Streaming with NVIDIA NVENC Settings in OBS

If you are planning to broadcast with OBS from your NVIDIA graphics system, it is a good idea to check out this guide.

The purpose of this guide is to help you understand how to use the NVIDIA NVENC encoder in OBS. We simplified some concepts so that everyone can easily understand the subject.

Bit Rate, Resolution and Frame Rate

Encoding is all about compressing images. The smaller the size of the image, the less we have to compress it. Thus, we preserve the image quality as much as possible. While the same is true for the frame rate, the viewer may actually notice a drop in FPS but not much of the drop in resolution. Therefore, we will always try to stream at 60 FPS.

First, run a speed test to determine your upload speed (eg. Speedtest.net ). We want to use around 75% of our upload speed, as other programs like gaming and Discord will also fight for bandwidth.

We will then determine the resolution and FPS we can use for this bitrate. Recommendations on what to use on most streaming sites ( Twitch , Mixer , Youtube ) is found. These are the values ​​recommended by NVIDIA:

• *Important note for High Motion Content: If you are going to play scenes with high motion (eg racing games, some Battle Royale games, etc.), we strongly recommend that you reduce your resolution. High motion content cannot be overcompressed and may suffer from distortion that causes your stream to appear frame by frame. If you lower the resolution, you also reduce the amount of encoded data, so the resulting image is better for the viewer. For Fortnite, for example, many broadcasters decide to broadcast at 1600 × 900 60 FPS.
• Note for those who want to start streaming on Twitch or for existing streamers: Converting videos allows a viewer to view your video in a different resolution and therefore requires lower bandwidth. Twitch offers guaranteed transcoding only to broadcasters in the Partner program; Non-partners can also receive transcoding, but there is no guarantee. This is especially important if your viewers are on mobile phones or their internet speeds are not that good. You may want to consider streaming at a lower bit rate and resolution to lower the bandwidth required to view your channel.

Recommended OBS Settings – Simple Settings

Start the software in the first place. Then choose Settings from the screen that appears. A window will appear before you. Then switch to the Video menu in the window that appears. Then click on the Dimension Reduction Filter menu and close the menu by selecting the “Lanczos, (finalized sizing, 36 samples) setting and clicking Apply.

Basic (Canvas) Resolution: Set the resolution you normally play with. That is, your desktop resolution (if you’re playing in borderless mode) or the game resolution you normally enter (if you’re playing in fullscreen).

Output (Scaled) Resolution: Enter the appropriate resolution for your Upload Speed ​​and Bitrate shared in the previous section.

FPS: You should choose the appropriate FPS value for your upload speed you see in the table above.

Output Settings

• Bit Rate : Enter the Bitrate suitable for your Upload Speed ​​as in the table in the previous section.
• Encoder: Select Hardware (NVENC).
  Enable Advanced Encoder Settings: Not marked
  Encoder Preset: Quality – This is already the default option. Note that it is visible only if you check the Encode Advanced Encoder Settings option. –
• Register Path: This is the directory where videos will be saved. Make sure there is enough space on the hard drive of your choice
• Record Quality: High Quality usually works for most users, but if you have enough disk space or are going to shoot short videos (about 60 seconds) you can change this to Indistinguishable Quality.
• Recording Format: FLV veya MKV
• Encoder: Hardware (NVENC)

Recommended OBS Settings – Advanced Settings

This gives you access to all settings.

