NS2 Streams
Tom-R
Join Date: 2013-01-09 Member: 178515Members
Join Date: 2013-01-09 Member: 178515Members
Hey,
I'd just like to make a discussion on the streams of NS2 doing the rounds, even the stream from the finals in ESL.
What the hell is with the quality!?. The finals between Arc and Nexzil we're so terrible frames and quality wise, it was like someone with 56k was streaming. Not very professional at all.
I noticed some very popular caster's (reddog and blind) also stream in bad quality.
So, my question is;
Why are these streams so poor quality?. Do these people live in areas where uploads speeds are poor?. Are they streaming from mediocre rigs?.
I can stream at 1200p, 9k bitrate and 60fps. (granted the fps is game dependant, mostly between 40-70 while streaming.) I'm currently using a 20Mbit upload. (That's 2.2MB/sec upload). With 80Mbit download (9.0MB/sec). Rig is an i7 2600k @ 4.5 and a GTX 680 @ 1275.
I'm tired of watching poor quality streams. The figures I quoted are possibly extreme, but I see no reason why we can't be enjoying streams of higher quality than what we're being given.
Anyone care to comment?
I'd just like to make a discussion on the streams of NS2 doing the rounds, even the stream from the finals in ESL.
What the hell is with the quality!?. The finals between Arc and Nexzil we're so terrible frames and quality wise, it was like someone with 56k was streaming. Not very professional at all.
I noticed some very popular caster's (reddog and blind) also stream in bad quality.
So, my question is;
Why are these streams so poor quality?. Do these people live in areas where uploads speeds are poor?. Are they streaming from mediocre rigs?.
I can stream at 1200p, 9k bitrate and 60fps. (granted the fps is game dependant, mostly between 40-70 while streaming.) I'm currently using a 20Mbit upload. (That's 2.2MB/sec upload). With 80Mbit download (9.0MB/sec). Rig is an i7 2600k @ 4.5 and a GTX 680 @ 1275.
I'm tired of watching poor quality streams. The figures I quoted are possibly extreme, but I see no reason why we can't be enjoying streams of higher quality than what we're being given.
Anyone care to comment?
Comments
Here's a sample of the quality I can steam at.
1080p/30fps: http://www.twitch.tv/scardybob/c/2123331
There are a few reasons for this:
- Hardware/upload not good enough
- Don't have Twitch Partnership so can't offer a lower resolution option to viewers
I still find the standard 720p/30fps to be good enough though. Not sure what happened at the ESL studio, but the video quality was unusually poor (probably a technical mishap rather than poor hardware).
Reddog and Blind's cast are both pretty blurry ingame. The audio compression is horrible too. It's really not a patch on scardys or mine. The point I was trying make was: surely they can do better!. As for making a compromise in terms of quality for viewers bandwidth, there's really not many people left that can't watch a 1080/30 stream. That doesn't require much download.
My limit is 70gigs a month, so you could see how that could be problematic. And I'm pretty sure many people in Canada have around 60-100gigs a month.
I'm sure lots of other people around the world deal with bandwidth restrictions too.
Frankly if you are too picky to watch 720p, I don't know what to say to you, I can remember when my limit was 30gigs a month only a few years ago and I watched streams in 360p perfectly fine.
It's simple, you're wrong...
There are still lots of people on lower bandwidth ISP's throughout the world. Not even mentioning on some bandwidth cap and since Twitch doesn't have the resources to provide multiple stream qualities for everyone, this will be an issue for quite some time.
What you have sir, is a first world problem :P
even if most people's computers or connections can handle it (they can't), twitch servers are very unreliable and often end up lagging out and skipping through no fault of your own
twitch doesn't provide viewer options until partnership either so you'd be isolating a lot of your audience
I have a GTX660 Ti and stream at 720p from a 1680x1050 monitor, and no one watching my casts has ever complained of blurriness or horribly-compressed audio (except for my my mic static which is something I just fixed).
Honestly, I just think you're a picky viewer
i7 2600 @ 3.4
gtx 460
8 GB ram
should be enough to run this game 4 times at once and stream...
eg.
http://www.twitch.tv/biz2/b/391953424 (don't follow for NS2. i barely stream NS2 let alone play it)
also without partnership, streaming at high bitrate is worthless for the masses since they won't be able to watch it even if Twitch was solid
While I do have the bandwidth to sustain reasonably good quality 720p 30fps, I can't do that without hearing complaints from my family about being unable to do anything with the internet or people unable to watch the stream.
Here's a sample: http://www.twitch.tv/strikerx3/c/2120966 (warning: loud maniacal laughter!)
I have 35 Mbps download / 3 Mbps upload and I can't watch some of the higher quality streams. Virsoul is one of them. Fortunately his channel has the option for 360p, so I can still watch his stream.
As someone who has had access to nothing craptastic internet speeds/infrastructure my entire life, LOL.
I can't remember the exact details as I'm at work right now, but I think this is it:
540p 30fps
1800k video bitrate, 160k audio bitrate
Quality 6
veryfast preset
Using OBS.
Of course its a first world problem!
I had no idea that Canada and the State's had such heavy bandwidth restrictions. I thought the UK was bad, but nearly all ISPs now offer unlimited usage. Pretty sure this is common within Europe at least.
I'm not too picky to watch them. Blind and Reddog are acceptable, I was merely seeing if more could be achieved. The ESL stream was horrible though. That imo, is unacceptable.
rantology pls go.
First time I wanted to watch Scardybob stream an Aus match, I was told it was 1080p. That kind of internet is something I don't think I'll be getting for a long, long time. Where I live in Aus, I can't even stream our home casted matches in their standard 480p. I have to wait until after the show and then start pre-loading everything.
It's always great to be able to show the best quality that a game can show, but you also need to be aware of the people you might unknowingly exclude that may be showing interest. I don't know how hard it is to have a variety of different resolutions available to viewers but finding a happy medium is probably better than catering to the select few?
For example, here are some examples of testing the quality impact of different bitrates for 1080p streaming:
The pixelation effect can better be seen with actual video though imo:
1080p, 2000 kbps bitrate/buffer = http://www.twitch.tv/scardybob/b/392373732
1080p, 5000 kbps bitrate/buffer = http://www.twitch.tv/scardybob/b/392376173