Frame drop issues while streaming, seems to be network related? (OBS Studio)

[Helgaiden]

Hopefully some of you are familiar with OBS studio and/or streaming network issues.

So i've been trying to help my brother get his streaming situation in order since i built him a 6-core PC a while back (Xeon E5-1650 aka i7-3930k) with a 980ti and 16gb ram. Seems like it would be a fine system for 720p30 single system gaming/streaming and for the most part, everything runs great...on the system. A while ago his internet company (charter/spectrum) started having major choking issues with a constant upload load...it would just drop to less than 1000kbps and made streaming impossible. Eventually they rectified this, or so we thought. Anyways, nowadays his streams seem to run hiccupy. Somewhat smooth at times, but then hiccupy at times too. I was watching last night via chromecast on my TV, other friends watching said it was hiccuping as well, then i recorded it on my phone too. Heres the clip, it fully loads in at 0:36.

I've tweaked his OBS alot and it doesn't seem to help a whole lot. Turned the CPU preset from Faster to Veryfast and lowered bitrate, no change (felt like it got worse honestly). His OBS stats seem to point at network as opposed to CPU as well.

https://imgur.com/a/XiFyf

Now, the above was happening while wired in to the router/switch. Here is an OBS log pic he took when he was using wifi and the same exact behavior was happening.

https://imgur.com/a/jxNcy

"Number of dropped frames due to insufficient bandwidth/connection stalls"

I tested his max stable upload wired and on wifi by dropping a 236mb video file into his google drive to upload. Wired saw 10-11mbps consistent during upload, wifi say 9-11mbps consistent with occasional dip to 6mbps but instantly back up to 9-11 (this didnt happen all that much, but it happened). Wifi is a wireless AC USB dongle plugged into a USB 3.0 port.

Any advice? Thanks in advance

OBS Settings: Video section

Base canvas = 1920x1080

Output (scaled) resolution = 1280x720

Common FPS value = 30

Downscale filter = Lanczos 32 sample
Output section:

Encoder x264

Rescale output NOT checked

Bitrate 4000 (but has been set as low as 2500 with minimal change)

keyframe interval 2

enforce streaming service encoder settings: unchecked

use custom buffer size: unchecked

CBR checked/selection

CPU preset: Faster (but sometimes Veryfast for troubleshooting)

edit/update:
My brother tried going live again earlier today and his bitrate was dropping into the hundreds and spiking up to the 5000kbps range, despite being CBR and set to 2500kbps. This is similar behavior to what the ISP was causing before, and i advised him to call them and start complaining again. The other PC in the house is in a locked room and we wont be able to use it for testing for a while. Im thinking its the ISP again.

 

[wellen1981]

I agree, it doesn't sound OBS/CPU related - my educated guess would be packet loss at the ISP headend (or further back on the ISP network).

There is one other check your brother could do and that is checking his cpu temps when testing.
Could his cpu be throttling slightly under load due to heat issues?

I suspect it to be ISP packet loss issues. He could test that by running some traceroutes and pings when he is having the issue.

I used to work for the UKs biggest fibre ISP and when the issue happened there, sometimes the issue would only manifest itself at certain times of the day.
Also sometimes it would happen during peak, other times could be non-peak times.

He could run pings to the IP address of the Twitch upload server he uses in his OBS settings eg

ping 2.2.2.2 -n 1000

This would ping the IP 1000 times and he could watch the output in realtime for evidence of packet loss.
(This is best done when he is having the trouble)

He could also test by just choosing the next nearest twitch server in obs settings as I guess there is also the rare chance that the twitch server he uploads to is the problem...

Have you or your brother tried another rig to rule out his build as the issue yet? Might be worth doing.

Could also be the classic 'others in the house hammering the connection' situation (unless only your brother was using the internet connection at the time)

hth

Edit: Also here's another huge tip for anyone in general, you get much smoother operation if you assign games to specific cores, then assign obs to a seperate core, also if you have cores to spare this can be improved further by leaving first core eg core0 free so the OS has immediate access to the cpu at all times (eg in the situation of onboard sound/networking).
This can be achieved manually everytime in task man set cpu affinity but you can also use software such as process lasso (free) or cpucores (paid and easier/more automated).
I personally do it manually as one-off but the convenience of process lasso is great for frequently needing to use it.
And on really lazy days just for gaming efficiently, cpucores is a couple of clicks approach.

This tip helps to improve/increase fps in games and avoid stuttering but also makes good improvements on minimum framerates during gaming and average framerates.

 

[Helgaiden]

I agree, it doesn't sound OBS/CPU related - my educated guess would be packet loss at the ISP headend (or further back on the ISP network).

There is one other check your brother could do and that is checking his cpu temps when testing.
Could his cpu be throttling slightly under load due to heat issues?

I suspect it to be ISP packet loss issues. He could test that by running some traceroutes and pings when he is having the issue.

I used to work for the UKs biggest fibre ISP and when the issue happened there, sometimes the issue would only manifest itself at certain times of the day.
Also sometimes it would happen during peak, other times could be non-peak times.

