OBS Studio 28.1 Released with Support for NVENC AV1 Accelerated Encoding on Ada GPUs

[chameleoneel]

https://www.techpowerup.com/300525/...or-nvenc-av1-accelerated-encoding-on-ada-gpus

Looks like there are some feature limitations, for now. However, should be enough features for general recording. I haven't looked for any quality comparisons for Nvidia, yet. Intel's AV1 demo look really impressive.

Note: you cannot stream AV1 to Twitch.
I believe you can, to Youtube. The thing about Youtube streaming, is that they re-encode your stream before the viewer sees it. And it looks bad. This should help, as AV1 will be a higher quality source to re-encode.

 

[Lakados]

Twitch is funny, it's owned by a trillion-dollar company, but they treat it like the rented donkey of the bastard red-headed stepchild.

But Twitch has been working with Nvidia for a long ass time to get it working on the back end.
"We are working with Twitch on the next generation of game streaming. AV1 will enable Twitch viewers to watch at up to 1440p 120 FPS at 8mbps; a feasible bitrate that can reach most home-broadband and 5G users."
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/rtx-30-series-av1-decoding/

There were some leaks in the Twitch service that had references to source code that showed they were working on it but it would require hardware updates to the Twitch servers, and that's where things seemed to die as off as Amazon seems to hate pumping money into the service.

 

[DPI]

I believe you can, to Youtube. The thing about Youtube streaming, is that they re-encode your stream before the viewer sees it. And it looks bad. This should help, as AV1 will be a higher quality source to re-encode.

Subjective of course, but hasn't been my experience. Twitch is infamous for looking like overly compressed and still weirdly-low max resolution considering it's 2022. Youtube I seem to mostly hear praise about better QoL features and higher streaming resolutions (up to 4K) from the streamers that left Twitch for Youtube.

Twitch has been coasting on inertia and first-mover advantage, but if they don't stop the slow-bleeding and improve QoL features and quality/resolution (to say nothing of their weird internal politics, or secret police style of banning streamers), Youtube will continue to slowly subsume game streaming like a god damn anaconda and that wouldn't necessarily be a good thing.

 

[III_Slyflyer_III]

Subjective of course, but hasn't been my experience. Twitch is infamous for looking like overly compressed and still weirdly-low max resolution considering it's 2022. Youtube I seem to mostly hear praise about better QoL features and higher streaming resolutions (up to 4K) from the streamers that left Twitch for Youtube.

Twitch has been coasting on inertia and first-mover advantage, but if they don't stop the slow-bleeding and improve QoL and quality/resolution, Youtube will continue to slowly subsume streaming like a god damn anaconda and that wouldn't necessarily be a good thing.

Youtube also has true HDR support.

 

[Lakados]

Subjective of course, but hasn't been my experience. Twitch is infamous for looking like overly compressed and still weirdly-low max resolution considering it's 2022. Youtube I seem to mostly hear praise about better QoL features and higher streaming resolutions (up to 4K) from the streamers that left Twitch for Youtube.

Twitch has been coasting on inertia and first-mover advantage, but if they don't stop the slow-bleeding and improve QoL and quality/resolution, Youtube will continue to slowly subsume streaming like a god damn anaconda and that wouldn't necessarily be a good thing.

Their recent contract changes and the downsizing of their various support departments can't help them either. I swear that Amazon is just leaving the service to die as they haven't found a way to monetize it to their satisfaction now that competitors have stepped up their game.

 

[chameleoneel]

Subjective of course, but hasn't been my experience. Twitch is infamous for looking like overly compressed and still weirdly-low max resolution considering it's 2022. Youtube I seem to mostly hear praise about better QoL features and higher streaming resolutions (up to 4K) from the streamers that left Twitch for Youtube.

Twitch has been coasting on inertia and first-mover advantage, but if they don't stop the slow-bleeding and improve QoL features and quality/resolution (to say nothing of their weird internal politics, or secret police style of banning streamers), Youtube will continue to slowly subsume game streaming like a god damn anaconda and that wouldn't necessarily be a good thing.

