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hey
(TL;DR@Bottom in BOLD)
When I started streaming I discovered that it only worked if I was running in-game resolution on 1280x720, and the same in windows and XSplit, whenever I try to stream any above 16: 9 resolutions my streams start to lag, I can't notice any difference in my game.
I haven't tried to stream SCII yet since I will only do that for fun when I have the time, I'm currently only streaming BF3 competitive play.
I really want to solve this problem since a windows resolution of 1280x720 makes everything way too big of my likings. Additionally I also need to use "auto-hide taskbar", since Battlefield 3 don't have a fullscreen windowmode. I also believe that I got good enough computer and internet, but I'm not sure.
XSplit settings: dunno if it is the optimal, but I have followed different guides
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8FyGh.png)
FPS: 25
Resolution: 1920x1080
Internet info:
Using Amsterdam XSplit server, this is the closest to Amsterdam:
![[image loading]](http://www.pingtest.net/result/52015552.png)
Dunno what packet loss is, something I should worry about?
![[image loading]](http://www.speedtest.net/result/1634416075.png)
Computer specs:
Intel Core™ i7 Quad Processor i7-2600K 3,4GHz
ASUS Sabertooth P67
Corsair Vengeance™ DDR3 1600MHz 8GB
ASUS GeForce GTX 570 1280MB PhysX CUDA
OS: w7 Ultimate 64-bit
VOD's
SCII VOD http://www.twitch.tv/lightyearsahead/b/301920877 (lag occurs @ ~3min)
http://www.twitch.tv/lightyearsahead/b/301908508 (lag occurs @ ~3min))
Here is a VOD of; when running 1280x720 ingame, windows and XSplit:
http://www.twitch.tv/lightyearsahead/b/301700061 ( actual PCW with helicopter-gunner point of view starting at 7:20 mark if your interested :D )
Other info:
The stream will also lag when I run 1920x1080 in windows but output on 1280x720 on XSplit or any other lower 16: 9 resolutions
The same problem occurs when trying DXtory with and without windowmode
I rarely get a FPS drop below 80 when ingame when streaming.
CPU temperature is normal when ingame.
No, I haven't tried "Enable Gamesource" in XSplit since I don't really know if it is worth to buy XSplit yet.
TL;DR
stream lags when trying to stream 1080, tho it shouldn't, since I can stream perfectly fine on 720 with the same settings and no ingame frame drop on either resolutions
I'm wondering if anyone have had the same problem or if anyone knows some tweaks I can start with to try to resolve my problem.
Thanks in advance
MEANWHILE
making a stream test in SCII, see if I get the same problem there.
EDIT: SCII stream is added in VODS section (yep, it lags)
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
Streaming at 1920x1080 is very CPU intensive, you should set up a few things first to avoid problems with it.
Edited in spoiler tags since this part is only for sc2 or other games that only use a few cores
+ Show Spoiler +Close xsplit completely (or restart computer) and then open it again, open starcraft 2 as well, dont start stream etc, go to task manager, right click on the starcraft 2 process, affinity, set cores 0123, ok, go to the xsplit process, affinity, set cores 4567, ok.
That will let sc2 run on 2 cores (+2 hyperthreaded) without being interrupted by xsplit trying to use the same CPU cores, and should fix any stuttering you have there.
You can set xsplit process to above normal priority, but make sure sc2 is always 1 notch above if you dont want to see stutters etc.
Check task manager while streaming, see if any cores hit 100%, if they do you will start to drop frames on the stream (and if priority is above normal, you may get systemwide stutters, etc) so you want to avoid that if possible.
A stock 2600k isnt really that great for streaming at such a high resolution, im pretty sure you are just CPU capped. 4.5-5ghz is reasonable for overclocking goals, but if you are not overclocking you are kinda stuck where you are, probably just unable to stream at those resolutions. The affinity thing will only help you for sc2, because it only utilises 2 cores effectively and gets almost 0 gain from extra cores, but battlefield 3 will stress a quad core far far more than sc2 in my experience, so i doubt you can stream @1920x1080 with a 2600k, at a high overclock id attempt it but otherwise it just seems like too much.
Id suggest setting up 960x540 stage resolution on xsplit, as that is a 1:2 downscale of 1920x1080 and will take far far less CPU power to encode (1/4'th as many pixels) while still looking nice due to the nice downscaling ratio, people will probably whine if you have a twitch.tv partnership for the resolution options (its not 720p, it must suck, p means everything, waaaaa) but in the end it doesnt really matter, it is still better than downscaling to some higher but weird resolution at a different aspect ratio.
1280x720 is also fine and will take much less CPU power (but more than 960x540) so try both, im pretty sure it is just a CPU issue as your "lag" is the same as i had when i was messing around with the slower xsplit cpu presets, but not 100%, so report back if you can run fine @960x540 and with your CPU utilization in task manager (specifically each core usage) if you need to troubleshoot further.
