Why is my stream preview choppy?

race_out

2014-08-02 06:53:43 pm

.

Thread title:

TheThrillness

2014-08-02 08:10:05 pm

thethrillness.blogspot.com

I'd have to see some OBS and AmaRec samples to know what your definition of choppy is. You have also not shown the broadcast settings in OBS or what codecs/setup you had for AmaRec.

I've not looked into OBS deinterlacing but I think in this situation letting AmaRec handle everything is better (plus we get lossless files). This is just for local recording as of now? If I had to take a guess at what was wrong it would be dropped frames. This is most common on a single drive PC setup. The next time you record, take a peek at AmaRec's bottom information (where it says 0,0,0). If the right most 0 rises by a significant margin then this is indication of dropped frames and will need a codec change.

race_out

2014-08-03 03:56:49 am

.

TheThrillness

2014-08-03 01:17:56 pm

thethrillness.blogspot.com

http://www.mega.co.nz is pretty good right now for uploading samples. It always maxes out my bandwidth.

As for AmaRec, the frame rate under the Recording tab was set to 10. I thought you would have stated it was really choppy then. Regardless, set that to 30.

I think installing AmaRec's live feature might work well here. It saves having to screen capture. This is a really good guide here on the subject: https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/guide-deinterlacing-for-console-games.1771/

I did notice you wanted to output 720p so if you still want to do this, make sure your set AmaRec's live resize to 1280x720 and configure aspect ratio controls as desired (720p is 16:9 where as a 480i will be 4:3).

DeMoNFLiP84

2014-08-03 01:44:00 pm

Under the Graph 1 tab of AmarecTV go to format and change it to w=640, h=480, fps=29.97. fcc=YUY2, bit=16

don't ask me why but from my experience, i had with the video lag when the format was set to 720 x 480. I assume that your setup and settings are correct then changing the format will resolve your issue hopefully.

Let us know!

DeMoNFLiP84

2014-08-03 01:50:23 pm

A Serious Noob

Quote from DeMoNFLiP84:

Under the Graph 1 tab of AmarecTV go to format and change it to w=640, h=480, fps=29.97. fcc=YUY2, bit=16

don't ask me why but from my experience, i had with the video lag when the format was set to 720 x 480. I assume that your setup and settings are correct then changing the format will resolve your issue hopefully.

Let us know!

Hadouken!

race_out

2014-08-03 02:47:20 pm

.

race_out

2014-08-03 03:12:03 pm

.

TheThrillness

2014-08-03 03:16:28 pm

thethrillness.blogspot.com

Yes. I should also note that you should also disable the deinterlacing in the device selection of OBS since AmaRec does this for you and is most likely faster than what OBS does.

race_out

2014-08-03 03:25:05 pm

.

TheThrillness

Edit history:

TheThrillness: 2014-08-03 03:47:23 pm

2014-08-03 03:46:25 pm

thethrillness.blogspot.com

You would give yourself like a 854x480 resolution (or if you want, 720p as you had previously) and then use the extra horizontal width to fit in splits. I guess once you get the choppiness fixed you can work that out later.

race_out

2014-08-03 05:10:24 pm

.

TheThrillness

2014-08-03 06:03:16 pm

thethrillness.blogspot.com

I guess maybe 720p encoding was too demanding or something? Seems very weird if a gaming PC can't do that though. Least it worked I guess.

race_out

2014-08-09 11:59:11 am

as of late i am still getting choppiness and screen tearing on my amarec and OBS recordings. i will try to upload samples soon.

honorableJay

Edit history:

honorableJay: 2014-08-09 09:14:02 pm

2014-08-09 09:12:45 pm

The Dork Knight himself.

One thing I noticed at the start of this was you were having both Amarec and OBS access the Dazzle at the same time. Normally this would be impossible, but assuming it could be possible, that could be another cause of the stuttering.

The way the stream should be setup is like this:
Amarec grabs the direct feed from the Dazzle and sets up the Amarec Live virtual capture card
OBS then gets the game footage from the Amarec Live virtual capture card

For Amarec, once you get version 3.10 (linked in this post) set it up like this:
Video capture: Dazzle, 720x480@29.97fps OR 640x480@29.97fps
Audio capture: Line-in (basically keep the audio video capture how you've been doing it)
Preview: Deinterlacer set to Auto or Top Field First, the mode (Retro/Action/RGP) should be based on your game of choice but NES/SNES/Genesis are all Retro, Scan Doubler to Auto should work
Recording: Set the framerate to 999 with the Filter set to off, this will record the raw footage from the Dazzle
Live: Make sure the upper section (Mixer, Mic, PC, etc) are all uncheck. For the lower section, check Live Enable, set the Framerate to whatever you want to stream at (30 or 60 works), set the resize to whatever you want (setting it to the same res you're capturing works too, OBS can resize), make sure the bottom line is set to Line:1, and the audio can be left alone

Once in OBS, add in the Amarec Video Capture the same way I have on the attached picture. You don't have to setup the Deinterlacing in OBS since Amarec has already taken care of that. Note that you use both the Amarec Video Capture and Amarec Audio Capture for the game footage.

I hope this can clear up some of the choppiness you've been experiencing.

One thing I noticed at the start of this was you were having both Amarec and OBS access the Dazzle at the same time. Normally this would be impossible, but assuming it could be possible, that could be another cause of the stuttering.

