Remote Play - HEVC stutter

Submitted ⁨⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨WereCat@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨steamdeck@sopuli.xyz⁩

Hello, I’ve spent maybe 5h+ trying to troubleshoot Remote Play from my Linux (Fedora 42 GNOME) PC host to my Steam Deck OLED client and I keep finding outdated or contradicting information regarding HEVC.

1.) Main crux of my issues with remote play seems to be fixed after solving some WiFi congestion issues and I’m able to get perfectly smooth 60FPS 50Mbps stream without HW-encoding&decoding with the h.264 codec.

2.) The HEVC codec is a major visual improvement for the Remote Play however the frametimes are all over the place when streaming HEVC and I’m at a loss on how to solve this.

It does not matter if I have HW encoding&decoding enabled/disabled, the HEVC streaming experience is just bad. Is it just a limitation within the Steam Deck or is that some SW issue? Any way to try to fix this?

Note: issue is not related to bandwidth for streaming and even for x264 stutters starts to happen the moment I enable HW-decoding

My main PC runs 5800X3D with RX 6800 XT 16GB and 64GB RAM

Note2: For client - If I use HW decoding or if I use just HEVC without HW-decoding I can use the Steam Deck HW overlay just fine but if I just use h.264 with no HW-decoding then I can’t access the Steam menu or the “…” menu until I quit the game… what’s up with that?

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bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I use Sunshine and Moonlight for PC streaming. Steam’s own solution always had some problems for me. Sunshine and Moonlight just work. And if they get one bug fixed it should even work in the other direction.

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- WereCat@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I went to set it up and I give up, I dont have time for that. Seems complicated Maybe later. I’ll stick with desktop mode remote play for now.
  
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peculiar_goat@lemm.ee ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I don’t know anything about HEVC but I’ve never managed to get Steam streaming working beyond a completely unplayable level… I suspect it’s just busted for Steamdeck. Steam Link on the other hand works pretty much flawlessly. Install it in desktop mode and add it as a non-Steam game.

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- WereCat@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  So after trying I can say that Steam Link is literally the same as a Remote Play, it even has the same settings and everything… But on Desktop mode the Remote Play works so much better for whatever reason. Both HEVC and HW-decoding also work.
  
  However when HW-decoding is enabled all the colors are washed out and blacks are just medium grays (more white-ish than black) for example so all of the main OLED advantages are lost. Same happens if I enable HW encoding on my PC side, in which case I have the same issue with HW decoding enabled/disabled on Steam Deck side.
  
  Now that may be because of RDNA2 encoder but since this happens also when just decoding when the source is CPU encoded, idk for sure.
  
  Now the issue is that in desktop mode I’m locked to 90Hz so I’m forced to stream 90FPS otherwise the gameplay is not smooth as it would be at 60Hz so I lose some visual advantage from HEVC in trade for smoothness… Guess I can’t have it all unless there is some way to force 60Hz on desktop?
  
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- WereCat@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Isn’t Steam Remote play literally just Steam link though?
  
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ArchAengelus@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
If both h264 and hevc are stuttering using hardware decoding, something might be wrong. Try setting up Apollo or sunshine on your remote PC, and add Moonlight to your deck using the desktop App Store.

There are lots of guides online for how to install Moonlight and add it to your deck’s games list.

If that works smoothly with hardware decoding, then the problem is with remote play.

I wrote out the rest of this before rereading your post and want to put it out there for others:

If you’re having issues with hevc, switch back to h264.

Hevc is more computationally complex to encode/decode, so if you’re trying to do either with software, then it would be better to use the less compressed h264.

Network congestion over WiFi, as you pointed out, is often also a culprit.

What is your domicile like? An apartment with lots of nearby apartments? Freestanding house? WiFi congestion gets worse with more people using it.

If you have a dock, plug in an Ethernet cable to the dock and try streaming that way. Does it mitigate your stutter?

If so, turn down the bandwidth as much as you can and check (e.g 720p at 30 fps).

If it is that, buying a higher quality wifi access point may help.

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