Game Lags when Streaming

[xartin]

one other thing that would be a huge benefit is not using fme to transcode the video from 1080p to 720p which does use a LOT of cpu horsepower. If your ouput video resolution is smaller than your configured input resolution in fme it forces fme to use cpu processing to transcode video to a lower resolution often creating very noticeable lag.

if you use vhsrcap to resize the video from 1920x1080 to 1280x720 and configure fme to stream at 1280x720 as both input and output in fme your results will be far less laggy since fme will not be forced to transcode video to a lower resolution.

here's your config from above which lead me to suspect that's what the problem might be. also the default specification framerate for HD video is 23fps. If you can get close to 23fps with the settings I mentoned it's likely the best results your cpu will be capable of as tim previously mentoned. I'm sure the video card upgrade definitely helped overall but some fine tuning of your stream config will likely reveal the best results your able to do with the rest of your system.

lastly i also wanted to mention that both fme 2.5 and fme 3.2 will cause noticable video lag if you force live video transcoding. even my i7 920 lagged whith either version of fme if I configured fme to transcode video and i'm running dual 480GTX nvidias in sli.

<capture>
<video>
<device>VHScrCap</device>
<crossbar_input>0</crossbar_input>
<frame_rate>25.00</frame_rate>
<size>
<width>1920</width>
<height>1080</height>
</size>
</video>
<audio>
<device>Line In (High Definition Audio </device>
<crossbar_input>0</crossbar_input>
<sample_rate>44100</sample_rate>
<channels>2</channels>
<input_volume>97</input_volume>
</audio>
</capture>
<process>
<video>
<preserve_aspect></preserve_aspect>
</video>
</process>
<encode>
<video>
<format>VP6</format>
<datarate>1400;</datarate>
<outputsize>1280x720;</outputsize>
<advanced>
<keyframe_frequency>5 Seconds</keyframe_frequency>
<quality>Good Quality - Good Framerate</quality>
<noise_reduction>None</noise_reduction>
<datarate_window>Medium</datarate_window>
<cpu_usage>Dedicated</cpu_usage>

[Mn3MoN1C]

So I've changed to FME 2.5 and set my vhsrcap to output to 1280 x 720. My new xml settings are

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?>
<flashmediaencoder_profile>
    <preset>
        <name>Custom</name>
        <description></description>
    </preset>
    <capture>
        <video>
        <device>VHScrCap</device>
        <crossbar_input>0</crossbar_input>
        <frame_rate>23</frame_rate>
        <size>
            <width>1280</width>
            <height>720</height>
        </size>
        </video>
        <audio>
        <device>Line In</device>
        <crossbar_input>0</crossbar_input>
        <sample_rate>44100</sample_rate>
        <channels>2</channels>
        <input_volume>75</input_volume>
        </audio>
    </capture>
    <process>
        <video>
        <crop>
            <left>0</left>
            <top>0</top>
            <right>0</right>
            <bottom>3</bottom>
        </crop>

        </video>
    </process>
    <encode>
        <video>
        <format>VP6</format>
        <datarate>1000</datarate>
        <advanced>
            <keyframe_frequency>5 seconds</keyframe_frequency>
            <quality>Avg Quality - Great Framerate</quality>
            <noise_reduction>None</noise_reduction>
            <datarate_window>Medium</datarate_window>
            <cpu_usage>Dedicated</cpu_usage>
        </advanced>
        </video>
        <audio>
        <format>Mp3</format>
        <datarate>128</datarate>
        </audio>
    </encode>
    <restartinterval>
        <days></days>
        <hours></hours>
        <minutes></minutes>
    </restartinterval>
    <reconnectinterval>
        <attempts></attempts>
        <interval></interval>
    </reconnectinterval>
    <output>
        <rtmp>
        <url>rtmp://live.justin.tv/app</url>
        <backup_url></backup_url>
        <stream>STREAM_ID</stream>
        </rtmp>
    </output>
    <metadata>
        <entry>
        <key>author</key>
        <value></value>
        </entry>
        <entry>
        <key>copyright</key>
        <value></value>
        </entry>
        <entry>
        <key>description</key>
        <value></value>
        </entry>
        <entry>
        <key>keywords</key>
        <value></value>
        </entry>
        <entry>
        <key>rating</key>
        <value></value>
        </entry>
        <entry>
        <key>title</key>
        <value></value>
        </entry>
    </metadata>
    <preview>
        <audio></audio>
    </preview>
    <log>
        <level>100</level>
        <directory>C:\fme\</directory>
    </log>
</flashmediaencoder_profile>

My newest test of the stream is here, justNeph's Gaming Binge - Gearing up my Lock and Alchemy!

It is a lot smoother but I'm wondering if there anything further I can tweak to maximize the quality.

[xartin]

one thing you may have to do is turn down the in game video quality a bit if your using ultra your pc may have trouble handling it while streaming.

also are you running the game with directx 11 enabled? if not enable it.

do you have the latest nvidia drivers from nvidia.com or did you use the outdated drivers from the cdrom that came with the new video card?

is your world of warcraft program files located on the same physical hard disk as your os install? If it is you might consider making a copy of it to a second hard drive and running it from the second drive instead. that can also be a significant performance increase for wow.