He could run pings to the IP address of the Twitch upload server he uses in his OBS settings eg

ping 2.2.2.2 -n 1000

This would ping the IP 1000 times and he could watch the output in realtime for evidence of packet loss.
(This is best done when he is having the trouble)

He could also test by just choosing the next nearest twitch server in obs settings as I guess there is also the rare chance that the twitch server he uploads to is the problem...

Have you or your brother tried another rig to rule out his build as the issue yet? Might be worth doing.

Could also be the classic 'others in the house hammering the connection' situation (unless only your brother was using the internet connection at the time)

hth

Edit: Also here's another huge tip for anyone in general, you get much smoother operation if you assign games to specific cores, then assign obs to a seperate core, also if you have cores to spare this can be improved further by leaving first core eg core0 free so the OS has immediate access to the cpu at all times (eg in the situation of onboard sound/networking).
This can be achieved manually everytime in task man set cpu affinity but you can also use software such as process lasso (free) or cpucores (paid and easier/more automated).
I personally do it manually as one-off but the convenience of process lasso is great for frequently needing to use it.
And on really lazy days just for gaming efficiently, cpucores is a couple of clicks approach.

This tip helps to improve/increase fps in games and avoid stuttering but also makes good improvements on minimum framerates during gaming and average framerates.

He isnt having any issues with FPS in his games, on his end everything is playing as good as usual. Its just the stream issue. Will have to give the pinging thing a try when i can get back over there. He has been the only one in the house the last 2 weeks, though i suspect the other PC in the house would have the same issue (cant test, its in a locked room). The last time this issue happened and we determined it was the ISP, the 2nd computer in the house exhibited the same exact issues. CPU temps are fine as i've tweaked and tweaked (didnt win the silicon lottery with this one) and have it under an EK Fluid Gaming a240. My brother is always keeping an eye on his temps, tells me nowadays he doesn't even break 70c.

He went live a few times while the ISP technician was there and i guess the tech saw the issue, but it was at the pole/street so it was for the maintenance team to take care of...on a different day. Not sure when that will get looked at as they don't have to tell us when street-level work is done, its just a matter of trying to test it out over the next few days to see if there is an improvement (which would mean they came by and fixed it). We'll see. Hoping to eliminate the ISP as the issue since their the most frustrating to deal with.

I mean, im sure the house being 465ft away from the pole doesn't help but i believe an RG6 cable (i think its RG6, last i remember my folks talking about it when it was trenched 10 years ago) should be enough (there is also a booster on the line). But then again, this wasn't an issue before and it became an issue, then it wasnt an issue again, then it became an issue again....so something else must be going on.

 

[wellen1981]

He isnt having any issues with FPS in his games, on his end everything is playing as good as usual. Its just the stream issue. Will have to give the pinging thing a try when i can get back over there. He has been the only one in the house the last 2 weeks, though i suspect the other PC in the house would have the same issue (cant test, its in a locked room). The last time this issue happened and we determined it was the ISP, the 2nd computer in the house exhibited the same exact issues. CPU temps are fine as i've tweaked and tweaked (didnt win the silicon lottery with this one) and have it under an EK Fluid Gaming a240. My brother is always keeping an eye on his temps, tells me nowadays he doesn't even break 70c.

He went live a few times while the ISP technician was there and i guess the tech saw the issue, but it was at the pole/street so it was for the maintenance team to take care of...on a different day. Not sure when that will get looked at as they don't have to tell us when street-level work is done, its just a matter of trying to test it out over the next few days to see if there is an improvement (which would mean they came by and fixed it). We'll see. Hoping to eliminate the ISP as the issue since their the most frustrating to deal with.

I mean, im sure the house being 465ft away from the pole doesn't help but i believe an RG6 cable (i think its RG6, last i remember my folks talking about it when it was trenched 10 years ago) should be enough (there is also a booster on the line). But then again, this wasn't an issue before and it became an issue, then it wasnt an issue again, then it became an issue again....so something else must be going on.

Is it fibre internet or normal phone line eg Adsl?
Rom your extra info it sounds like isp narrowed it down to nearer the customer premesis and if fibre this could be downstream/upstream power levels out of spec or it could be snr levels. Most often if you ask your isp tech support to supply you with the correct values, you can keep an eye on these yourself by logging in to the modem pages. This also applies if you have Adsl but the isp has less control eg if they don't actually own the telephone lines. Here in the UK, British telecom own the whole phone line network but other operators offer services through it. When problems arise, that company has to request BT perform the needed work on their lines to resolve issues.

Hth

 

[Helgaiden]

Is it fibre internet or normal phone line eg Adsl?
Rom your extra info it sounds like isp narrowed it down to nearer the customer premesis and if fibre this could be downstream/upstream power levels out of spec or it could be snr levels. Most often if you ask your isp tech support to supply you with the correct values, you can keep an eye on these yourself by logging in to the modem pages. This also applies if you have Adsl but the isp has less control eg if they don't actually own the telephone lines. Here in the UK, British telecom own the whole phone line network but other operators offer services through it. When problems arise, that company has to request BT perform the needed work on their lines to resolve issues.

Hth

Its cable internet. Charter/Spectrum.
The ISP maintenance team did something at the pole/street level he told me. Now his streams can hold over 4000kbps bitrate with 0 dropped frames. Damn ISP, having to go through this again.