The way the stream should be setup is like this:
Amarec grabs the direct feed from the Dazzle and sets up the Amarec Live virtual capture card
OBS then gets the game footage from the Amarec Live virtual capture card

For Amarec, once you get version 3.10 (linked in this post) set it up like this:
Video capture: Dazzle, 720x480@29.97fps OR 640x480@29.97fps
Audio capture: Line-in  (basically keep the audio video capture how you've been doing it)
Preview: Deinterlacer set to Auto or Top Field First, the mode (Retro/Action/RGP) should be based on your game of choice but NES/SNES/Genesis are all Retro, Scan Doubler to Auto should work
Recording: Set the framerate to 999 with the Filter set to off, this will record the raw footage from the Dazzle
Live: Make sure the upper section (Mixer, Mic, PC, etc) are all uncheck. For the lower section, check Live Enable, set the Framerate to whatever you want to stream at (30 or 60 works), set the resize to whatever you want (setting it to the same res you're capturing works too, OBS can resize), make sure the bottom line is set to Line:1, and the audio can be left alone

Once in OBS, add in the Amarec Video Capture the same way I have on the attached picture. You don't have to setup the Deinterlacing in OBS since Amarec has already taken care of that. Note that you use both the Amarec Video Capture and Amarec Audio Capture for the game footage.

I hope this can clear up some of the choppiness you've been experiencing.

Attachments:

amarectv310.zip

obsamarec.jpg

race_out

2014-08-11 02:07:50 pm

.

TheThrillness

2014-08-11 03:48:00 pm

thethrillness.blogspot.com

The OBS sample and the AmaRec one looked fine to me. Granted I don't know Mario too well though. I guess someone else can confirm.

honorableJay

Edit history:

honorableJay: 2014-08-11 06:49:14 pm

2014-08-11 06:32:18 pm

The Dork Knight himself.

I just checked the Amarec sample, and it looks perfect to me. Even after a simple D4 F1 3D HQ encode with Yua I couldn't find any problems (not sure if those are the right settings, I was doing it pretty fast). I didn't experience any stuttering at all. Even the source looks nice.

I'll edit this once I get the OBS recording.

**Edit**
Wow that didn't take as long as I thought.
Anyway, I did see the skipping you're referring to in the OBS recording, and this is somewhat normal. The biggest factor is that your system isn't necessarily the fastest, so you are experiencing some CPU bottlenecking here. The other cause of the stuttering is that the N64 outputs at 29.97fps, but you have OBS set for 30fps. Since I know the Amarec Live component and deinterlacer are being used, I can guarantee that the framerate conversion taking place with the Live output is part of the cause. You're taking a 29.97fps framerate and deinterlacing it to 59.94fps. Then you're converting that down to 30fps for OBS. Since 59.94/2 does not equal 30fps, Amarec is dropping frames every so often to keep the audio and video in sync. It's perfectly normal, and until OBS allows streaming at framerates other than whole numbers, there isn't much you can do about it.

As for the Amarec recording being choppy for you, it probably has to do with the fact that Lagarith records all footage in a lossless format. Unlike a standard compressed MP4 file, the bitrate for these types of files can choke older systems when you try to play it without encoding it first. The good news is it is recording perfectly fine for official submission. The resolution is not normal due to the cropping used in Amarec (probably better to just crop in OBS) but in this case none of the actual gameplay is lost.

I just checked the Amarec sample, and it looks perfect to me. Even after a simple D4 F1 3D HQ encode with Yua I couldn't find any problems (not sure if those are the right settings, I was doing it pretty fast). I didn't experience any stuttering at all. Even the source looks nice.

I'll edit this once I get the OBS recording.

**Edit**
Wow that didn't take as long as I thought.
Anyway, I did see the skipping you're referring to in the OBS recording, and this is somewhat normal. The biggest factor is that your system isn't necessarily the fastest, so you are experiencing some CPU bottlenecking here. The other cause of the stuttering is that the N64 outputs at 29.97fps, but you have OBS set for 30fps. Since I know the Amarec Live component and deinterlacer are being used, I can guarantee that the framerate conversion taking place with the Live output is part of the cause. You're taking a 29.97fps framerate and deinterlacing it to 59.94fps. Then you're converting that down to 30fps for OBS. Since 59.94/2 does not equal 30fps, Amarec is dropping frames every so often to keep the audio and video in sync. It's perfectly normal, and until OBS allows streaming at framerates other than whole numbers, there isn't much you can do about it.

As for the Amarec recording being choppy for you, it probably has to do with the fact that Lagarith records all footage in a lossless format. Unlike a standard compressed MP4 file, the bitrate for these types of files can choke older systems when you try to play it without encoding it first. The good news is it is recording perfectly fine for official submission. The resolution is not normal due to the cropping used in Amarec (probably better to just crop in OBS) but in this case none of the actual gameplay is lost.

race_out

2014-08-19 04:42:31 am

.

honorableJay

2014-08-20 05:09:10 pm

The Dork Knight himself.

Unfortunately streaming to Twitch can be hit or miss, and it can have nothing to do with your end necessarily. It all depends on the current load of the ingest server you're using for Twitch and your own internet. Sometimes your computer can choke when encoding, but since your own local recording is more or less unaffected it sounds like a problem with the Twitch servers. The only way to really fix this is to either lower your encoding bitrate/resolution/framerate or switch to a different ingest server. For me, I have to use the Virginia ingest server (even though I live 3 hours outside of NYC) because the NY ingest server is too overloaded and my streams look like poo-poo.