Lastly... defragment. and not with the windows defragger. download a trial copy of diskeeper pro premier and run that. set it to automatic and make sure in the preferences it is set to perform an extensive deframentation job with folder index consolidation enabled.

It if wasn't for diskeeper I would likely tolerate the additional nuicance of running games on linux using wine instead because ext3 and ext4 linux filesystems never fragment nearly as bad as ntfs in windows.

Here's another reason why i would never run a gaming rig or any of my personal windows servers without diskeeper as well as the recommended settings. Notice how many wasted file accesses diskeeper prevented on my system. Lastly yes that is a 5.5TB sata 3 raid 5 array

here's a link to the original full size image http://i.imgur.com/STAZd.jpg

[Mn3MoN1C]

I enabled Direct X and ran that defragging software and I have the latest drivers. The results are below

justNeph's Gaming Binge - Gearing up my Lock and Alchemy!

I also had it turned down to high.

[xartin]

the stream is definitely a lot smoother than it was previously so it does seem to be making some progress. you could also try streaming on a lower graphics setting to see if that helps further.

Testing is everything to find what works best for your current hardware. I do know your video card itself is more than capable of running multiple wow installs on ultra however the rest of your system is the bottleneck as far as finding the "sweet spot" your system can smoothly stream while your gaming.

You could also try streaming with H.264 with main profile instead of baseline as main h264 is intended for higher motion video such as gaming.

a few other considerations for some further tuning efforts. do keep in mind that with your current hardware aside from the video card it's possible you may not achieve the ideal results that you would find acceptable.

are you getting any frame drops in FME while streaming? input and output frame drops are an important factor of determining how well your system can cope with the demands as well as the consistency of the configuration for both fme and vhsrcap

whats the max fps fme seems to stream at with 23fps configured as the current maximum? test with both vp6 and h264 and attempt to find the sweet spot and cap your stream fps there in the config.

If it's over 15fps and 15 looks better then as Tim mentioned previously 15fps is good enough but certainly using video fps standards for a guideline is always very helpful as well. I typically stream at 29.97 fps and rarely ever have frame drops but I also have an i7-920 and 3MBit upload.

what bitrate are you streaming at and whats your max upload speed?

if you can stream at 500kbps less than your maximum upload so you leave some bandwidth for wow to communicate with the game servers and your system doesn't appear to struggle under the load the video may be significantly clearer.

I'm certainly not an expert with setting up fme but this has worked for me in testing my setup. I only lack the bandwidth it seems to have a really sharp high definition 720p stream it seems as 2200-2400kbps doesn;t seem to be enough for my liking to stream and multibox 5 wow accounts.

here's a replay video multiboxing 5 accounts from my channel with all of my accounts configured to fair setting in game. even with my system if i use higher video setting with 5 accounts my game just lags while streaming because of the video processing lag.

http://www.justin.tv/xartin/b/297259060

possessing some knowledge of video encoding standards can definitely be a benefit as well.

[Snowy42]

I might just put my word in here.

One thing that I immediately noticed is your CPU. Q6600's have the potential to be MASSIVELY overclocked with some decent air cooling. You could pick up a good air cooler for around $50 and bring that thing up past 3.0ghz.

If you don't, streaming with it as stock is still possible. I know you've worked really hard on getting your stream setup with FME and VHScrCap, but you could just try this: XSplit - Going Live is Simple

It basically replaces FME and VHScrCap, and brings it down to one little program. One downfall is that XSplit looks like it will be going into a paid-use program. But i'm not sure how long that'll be. XSplit makes it so easy, and i've managed to get a good 720p stream up without having some huge i7 system.

I'm running a Q9400 @ 3.2Ghz, 4gb ram and a HD4890. Compared to an i7-2600 it's nothing, but it's running the stream okay.

I've had to tweak my WoW a little though. My chars are running at 15fps when in the background, and i've limited them to 30fps when in the front.

By doing this, my CPU sits at around 60-80% usage most of the time. So with a little tweaking, and some changes to FPS/Resolution/graphics/etc I think you could get a nice little stream going.

[SethLan]

Try to change your Theme to windows Classic, it helps alot! i got tip from rev and my game dont drag anymore while turning strem on (on my end offtopic: i'm still testing my stream and trying to find soft spot) you have same speed as mine.

and of course having 5 chars or only 1 is huge difference. with 1 toon running i have no problem.

[Chamassa]

Sethlan good point.
Theres also a ton of options in windows, like aero, that slow windows down a ton.

[SethLan]

Cham yep, Each comp is different, and i dont belive you can just turn everything on, thinkig you're good to go it takes some testing.

[xartin]

Yeah really good point. I haven't used windows 7 aero theme for over a year. aero might look "cool" but it's not even close to compiz fusion eye candy for linux

here's a little teaser of compiz on gentoo... and the whole system running on 75MB of memory to boot.

Can you boot your PC in under 100MB of RAM? - YouTube

in short aero lags badly and uses gpu resources required for accellerated graphics.

I like this little compiz demo as well hehe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvcbryKIjss