Dota 2 Visual Lag While Streaming

B-Wong

United States240 Posts

March 07 2013 02:06 GMT

Visually, Dota 2 lags on my end when I'm streaming. However, when I look at the stream itself, the frames are nice and smooth. I'm not sure what's causing this, because it's distracting for myself to play with these kinds of settings, but it's perfectly fine for a viewer. The other thing is that when checking the FPS stats on Dota 2, it's relatively high (100-120 FPS average while streaming). So I'm kind of confused as to what might be causing this visual lag.

Using OBS:
2000kbps bit rate
128kbps audio
9 quality
1280x720 resolution (downscaled from 1600x900)

If more information is needed please ask.

Cyro

United Kingdom20285 Posts

March 07 2013 02:31 GMT

Can you describe it more?

And theres a number of things that can make the game feel like that, more input lag, frametimes varying more etc. Its pretty much expected to happen with streaming. Its less noticable with more performance (going from 100 to 200fps would help) but still clearly a worse experience than not streaming, starting out a game in sc2 on low settings at around 400fps for example i can tell if i have OBS/Xsplit on without dropping below 200fps because of how smooth the game is and how it feels to interact with - using lower framerate on OBS should make things better, and probably lower resolution too but i dont have much data on how that affects performance with OBS.

B-Wong

United States240 Posts

March 07 2013 02:45 GMT

It only LOOKS like it's laggy but the stat readings are up at 100-120FPS (looks more like 25 or something like that, though). I don't think it's any input lag or anything (at least I don't feel any input lag), but that's about it.

The only other thing I think I can add is that it wasn't like this before, but if that's the case I guess I'll just deal with it. Streaming Starcraft/LoL/whatever doesn't seem to have this problem, though. Perhaps it's different graphics requirements? Or something weird. Not sure.

Cyro

United Kingdom20285 Posts

March 07 2013 02:46 GMT

Check to see if your GPU is maxed and try a framerate limit

B-Wong

United States240 Posts

March 07 2013 02:51 GMT

GPU is sitting around 50%. I'll get back to you on whether or not the framerate limit works.
Nope, framerate limiting doesn't work. I guess it's just something I'll have to live with.

Cyro

United Kingdom20285 Posts

March 07 2013 03:13 GMT

You can probably fix it or minimize the effect especially if you think it was not there before

I will say though that it seems really common not to notice performance degradation until after a while of use

B-Wong

United States240 Posts

March 08 2013 03:03 GMT

Alright so I managed to fix it by changing my Windows theme.

Originally, I had it on the Windows 7 basic theme, but I changed it to Aero theme (it's supposed to move the load on the CPU to the graphics card, no?). So I changed it back and tested streaming and voila, the theme change makes it run smooth as butter for whatever reason. I'm just leaving this memento here in case there are people that have the same problem in the future.

poochop

2 Posts

April 02 2013 05:49 GMT

So you're back to using Windows 7 Basic theme? And do you have "Disable Aero at Startup" checked?

Well I guess I'm more experiencing network problems ( my ping fluctuates from 60-120, sometimes hits 600), but any ideas on optimizing OBS will always be of great use.

Typhoon1789

Australia292 Posts

April 02 2013 09:37 GMT

I had a problem just like this in SCII when streaming. When i had my frames capped to 60 when using vsynch everything looked like it was running at 20fps. When i turn vsynch off and let the game run at 150fps everything is smooth.

Also i recommend using Dxtory in conjunction with streaming software.

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