For anyone wondering, i know BF3 is widely considered as almost entirely GPU based, but it does utilise CPU a lot more than starcraft 2, i checked a few benchmarks and it seems to float SB quads at like 40-50% utilization, whereas starcraft will only use 1.5 threads and get in your way much less when trying to stream
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thanks for a really fast answer : ]
I forgot to mention that I've had the XSplit process on Above Normal. When I started to stream, everything just lagged no matter what resolution and that helped me being able to stream something at all.
I'm going to switch to affinity now and try with SCII at least : )
SCII VOD is updated in the OP with previous settings, I'm not happy with the video quality :|
and it starts to lag at 3min mark, the same as BF3 did
Coming back with updates within an hour on the different tips you gave me : ]
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
Need to know what usage all of your cpu cores are at while gaming and streaming, most likely problem
Also, set the quality to "Not Set" instead of 10, it will adjust on the fly, forcing 10 at those resolutions is a horrible idea on stock cpu settings and could be causing those issues.
Btw, enable game timer in sc2 options somewhere, most crucial tool for playing/learning the game by far 
Fun watching a gold play, you just sat at like 800/600 and 80/84 supply for a minute or so killing his spawning pool, and then hit cap after making a few units, you should probably just focus on keeping money low and checking your supply count every 5-10 seconds, if you can do both of those + some more scouting without as many massive production gaps you seem better than the average gold player, could probably get to plat/diamond pretty easily if you can hold some random all ins.
Anyways back to stream troubleshooting
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haha thanks for the free coaching :D:D, I haven't played SCII since BF3 release actually 
I used to have ingame timer before I did a format c:
I streamed another game now with 960x540, no lag, everything was good, CPU usage was not over 27% I believe, but I'm not happy with the quality so I'm going to try higher resolution.
Here is the VOD:
http://www.twitch.tv/lightyearsahead/b/301923132 ( I did a huge noob mistake with larva on this one xD made 8 overlords instead of mutalisk, forgot where the muta binding was )
can the quality get better if I take bit-rate up higher?
coming back with other results : )
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
The CPU usage bar is almost meaningless due to hyperthreading and some other factors. The bar reading 13% could have 1 core maxed and the other 3 (plus all hyperthreaded cores) idle, so it doesnt help at all.
Need to know the load of each core while streaming and playing when you are getting the lag issues, if any of them hit 100% pretty much ever (aside from maybe 0.5 seconds to alt tab etc causing spikes) then you will get issues with xsplit.
Quality will rise with bitrate, yea, but if you ever hit 100% of your upload rate with a heavy action scene or something you will see lag from that not only on stream, but with massive ingame latency. Try 3k or 3.5k, i wouldnt go higher with that upload because of potential issues with minimal gain (not really worth pushing around a bit higher for hours to find one that doesnt lag you out, and even if you do that you can get caught out and dc from a ladder game if you are not careful)
If you want better quality the answer would be to bump up to 1920x1080 instead of downscaling to 960x540, but you were having issues with that before, need to find cause (check all cpu core usage stats while streaming 1080+playing) to say for certain how to help with that, you might want to play a custom game or a replay (after skipping ahead to a big battle or something, then playing at 1x) to get the same CPU load without actuly being tied into a ladder game.
You can screenshot the task manager performance tab with cpu core graphs after tabbing out during a battle and upload using teamliquid function thing or directly to www.imgur.com and link
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
Core parking and turbo mode enabled will both get in the way with streaming at variable loads... I think you have to go into the BIOS to disable turbo mode, and regedit to disable core parking, so skipping those for now, but its a potential issue
That was with 1920x1080 stream?
There is a better monitor, hit ctrl alt delete, go to task manager, and then performance tab. You can right click on the bar at the bottom of your desktop and pin it to taskbar so you can access it easily too
edit: It was 960x540, gotta see it when you are experiencing the stream lag etc, so jump to 1920x1080, and make sure affinity is set to all cores and not limited if you are playing bf3 as im not sure how it would react performance wise to being core limited
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2300kbps is too low to stream 1080p. Also what fps are you trying to stream at? For 2300kbps, you can probably get low quality 15fps, but certainly not anything at 10 quality. Up your bitrate to 3500 at least, set fps to 20 and quality to 4 and see if that does anything. You just need to tweak your settings.
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
On December 07 2011 18:45 Cel.erity wrote:
2300kbps is too low to stream 1080p. Also what fps are you trying to stream at? For 2300kbps, you can probably get low quality 15fps, but certainly not anything at 10 quality. Up your bitrate to 3500 at least, set fps to 20 and quality to 4 and see if that does anything. You just need to tweak your settings.
Didnt read the thread, and has no idea what he is talking about.
I can stream @1920x1080 30fps with 500 bitrate in xsplit, it just degrades really fast to a blurry mess when faced with moving 3d objects etc. It has no effect on you lagging out.
I know for a fact more than a couple of 1080p streams featured on TL use less than 3k bitrate, and it is very easy to tell the difference between like 1k and 2.5-3k with default xsplit preset, but that is not the issue here.
