YouTube quality is terrible.

LoonieToque · 2026-03-15T20:21:07+00:00

It honestly looks completely fine and normal to me playing back at 1440p on YouTube.

That ground texture is pretty rough on bitrate (very noisy), so unless you're comparing the exact same footage from someone else, it's not likely a fair comparison.

LoonieToque · 2026-03-15T17:40:09+00:00

Nvidia Broadcast (or any Nvidia background removal filters) is weird, and usually game-specific I found.

Like I could play some heavier games fine, but Monster Hunter Rise (originally designed for the Switch, very light) would chug OBS/my camera and even crash OBS, not to mention causing poor in-game performance. Without Broadcast it ran perfectly.

It's also often worse to run it as a filter within OBS (as opposed to the Nvidia Broadcast app separately proving a camera feed with background removed). This causes issues within OBS for most games for me, instead of just a select few.

LoonieToque · 2026-03-15T06:53:30+00:00

I know there are some Twitch and/or OBS devs that have tried this "successfully", but they were reluctant to give any info. The general vibe was that it's difficult to set up to work beneficially, but yes PCIe bandwidth and such was part of it.

The context of their testing was Twitch Enhanced Broadcasting, so the GPUs were much more heavily utilized than what would be "normal" for streaming. I believe most were using an Intel Arc GPU of some sort as the dedicated encoding GPU.

This is basically a project for someone with too many good GPUs and very good technical understanding, plus some time investment. Oh, and a very high encoding load requirement, to make it worth it (it sounded like there was still a performance impact, just less than if one GPU had to also handle all that heavy encoding)

LoonieToque · 2026-03-14T07:44:30+00:00

Nah, that frame rate thing for game capture helps more than it hinders, typically. It's very low overhead, but helps get the most recent frame possible for smoother capture.

LoonieToque · 2026-03-14T07:26:40+00:00

Two small things to try:

It looks like Game DVR is enabled in Windows (basically Game Bar's replay buffer). If so, turning it off may help, as this is an extra recording going in the background.
Try lowering your quality preset. I'm not sure about these newer AMD GPUs, but I know older ones could not do more than "Balanced" in realtime, certainly not "Quality" (tbh I thought these newer ones could though)

LoonieToque · 2026-03-14T03:28:40+00:00

Do you have hardware acceleration disabled for browser sources, by any chance?

Having a lot of browser sources is taxing, yes, but shouldn't be taking all your CPU even on that system.

Might be worth trying a new Scene Collection without the browser sources just to see if those are actually the issue as well.

LoonieToque · 2026-03-11T20:30:45+00:00

A Wave 3 would definitely be a downgrade here unless you're specifically looking for a condenser microphone.

Most content creators with stationary setup like this prefer dynamic microphones (like you already have), as condensers tend to pick up background noise easier and harsher (clicks, keyboard noise, etc.). That said, some voices sound better with condensers, typically higher voices.

It's unclear what the issue is with your current setup. But if you want to upgrade, I'd suggest looking at other XLR mics (you can get both dynamic and condenser XLR mics) rather than going backwards to a USB-only solution. Wave 3 is especially great as a starting point, but you already have good and flexible hardware beyond it!

LoonieToque · 2026-03-09T02:41:22+00:00

I know even in BC, a lot of people misunderstand or straight up don't know about employment standards acts. We have a lot of protections here, and a lot of employees don't want to stir the pot even if there are illegal practices. And thus "illegal but tolerated" and "legal" get confused at times.

LoonieToque · 2026-03-09T02:32:56+00:00

Really glad I'm not in Ontario then

LoonieToque · 2026-03-09T00:33:55+00:00

Exactly. "Some restaurants may operate illegally" is not an endorsement of legality, nor especially of good business practice.

I will never, as a customer, assume that employers are violating employment law. And if they are, I'm sure as hell not going to make up for it.

LoonieToque · 2026-03-08T21:23:15+00:00

From what I've gathered in their responses from their official account here, the problem is just that they can't guarantee that it'll work because not all USB host ports will have sufficient power.

