This week’s DF Direct Weekly is what you might call a “get down” episode. After highlights from Sony’s State of Play, Summer Games Fest, and Xbox’s best showcase in years, we’re taking it a little slower – although we’re spending a lot of time watching Ubisoft Forward. While the game content gets a lot of commentary, it’s really the quality of the live stream presentation itself really have a problem with. Why did it look so bad?
For years, digital showcases have had a problem: the state of YouTube’s live streaming technology. Low bitrates, low resolution, inconsistent frame rate, terrible macro blocking. It got to the point where we had to watch the content twice – first to get the news via the live stream, then we watched the individually recorded trailers, which looked an order of magnitude better in terms of quality. The good news is that the situation is improving. It is now possible to stream 4K at 60fps with a decent bitrate. We saw this with the Xbox Showcase. Even Summer Games Fest streamed in 4K, though it felt like upscaling 1080p content from the nearest neighbor. In both cases, we see a real improvement over their 2023 presentations.
However, Ubisoft Forward was a step backwards. In fact, it featured almost every bad practice we’ve seen when it comes to live streaming new games. I was shocked when I first saw it, and considering the amount of money it takes to make a game like Star Wars Outlaws or Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the concept that these titles should look so bad during a major live event is almost unimaginable. , so what happened and how can things get better?
- 0:00:31 Introduction
- 0:02:29 News 01: Star Wars Outlaws Reaction Demo!
- 0:28:42 News 02: Assassin’s Creed Shadows revealed
- 0:46:55 News 03: Clarifying the Gears of War movie trailer
- 0:55:05 News 04: Epic Games Store Leaked Upcoming Games
- 1:01:05 News 05: Riven demo released
- 1:08:59 Supporter Q1: Has any console generation been more boring than this one?
- 1:13:43 Supporter Question 2: Did Microsoft show X series or PC footage at their game show?
- 1:20:20 Supporter Question 3: Is delaying the physical release the best option for modern games?
- 1:27:06 Supporter Question 4: Will you make updated PC games on cheap video?
- 1:34:32 Supporter Question 5: Do you have ambitions to expand your audience?
First, live streaming revolves around real-time video encoding. The source computer that communicates with YouTube encodes the video in a fast, not very efficient way. YouTube then has to decode and encode that content – ​​again in real time with minimal latency. Real-time encoding degrades video quality in a way that offline encoding does not. Second, Ubisoft streamed in 1080p at 60fps. YouTube is notoriously stingy with bandwidth at full HD, resulting in terrible artifacts. 4K is now available, which doesn’t fully solve the real-time encoding problem, but it certainly mitigates it with much higher bandwidth levels, which translates into excellent picture quality.
However, Ubisoft’s stream had other issues besides image quality. In the stream, Star Wars Outlaws had jerky camera movements, dropped frames, and even screen tearing. Two issues seem to be at play here. First, the terrible tearing appeared to be an artifact introduced either by the source computer in charge of the live stream or within the live stream process itself. Check out the self-recorded trailer and there’s no tearing, so something bad has happened unrelated to the quality of the source work. Much worse for me, as a late-comer to the show, was that GameSpot’s rendering of the event was the first result for a search for “Ubisoft Forward 2024,” meaning that I was initially watching a version of the second-gen stream that looked really awful.
That stuttering camera and dropped frames in the Outlaws trailer, right? That is something else. We can only speculate here, but we’ve seen these issues before and if we were to put money on it, it would be on Ubisoft running a PC version and using technology like Nvidia Share (aka Shadowplay) to record footage. The fact that the trailer itself peaks in 1440p resolution is also indicative. Regardless, the point is that Nvidia Share captures images directly from video memory at the frame rate you specify, but doesn’t accurately reflect the output rate – which gets worse if the game’s performance level is higher and/or lower than the recording rate. . Outlaws appears to have been captured at 1440p60 while the game appears to run higher and below this frame rate, resulting in inconsistent motion and a real drop in performance.
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Assuming it’s running on a PC, the answer is to provide enough horsepower to hit the target framerate at all times, turn on v-sync, and capture externally. There are many capture card solutions, but the supplied software usually uses sub-optimal real-time video encoders. Our recommendation would be to invest in the Atomos Ninja V capture box, available for $600 (and often on sale for much less). Plug in a fast SATA SSD and connect the source via HDMI 2.0, it will record your game in broadcast standard ProRes codec at 4K 60fps – playable and fast on any modern editing system. There are many flavors of ProRes of varying quality available with the Ninja V, but everything from standard ProRes to ProRes HQ is fine.
Other relatively inexpensive broadcast quality solutions are available. There are even HDMI 2.1 capture cards now capable of 8K 60fps or 4K 120fps. However, all video playback platforms top out at 4K at 60fps, so nothing more is needed. The key advantage is the frame rate limitation and should properly paced (otherwise we’re talking about a software issue!) but the point is that you’re using a broadcast-quality device to record that’s built for the task and actually captures the game’s output as users would see it. As a bonus, you also have a broadcast-quality console capture solution ready.
We have another tip for game developers and publishers who create game trailers – even if your game runs at 30 frames per second, we recommend capturing, editing and uploading at 60 frames per second. It ensures that the way a title is presented on a standard 60Hz display is accurately reflected in your final asset. Let’s put it another way – if a game targeting 30fps has some slight frame drops, the dropped frame persists for 16.7ms at 60fps. On a 30fps video, the dropout will either not be visible at all, or it will take twice as long – 33.3ms – to make the game look much more choppy than it actually looks live. Games completely locked to 30fps with a consistent framerate can look good at pure 30fps. However, games with an inconsistent framerate at 30fps will look really terrible when shooting at 30fps. Another bonus of the 60fps workflow is that YouTube allocates more bandwidth and usually provides better image quality.
Although it is Ubisoft Forward that prompted this article, many have been wrong in the past. Until we played Starfield ourselves on the Xbox Series X, every piece of media we saw — right up to the spectacular presentation at Gamescom 2024 — was presented in a choppy state that didn’t represent the game itself. And of course, Sony presented its first PS5 gameplay reveal in a live streamed 1080p 30fps container with questionable video quality! Again, it was a case of waiting for the ‘proper’ trailers to follow to get some idea of ​​how good the games actually looked, but first impressions count, don’t they?
At this point, I’m pretty sure the best way to deliver 4K at 60fps through YouTube is through its “Premiere” feature – which is basically a standard YouTube video that’s broadcast on demand and where the viewer can’t skip ahead , when playback starts. This works best for a pre-recorded show and you should get the maximum picture quality the platform is capable of. However, it’s not the right format for a live event where a native 4K 60fps stream should be mandatory at this point. I should note that Sony switched to the Premiere format for State of Play and benefited immensely, while Xbox seems to have shown that live streaming technology has evolved. Then there are workarounds, along with ways to guarantee the best quality footage to be fed into a presentation – and we hope to see better ones in the future.