Alongside the announcement of the new GeForce RTX 40 SUPER, NVIDIA revealed that its hardware would offer a significant boost to visual quality for streamers. Specifically, NVIDIA, Twitch, and OBS have partnered to bring improved broadcasting on Twitch through the Twitch Enhanced Broadcasting beta program. Available within the next few days, content creators will be able to choose to stream with simultaneous multiple encoding, providing an optimal viewing experience for all viewers.
Currently, many streamers struggle with choosing between higher resolution and reliable streaming. High-quality video offers a better viewing experience but can buffer for viewers with limited bandwidth or older display devices. Lower bit-rate video streaming allows more people to watch content smoothly, but it introduces artifacts.
These are the improvements NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 40 will bring to Twitch Enhanced Broadcasting:
Twitch, OBS, and NVIDIA have collaborated to create Twitch Enhanced Broadcasting. Available as a beta version later this month, it leverages the dedicated, high-quality NVENC encoder of modern GeForce RTX and GTX GPUs to stream up to three simultaneous 1080p resolutions.
In the following months, Enhanced Broadcasting beta users will be able to experiment with higher input bit rates, resolutions up to 4K, up to five simultaneous streams, and new codecs. The new codecs include the next-generation AV1 for GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs, offering 40% more encoding efficiency than H.264, and HEVC for previous-generation GeForce GPUs.
To simplify settings for users, Twitch Enhanced Broadcasting will automatically configure all OBS encoder settings, including resolution, bit rate, and encoding parameters. A server-side algorithm will provide the best possible configuration for OBS Studio based on the streamer’s settings, eliminating headaches when searching for the optimal live streaming setup. This information is courtesy of NVIDIA.
Twitch Provides More Specific Details on Streaming Quality Improvements:
Depending on the hardware and internet connection, the automatic stream configuration algorithm sets OBS Studio to encode three different video qualities associated with aggregated bit rates between 4 Mbps and 10 Mbps. The company also promises to support higher resolutions such as 1440p or 2160p (4K) at 60 FPS. The most exciting aspect is the adoption of new codecs such as HEVC or AV1. However, AV1 is only compatible with GeForce RTX 40 GPUs, so the highest possible visual quality requires one of these NVIDIA GPUs.
As streamers “experiment” with streaming, they will allow the number of encodings and bit rates to vary significantly. However, the company is clear that they do not currently plan to support HDR content or refresh rates higher than 60 FPS. In the future, they “could explore this possibility.”
Understanding complicated video settings to achieve maximum video quality can be time-consuming and frustrating. Automatic stream configuration eliminates the need for trial and error offline to find the right settings by sending information about your setup (such as GPU, CPU, and network) to Twitch.
A server algorithm returns the best possible configuration for OBS Studio, optimizing the viewer experience given your setup’s limitations. The plan is to use automatic streaming configuration to experiment with higher bit rates (better quality), 1440p60/4k60 streaming, and new codecs such as HEVC/AV1 in the future.
Minimum requirements to access Twitch Enhanced Broadcasting include using Windows 11 and an NVIDIA GPU, as well as the latest version of OBS Studio. In the future, GPU provider and operating system compatibility will be expanded.
The news about NVIDIA bringing AV1 codec to Twitch via OBS and GeForce RTX 40 premieres on El Chapuzas Informático.