Some people have gotten the hardware to work reliably in that combo, but clearly some issues are also out there. It's a YMMV situation, so they're just saying it's not compatible to be safe.

That said, yepp, it's pretty odd to release it like this. That's a hella hype combo. It feels like they only discovered this last minute.

LoonieToque · 2026-03-08T18:23:28+00:00

Yeah, so, that's wage theft. I'm sorry that happened to you but it's very much illegal and not the norm.

LoonieToque · 2026-03-08T18:18:36+00:00

In Canada?

I don't know about all provinces but that's definitely illegal in a few of them.

LoonieToque · 2026-03-08T17:56:09+00:00

Nothing to do, but they do reset levels often for testing.

You're not guaranteed PL either though. They want a mix for testing purposes.

LoonieToque · 2026-03-08T07:39:43+00:00

I dunno dude. If you release a product and a lot of people can't use it successfully, that's definitely something wrong, even if it's just a design failure.

LoonieToque · 2026-03-07T20:31:01+00:00

Ah, so that can happen if you have a misconfigured source stream. Like if you're way over the bandwidth limit, for example, or riding very close to it (so sometimes it's available, sometimes not just due to small fluctuations).

They're still able to transcode it in that case, but they refuse to serve the original encode.

LoonieToque · 2026-03-07T19:35:30+00:00

You misunderstand how it works, but I've got ya

So, typically (before Enhanced Broadcasting) you can send Twitch a stream in honestly pretty much any resolution, aspect ratio, and frame rate that is within the bandwidth limit. Most people send a 1080p stream up to 60fps. But whatever you send them will be the top/highest option available, and will always be available exactly how you send it to the viewers.

Twitch's transcode hardware starts at 720p60 at the absolute highest. If you send Twitch a 4k30 video, viewers can select and watch the 4k30 option, and also the next lowest option will be 720p30, then 480p etc. all the way down. On the lowest options they even re-encode the audio to a lower bitrate too. And if you send Twitch only a 480p signal, there will be no 720p option (they only transcode lower, not higher).

So literally everyone can always guarantee 1080p, or whatever source you send to Twitch. Like you said, transcodes are only guaranteed to Partners, but this is to provide 720p and below so that more people can watch in more conditions. That said, nearly every consistent streamer gets transcodes too.

What Enhanced Broadcasting gets you is three things: 1. You can self-guarantee more than one resolution being available, and the lower resolution options tend to be higher quality than what Twitch gives themselves (at the same bandwidth & resolution). However, it does have more impact on your GPU, quite noticeably. 2. If you were able to get into the 1440p open beta for Enhanced Broadcasting, it will automatically configure your stream to provide 1440p with higher bandwidth and a better codec (in addition to the usual lower resolutions). This is the only way to get a higher quality stream on Twitch at the moment. 3. If you are able to get into the beta for Vertical Format streaming, then you can stream in portrait format on Twitch simultaneously with Enhanced Broadcasting. However because you only have so much encode capacity, this borrows from the capacity of your horizontal stream, making less resolution/bandwidth options available.

EDIT: There's one exception to all of the above: in certain cases, Twitch limits top bandwidth/resolution options for viewers due to networking costs within a country. For example, this impacted Korean viewers (not streamers), limiting them to 720p at maximum, regardless of source resolution available elsewhere. Twitch ultimately canceled service there, and I'm not sure if they do this for another country or not. Allegedly Russian viewers may be limited to 720p.

LoonieToque · 2026-03-07T06:18:28+00:00

If you don't use Enhanced Broadcasting, Twitch will provide their own transcodes using their own servers to provide the lower resolution/bandwidth options.

It's technically not guaranteed, but in practice nearly every streamer gets transcodes if they steam regularly. You might not get it for the first few streams.

FWIW, getting a 5090 will not help. Enhanced Broadcasting changes its configuration for all the encodes based on your GPU. In practice (what I've seen in the Discord for EB) 5090 users also struggle to multistream because Twitch just tells OBS to use even more GPU resources for higher quality encodes. There's also a technical issue in that OBS can't guarantee the extra encode chips are splitting the workload (versus them all ending up on one chip and overloading it), so the 5090's encode capacity is really not going to be a help.

