Valorant streaming delays
Valorant streaming delays
I’ve been attempting to broadcast Rainbow Six Siege with Streamlabs OBS for several days, and my stream consistently experiences frame drops. These drops are severe while audio remains consistent, despite in-game frame rates being perfectly normal. The only solution I’ve discovered is implementing 2 frames of V-Sync within the game, which significantly reduces my in-game FPS while simultaneously preventing stream instability. However, this results in a noticeably diminished experience at 70 frames per second on a 144Hz monitor, particularly during competitive ranked matches. I’ve explored alternative V-Sync settings without success. Regardless of whether my game is running at 140fps or 70fps, the CPU consistently maxes out its utilization.
Hardware:
i7 8700k (overclocked) @ 4.8GHz
Gigabyte GTX 1080
16GB DDR4 3200
Streaming:
720p
60fps
6000 Bitrate
Encoding using CPU, though I’ve also tested NVENC as a potential remedy, with no positive outcome.
Do you have any suggestions?
The problem stems from excessive CPU activity. OBS automatically consumes a certain amount of processing power just to operate. This increases significantly depending on the number and complexity – including file size – of elements within your scene, particularly browser extensions like those providing notifications. Furthermore, OBS requires a considerable amount of CPU to transform your scene into a live stream.
Reduce your visual settings until your CPU usage is minimal, ideally below 50%, with a target of around 30-40%. Then, within OBS, adjust your streaming bitrate to 1500, set the base resolution to 720p, and output at 720p while maintaining bilinear scaling and a frame rate of 30.
Subsequently, eliminate all extraneous elements from your scene, leaving only the game and webcam (if used), to assess performance. If you observe sufficient CPU capacity, gradually introduce minor additions like simple overlays and monitor the results through repeated testing.
Crucially, avoid streaming during these tests; instead, configure recording settings using the intended streaming parameters and record a test segment. Afterwards, replay this recording using a program such as VLC to identify any instances of stuttering, frame drops, or skipping.
If considering the NVENC encoder, maintain the quality setting at its default and lower your graphics settings to a level that prevents significant GPU strain, thus allowing the NVENC encoder sufficient headroom for optimal performance and maintaining higher frame rates.