there what do you commonly see people either they need the most help with to start streaming or they most frequently get incorrect with the setup I mean the big thing I see and this has been the case even with just making youtube videos not even just streaming but people want to jump in and regardless of what they're doing they want to be the highest number so they want 1080p they want 60fps even if they're streaming from a laptop they can barely run the game in our is it 1080p but they want the biggest number even if they can't stream the bitrate for it and streaming getting like a good image quality is all about balancing everything and so most people should be streaming at 720p and you know using reason instead of just jumping for the higher numbers that's with something like twitch - or you really do have a bitrate right budget you've got a cap you can't - even if you go above to the 8 megabits per second which is a great area at the moment that's not really enough for a great 1080p image even on slow on x264 or any of that like it is not enough and you will literally just see a direct image quality spike by just lowering your resolution be at 720p all the weird options OBS gives you for 864 whatever just don't aim for the biggest numbers because you can't support it yeah I guess if you think of it as a budget you're burning budget on increasing to 60fps facing to 1080p and as you increase those things I guess it's a even if a stream comes out as 1080p 60 like it's fluid there's still image quality loss rightfully yes excellent artifacting intermittent stutters that you may not notice or aren't reported and a big thing that I recorded a video for but I haven't figured out how to format because it sounds so obvious is a lot of games especially for console streamers are running at 30fps oh yeah so don't spend your streaming budget on running it at 60fps because your game isn't running there your webcam is probably not running there aiming for 60fps is not deep fix all four but everyone wants the highest frame rates now and 30 FPS is fine for a lot of K so if you have a webcam in the corner that can do 60 and you've got the game that can do maybe 30 max for the console you recommend just running everything already absolutely smashing it and you can honestly you can probably get better quality of your webcam by dropping that to 32 if your games running at 30 because it'll write up the slower shutters or shutter speed and get more light in and webcams do better at 30 than 60 like your webcam does not matter in terms of frame rate right so other other than budget of bit rate and resolution frame rate what are the next suggestions we've got we have a lot of options for encoding mm-hm like an insane amount of options for encoding and there's CPU side encoding GPU side encoding envy encoder h.264 on CPU where do you start with that like let's let's let's list maybe by component I guess because if you have too low end of a GPU right you probably shouldn't do envy encoder or something I don't know assume like a mid-range system maybe you have like a thirty six hundred and fifty seven hundred or something or a thirty six hundred and a twenty sixty if you're on the twenty sixty well okay here's the thing at the moment AMD's encoder is hella broke it is really bad i've spoken with people it's being worked on don't know when it's being fixed but it's not really usable period unless you're streaming to youtube it like 10 15 megabits per second for our further Radeon cards right yes so you know any Radeon card gone back to our X 480 like all of them are it's it's literally broken there is something literally wrong with it okay that simplifies that part of the equation right that you can use it for recording at high bitrate but for streaming it's not an option in terms of x264 in and quick sink avoid quick sync at all cost as well it works it actually runs performance wise really amazing image quality a shame its quality is pretty port there newer generation stuff starting with ninth gin and some of the stuff they're working on is actually doing some really cool stuff and they have the only GPU accelerated vp9 encoder by the way okay not useful right now but really cool but when it comes x264 you there is a balance of what resources you have versus what you're actually trying to achieve performance wise with your live stream and the big common misconception I guess miss or not is you want to use x264 because it's better quality but if you're on say if we hear that a lot if you're on like an APU or a lower end processor you're not running your stream at anything slower than very fast or super fast at which point in Vinc is more than good enough it is gonna blow your stream out of the water performance wise or in quality wise in most cases if you're on a 3600 especially the 3900 the 3900 at the moment can work magic now I get down to x26 more medium don't ask any questions just move on yeah you're good you can run pretty much anything on it but when you're on Intel side because they have less threads at the moment and it's not it's the same or you're on a lower end system I would do tests that's the big thing no one does any streaming tests they just like I went live and it didn't work what's wrong you can literally you can make a new profile and make it to where it records the exact same settings as your stream settings and there is still some slight difference once it gets up to twitch but overall you'll get to see what your performance are your performances if it's not holding the framerate don't use that setting lauric keep you know aim aim high but start setting it back to like one minute long segments and like a training mansion overwatch or you know whatever your game you're using and just keep setting it back until you've got perfect performance and then I think one of the most common things talk about GPU and CPU encoding options one of the most common things is still the discussion that GPU is always worse quality right so just strictly talking about streaming like game stream what most people do or webcam maybe if you're on Twitch and do both how do you feel about GPU stream quality with envy encoder these days I mean like do you default to that I do okay I have been using it for and obviously with recording that's a little bit different but I have always defaulted to it for most of my setups I currently for my game streaming I actually do two PC setup but I was running into the utilization issue or that's a whole nother bottleneck foot Windows is working on that but I default to it because especially on the Turing cards which includes the 1660 and 1660 Ti at the 1650 right quality is more than good enough for most people and here's the thing is people always want like the best quality but when you're first starting streaming streaming to your friends watching on their phones they don't care they don't audio quality is far more important the the conception that are the idea that it is lower quality is from much older cards and then AMD's cards at the moment it's like super fast equivalent which is very low but it is improving and the thing is x264 is optimized for like movies TV shows there you can actually if you start fine-tuning the options enough you can see that the quality optimization is for like a single subject in the center of your frame and everything to the side starts to fall apart okay that's not how games work my aims are meant to see everything in focus and the game the GPU encoders are specifically designed for game shares they were designed with this purpose in mind and so we're gonna see over the next five or so years maybe depending on how long Nvidia drags their generations yeah that how long they can straight out that it's gonna start passing it up because of those fine-tuned optimizations because game sharing is a whole different ball park and it is built for that purpose any other major misconceptions mistakes things if you're trying to help someone get a good stream going you've given them some good advice now are there any final points you want to throw in there don't listen to the people who tell you to drop your framerate to 48 fps because frame pacing and it just turns out very poorly test test tests and focus on your audio quality if you're using a webcam just a little pointer I've been trying to like sprinkle in Nuggets than all of my videos now don't set it to 1080p the c920 of the c920 - those aren't cameras with actual 1080p native Brazil you will actually get the best image out of it at like 640 by 360 and if it's a quarter of your screen it's gonna look great now obviously you're just chatting fullscreen thing might not but again people aren't going to care you want the best perceived quality not the highest resolution number and I really want to break down that wall of I want the biggest number because yeah bigger number not necessarily better yeah so I guess the big the biggest piece of advice then is try a few of these things and genuinely try them get right then right the first time make a second twitch account if you need you to like stream for an hour and see how it goes you don't want to get live especially if you already have a following as I see people who have an established follow me and jump in and they're like I'm just gonna try this new software or like stream labs OBS like people will jump in and then the stream will fall apart and they'll just be on social media yelling at the capture card companies at the software companies like yelling at someone for Bruning their stream when they didn't bother to test it ahead of time so there's your advice from Adam some really good stuff in here do check out his channel a post box will link it below and he's got some really good streaming topics on there so you've been working with rising 3000 working with AMD 5000 series and that'll be all in the link in the description below thank you for joining me thank you we'll see you all next time\n"