Twitch serves exactly what you stream, to the viewer. If you are a small streamer, that is often the only option for viewing. Its usually fine, because most people stream between 3,000 - 6,000kbps. And most viewers can handle that bandwidth.

Streamers with enough viewers, get options for their viewers to view a lower-res/lower bitrate re-encode. This is usually more important for larger streamers, as they are more likely to max out the bitrates. Not all viewers can handle that. Especially for mobile. However, Twitch's re-encode quality is good. The visual loss is pretty small.

Youtube re-encodes your stream, no matter what. And the quality of their re-encodes is not as good. Most game streams are already only serviceable in visual quality. Re-encoding them (on youtube) usually makes them look noticeably worse than the source stream.

 

[LodeRunner]

Subjective of course, but hasn't been my experience. Twitch is infamous for looking like overly compressed and still weirdly-low max resolution considering it's 2022. Youtube I seem to mostly hear praise about better QoL features and higher streaming resolutions (up to 4K) from the streamers that left Twitch for Youtube.

Twitch maxes out a 6Mbps* intake (regardless of resolution) for most people; I don't know if big streamers have access to higher upload speeds. At 6Mbps,1080p60 is probably going to be mush, especially for anything high-motion. If you had enough CPU grunt to use x264 to encode maybe it would look better.

*There's some stuff written about Twitch accepting a 8.5Mbps stream, but that it may cause issues.

 

[chameleoneel]

Twitch maxes out a 6Mbps* intake (regardless of resolution) for most people; I don't know if big streamers have access to higher upload speeds. At 6Mbps,1080p60 is probably going to be mush, especially for anything high-motion. If you had enough CPU grunt to use x264 to encode maybe it would look better.

*There's some stuff written about Twitch accepting a 8.5Mbps stream, but that it may cause issues.

NVENC since Turing, is highly comparable to x264 "Slow" for game streams. There are some games which one will do clearly better. But, IMO, NVENC is better, overall. Especially for games with a lot of visual noise (high detail, lots of thin details like grass, tree leaves, etc).

 

[LodeRunner]

NVENC since Turing, is highly comparable to x264 "Slow" for game streams. There are some games which one will do clearly better. But, IMO, NVENC is better, overall. Especially for games with a lot of visual noise (high detail, lots of thin details like grass, tree leaves, etc).

I'll have to try streaming something that moves fast again; I have a 2070 Super, but haven't streamed since rebuilding my system from a Xeon E5-2680v3 to a Ryzen 5800. I remember significant macroblocking and other distortion when sending 1080p60 to Twitch; not sure if it's their side or the encoding from my side, I did use NVENC. I changed it to rescale down to 720p60 from a 1080 canvas and quality went way up. My secondary system was receiving 1080p video via NDI and recording to disc at some very high bitrate, like 150 Mbps CBR.

I do agree NVENC is overall better as its impact on the system running the game is much lower than x264.

 

[chameleoneel]

I'll have to try streaming something that moves fast again; I have a 2070 Super, but haven't streamed since rebuilding my system from a Xeon E5-2680v3 to a Ryzen 5800. I remember significant macroblocking and other distortion when sending 1080p60 to Twitch; not sure if it's their side or the encoding from my side, I did use NVENC. I changed it to rescale down to 720p60 from a 1080 canvas and quality went way up. My secondary system was receiving 1080p video via NDI and recording to disc at some very high bitrate, like 150 Mbps CBR.

I do agree NVENC is overall better as its impact on the system running the game is much lower than x264.

As I said, Twitch serves viewers what you send it (unless you are a somewhat larger streamer, with transcoding options vailable).
The macroblocking is on your side of the pipeline. And some blocking is to be expected, for a 1080p/60 stream with medium/high motion. 6,000Kbps isn't enough bitrate. 720p is usually the way to go, for games with medium/high motion.
Slower paced games work well, like Obduction, Obeservation. CRPG's with fixed camera angles. card games. The Last Guardian looked pretty good on stream. Also, older games with less detailed graphics. Portal 1 and 2 both looked quite good at 1080p/60 on a twitch stream.
The 3 most difficult games to stream for me, were Elden Ring, Dark Souls 3, and Soulcalibur 6. I had to drop those to 720p, to maintain detail and minimize smearing and other visual issues.