• Encoder: Select NVIDIA NVENC H.264 (new).
• Force Streaming Service Encoder Settings: Leave this checked – This will ensure that if you accidentally enter an incorrect value, it will be corrected. –
• Speed ​​Control: Select CBR – This determines the rate at which frames are encoded. –
• Bit rate: Enter the appropriate bitrate for your Upload Speed ​​as mentioned in the previous section. Note that some platforms have a maximum bitrate (i.e. 6000 Kbps for Twitch currently)
• Key Frame Range: Set to 2 – Streaming platforms may limit what you can choose here, and most require 2 settings. –
• Preset: Select Quality – you can change this to Maximum Quality to enable 2-pass encoding; this will give you a small quality improvement. –
• Profile: Set to High – Profile sets a group setting in H.264 Codec. It does not affect performance and provides access to a number of features that are key to streaming, so this should always be set to High. –
• Looking forward: Checked – This allows the encoder to dynamically choose the number of B-Frames between 0 and the number of B-Frames you specify. B-frames improve image quality but consume most of your available bitrate; therefore, they lower the quality in high moving content. –
• Looking forward: This feature is accelerated by CUDA; Turn this off if your GPU usage is high to ensure smooth streaming.
• Psycho Visual Tuning: Checked – This enables Speed ​​Distortion Optimization in the encoder, which greatly optimizes the way you use bitrate and improves image quality during motion.
  GPU: 0 – If your system has 2 GPUs, you can choose which one to use for encoding. This is not recommended as NVENC is already very efficient and the little gain you can gain from using a second card is lost when you have to copy the frame to the second GPU. –
  Max B Frame: Set to 4 – If you uncheck the Look forward option, lower it to 2 B Frame –

NVIDIA NVENC – Other Settings

Apart from OBS, we need to make a different setting from our operating system. This process is to activate the game mode on Windows 10. You can follow the steps below in order to do it.

Press the Windows key and Game Modu in summer. In front of you Game Either way Hungry You will see a setting that appears. Open it by selecting it. If it does not appear in the form of searching, respectively; Settings → Game → Game Modu You can reach the same section by following the tabs. You will see the window. In this window Game Modu Open If not, click it once to turn it On.

Seeing and Adjusting GPU Usage Rate

GPU Use rate of it will significantly affect your broadcast efficiency. To solve this problem OBS 24.0.3 If you have version and above, just run the software as an administrator. However, if you cannot work as an administrator due to a possible situation or a reason, it is useful to do the following actions. This process GPU Use your rate percent 95If it is above, do it. Referenced video card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 You

The things you need to do can be listed as follows:

You can enable V-Sync, lower the graphics of your game or turn down the resolution. Or set the resolution to 1080p or lower by adjusting the resolution in OBS.

What is NVIDIA NVENC?

NVENC, NVIDIAis the encoder of. It is a physical portion of our GPUs devoted solely to encoding. This means that your GPU can function normally regardless of whether you use this region for streaming or recording. Other encoders like X264 use your CPU to encode, which means you have a hard time allocating resources to gaming and programming. That’s why using NVENC allows you to play games at a higher frame rate and avoid stuttering, giving you and your audience a better experience.

NVIDIA, which has made updates to help ensure the best output quality in NVENC in the last two GPU generations, stated that NVENC in GTX 10 series GPUs provides superior quality than the most widely used x264 preset, x264 Very Fast; He states that the NVENC in the RTX 20 series outperforms the x264 Fast and is on par with the x264 Medium, a preset that requires an expensive dual PC setup.

NVIDIA NVENC troubleshooting

First of all, we can say that the problem may be bilateral. In other words, errors may have occurred in the viewer internet and your internet or hardware / software. In the first place, according to the recommendations made by the NVIDIA team, it should be your priority to test the internet speed and, if the problem does not appear, to see if the platform you are broadcasting has made a statement about whether there is a problem or not. However, if the problem is different, you may need to roll up your sleeves for a solution. In this context, you can start by analyzing your data by saying View → Statistics on OBS.

Common Types of Errors

FPS missing error on stream: The statistics window will show the missing frames. If there are missing frames while streaming, run Task Manager and select your GPU in the Performance menu. Check 3D load and Encoder load.

Windows may be prioritizing the game over OBS, especially if the 3D load is above 95 percent in 1440p or 4K setups. To fix this (if you are using OBS 24.0.3 or higher version) you can prioritize OBS over the Game here. In this case, run OBS in Game Mode.

If the Video Coding load has been maximized, you need to reduce the load. If you are encoding 4K60 FPS, your quality setting in OBS is Max. Make sure it is set to Quality, not Quality. Maximum Quality does 2-pass encoding (i.e. encodes twice) which is too much for the encoder.

The image looks very pale: The most likely problem is trying to force too much quality with sufficient bitrate. Consider lowering the resolution and frame rate (if needed) and try again. If the quality improves, you can continue with your broadcast.

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