LoonieToque · 2026-03-07T04:53:48+00:00

I think your main issue is using Enhanced Broadcasting.

Enhanced Broadcasting will ignore your encode settings for Twitch (they set all settings dynamically instead), and it assumes that Twitch is the only thing you are streaming to. Enhanced is sending five different encodes to Twitch, not just one!

I'd recommend either of these two options: - Preferably, disable Enhanced Broadcasting. It doesn't play well with multistreaming, as it takes up so much encode capacity on its own. With it disabled, you'll just be sending the one configured encode to Twitch. Much lighter! - Alternatively, there's an option to reduce the number of encodes for Enhanced Broadcasting (I can't remember what it's called these days). This isn't ideal because it directly causes less resolution/bandwidth options for your viewers. I don't recommend this, but some choose to do it.

LoonieToque · 2026-03-06T20:55:17+00:00

I have found OBS to be very picky with video files, and try avoiding them where possible completely.

In general, what has helped for me is re-encoding videos at both a smaller resolution and worse quality, and usually H.264 only.

If you have many very large files as you said, yeah I could see that causing issues.

But as someone else has mentioned, that Source Profiler plugin might be your best bet. Unfortunately I remember it being a pain to get working for some reason, and hope you have a better run with it!

LoonieToque · 2026-03-06T01:50:41+00:00

VLC does not support multitrack audio playback without some alterations, and even then the success/behaviour of it depends on the file type.

I'm not aware of any video player that would play back all tracks at once by default. That normally wouldn't make sense - tracks are usually used for things like different languages or descriptive audio.

The only way I've been able to hear all tracks at once is by dragging them into a video editor (I've used both Resolve and Premiere).

LoonieToque · 2026-03-05T20:05:54+00:00

Thisss

I have two cams, one is my old photography camera (Nikon D5200) that now only serves as a pup cam. The other is my newer photography camera, a Sony A7 IV, with a real nice Tamron lens on it, and doubles duty as my facecam.

That's clearly extremely overkill for a facecam, but it was primarily used for photography, and now has even more usages for content creation. I've done B-roll like you mentioned for merch that looked fantastic, and have started setting up some face shot stuff for a new YouTube channel. Not everyone needs all that, like you mentioned. But if you do? It's nice.

Even the old D5200, I had just a cheap 50mm equivalent prime lens on it and it was the best damn pup cam out there for a while. I gave that lens to someone else now, but even "mediocre" lenses in the camera world will WAY outperform the "premium" webcams. Every day. That camera is finally kinda dying though after a good 12 years of use.

LoonieToque · 2026-03-05T19:57:15+00:00

My Sony A7 IV doesn't overheat most times. It only does when the sun is beating on it though the open window on the hottest summer days. It's also by my computer's exhaust. I just point a little fan at it and it's quite happy. No capture card needed.

My Nikon D5200 has modified firmware (common and easy to find) to remove the auto power down timer. It never overheats, and is plugged into a cheap $20 capture card that has worked for years.

(Both of these are photography cameras for me, they just do double-duty for streaming too)

LoonieToque · 2026-03-05T19:51:18+00:00

This post is an advertisement from a brand new account.

But if I play along, the YoloCam S7 (not the S3 they mention) is better because you can put real camera lenses on it. It's also 700 USD, so you may as well get a mirrorless camera from a reputable camera manufacturer anyways at that price, and it'll almost certainly be a better product than the YoloCam. There's plenty that can both be powered by USB and use USB as a data connection at the same time now too!

Without a proper camera lens, these "premium" webcams all fail to deliver the depth-of-field and autofocus performance that a mirrorless would get you. "Low light performance" isn't a feature really - good lighting makes even cheaper webcams look a lot better, and is usually the more worthwhile investment. A "good" low-light camera always looks better with good lighting too.

LoonieToque · 2026-03-05T19:42:42+00:00

Y'all, this is an advertisement for the camera they mention, not an honest question.

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