NVENC was clearly better for Elden Ring. All of the grass and trees and other terrain details, have a better and more consistant look.
Dark Souls 3 was more/less equal between NVENC and x264. Plants, bushes, and fog looked better on NVENC. With x264, the edges of character/creature's bodies and faces didn't really smear under motion, like it did with NVENC.
Soulcalibur being a pretty fast paced, full 3D fighter: all of that camera movement is really difficult to handle. But the big thing, is all of the alpha and post process effects from the fighting. The sparks, full screen liquid ripple vortex distortions, and other visual effects for attacks. All of that is way better with NVENC.

 

[Jon855]

I'll have to try streaming something that moves fast again; I have a 2070 Super, but haven't streamed since rebuilding my system from a Xeon E5-2680v3 to a Ryzen 5800. I remember significant macroblocking and other distortion when sending 1080p60 to Twitch; not sure if it's their side or the encoding from my side, I did use NVENC. I changed it to rescale down to 720p60 from a 1080 canvas and quality went way up. My secondary system was receiving 1080p video via NDI and recording to disc at some very high bitrate, like 150 Mbps CBR.

I do agree NVENC is overall better as its impact on the system running the game is much lower than x264.

I have 2070 Super and I stream 1080p60 at 4500 rate. It works wonderfully for me. I don't have enough upload to push 6000 so I don't.

 

[LodeRunner]

The macroblocking is on your side of the pipeline. And some blocking is to be expected, for a 1080p/60 stream with medium/high motion. 6,000Kbps isn't enough bitrate. 720p is usually the way to go, for games with medium/high motion.

Yup almost everything I play is fast moving and lots of particles.

 

[Sycraft]

Twitch maxes out a 6Mbps* intake (regardless of resolution) for most people; I don't know if big streamers have access to higher upload speeds. At 6Mbps,1080p60 is probably going to be mush, especially for anything high-motion. If you had enough CPU grunt to use x264 to encode maybe it would look better.

Ya 6mbps isn't going to cut it for that rez and framerate, at least with AVC. From my experience the minimal if you want it to look nice and smooth with no blocks is 28mbps, the AVCHD standard, for 1080p60. That's for camera content though, videogames can actually be tougher due to the sharper edges you get. Twitch has always looked like crap to me, particularly for anything with fast motion. It is a little better when you get someone with a super high end right that has a separate computer doing the encoding, but only a little. There's only so much you can do on the encode side, more bitrate is just needed.

I am skeptical AV1 is enough of an improvement to 1440 @ 120 and not have it be a blocky mess. My guess is it'll look a lot like it does now, just higher rez and framerate.

Better compression can help, but at some point we have to admit that bandwidth matters and for really good looking experiences, we need more bits.

 

[chameleoneel]

Ya 6mbps isn't going to cut it for that rez and framerate, at least with AVC. From my experience the minimal if you want it to look nice and smooth with no blocks is 28mbps, the AVCHD standard, for 1080p60. That's for camera content though, videogames can actually be tougher due to the sharper edges you get. Twitch has always looked like crap to me, particularly for anything with fast motion. It is a little better when you get someone with a super high end right that has a separate computer doing the encoding, but only a little. There's only so much you can do on the encode side, more bitrate is just needed.

I am skeptical AV1 is enough of an improvement to 1440 @ 120 and not have it be a blocky mess. My guess is it'll look a lot like it does now, just higher rez and framerate.

Better compression can help, but at some point we have to admit that bandwidth matters and for really good looking experiences, we need more bits.

IMO, 1440p is marketing posture.

AV1 should allow pretty clean 1080p streams. And 720p streams, even at ~4,000Kbps, should also be quite a bit cleaner.