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
On December 07 2011 18:48 lyrlian wrote:I posted in this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=289361There's a screenshot with the settings I use, my upload is double yours though, maybe that changes things a little? Other than that we've got pretty much the same specs and stream settings. Could also try lowering to quality 8.
Not really relevant, another person that just read half the OP and posted i think. Not the issue here, there is also a ton of incorrect information in that thread, and nobody even mentioned setting affinity which is a massive performance gain for streaming sc2. Ty for the post but i think this is covered
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I tried streaming in 1980x1080 now, and it actually worked with
Quality: Not Set
but now I felt FPS drop in game, so I'm going to lower graphics, almost got all on ultra.
VOD:
http://www.twitch.tv/lightyearsahead/b/301926653
I take up the task manager thing several times to check the performance. I played on a tiny map with 64players, there is usually always a lot of action going on.
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
On December 07 2011 18:52 Latsom wrote:I tried streaming in 1980x1080 now, and it actually worked with Quality: Not Set but now I felt FPS drop in game, so I'm going to lower graphics, almost got all on ultra. VOD: http://www.twitch.tv/lightyearsahead/b/301926653I take up the task manager thing several times to check the performance. I played on a tiny map with 64players, there is usually always a lot of action going on.
You will probably get a massive performance impact trying to stream bf3 as it utilizes 4 cores quite well and xsplit will be fighting for them to stream at that resolution, you could set affinity with bf3 too but im not sure if running bf3 on 2 cores and xsplit on 2 is really any better than just leaving them both on all, maybe try setting bf3 a step above xsplit in priority?
Edit: You have 5 and a half days uptime and over 5gb RAM being used, you should really restart PC, at that point it could be having a big effect on performance
Either way you are nowhere near CPU being maxed, but then again you are not having problems with stuttering etc as you were with the 10 quality setting
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I tried with the same as recommended for SCII, BF3 lagged insane.
so xsplit on above normal and BF on high?
I'm going to restart sooner or later, what should I run instead of turbo mode?
And what is this parked thing in regedit?
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
On December 07 2011 18:58 Latsom wrote:
I tried with the same as recommended for SCII, BF3 lagged insane.
so xsplit on above normal and BF on high?
I'm going to restart sooner or later, what should I run instead of turbo mode?
And what is this parked thing in regedit?
Core parking, a "feature" that windows uses to disable CPU cores that it determines are not being used, it is a problem when you have programs like xsplit that can float around low CPU usage for a while and then you tab into a game etc and usage spikes, but you have to wait for the parked CPU core to start running again, causing weird lag etc.
Turbo mode is essentially just running the CPU faster under higher load, it has kinda the same effect, ideally you want to be running with it disabled but if you are not overclocking the CPU i guess this could lower your max frequency, so keep it on.
Core parking is done in the registry, best not to mess around with it, i dont think either will cause you problems atm but they are just a few things on the list of annoying shit that i spend days looking for to turn off whenever i reinstall windows, thats why i noticed it.
Yea, xsplit above normal and BF high should be good.
I think for performance reasons it would be best to set affinity 0123 for sc2, 4567 for xsplit and stream 1920x1080 there, but have different settings for bf3, i havnt played around with settings in a game that actuly uses 4 cores before so i dont know how it would behave, try doing the same with affinity there if you want to try 1920x1080 with bf3, otherwise, set the priorities and run 960x540 with all cores enabled for everything. It seems very very optimistic to be running a performance stable 1080p battlefield 3 stream using a 2600k at base clock (3.4ghz) as its a never game that does utilise quad cores to some extent, and encoding @1080p isnt easy at all on the CPU.
With an overclock close to 5ghz id push it, but im not sure if you can with stock settings
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thanks for all the help Cyro my main problem was fixed in this process, I can now stream with a different resolution than I have in windows and ingame : ]
As you said, BF3 requires more than a stock 2600k
I'm at least going to try and stream SCII in 1080 : ]
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
GL, you should be able to run sc2 @1920x1080 fine and if you have affinity set, see very little if any performance hit while doing so, let me know if it works out ok.
Honestly i wouldnt expect anyone to be streaming BF3 @1920x1080-30fps with anything less than a 6 core Sandy Bridge-E CPU, which is like $600 if i remember correctly (may be a few hundred off, but its way more than 2600k)
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Damn Cyro, you seem to know a lot about this topic. o.o
Wouldn't mind some help with my stream if you have the time. Mind if I send you a PM?
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On December 07 2011 18:47 Cyro wrote:
I can stream @1920x1080 30fps with 500 bitrate in xsplit, it just degrades really fast to a blurry mess when faced with moving 3d objects etc. It has no effect on you lagging out.
I know for a fact more than a couple of 1080p streams featured on TL use less than 3k bitrate, and it is very easy to tell the difference between like 1k and 2.5-3k with default xsplit preset, but that is not the issue here.
afaik..... h264 codec specifies that 3000-5000kb/s is 1080p. Destiny is really the only person streaming a true 1080p stream. Unless you see people streaming 4.5mb/s higher.
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