Ahh yes so assuming everybody is using your exact setup that you’ve made no mention of we can all be fine and dandy and not act like children.
I do apologize for my mistake; I honestly didn’t realize that there was an important difference there. Upon your comments, I educated myself; I appreciate that a lot, actually, because that could’ve caused some major headaches for me down the line. Learning, yay!
My point still stands that there’s a lot of value in analog mixing of the mic/game audio, if you can manage it. Standard electret PC microphones won’t work without something like what I have, but the information beyond that is valuable to consider. But for this discussion, which is about headsets (and not special ones with dynamic elements/properly designed for mixer use at that), I concede on all points and agree with your information entirely. Sorry if I came across sounding smart-aleck-y; that was certainly not my intent. I’ll be editing my first reply to reflect my idiocy.
If this wasn’t a discussion about headsets I’d be recommending the analog route as that’s my preferred method. I personally use two sets of dynamic microphones through XLR into a powered mixer, that nets the best sound quality. Unfortunately that is not the most reasonable or cost effective method for most and many revert to less expensive PC headsets, also for the sake of convenience.
Indeed, though the convenience of a headset when on location is nice; once I get a bigger mixer I’m going to have to either get a couple new headsets or make a power circuit to use the electret headsets that I have with a mixer properly (to eliminate that extra box, and let me adjust their levels on the main mix directly). Luckily it looks like it’ll be a pretty simple battery + voltage divider + capacitor circuit; easy enough to get into a compact form factor, just gotta make sure the sound quality will be good enough.
is there a guide for using a mixer with streams? I was interested in getting a mixer, but I’ve only had experience with mixers when playing music and that was years ago. I’m wanting to upgrade my commentary portion of my stream, so I was looking into USB mics, but if getting a mixer would be best, money would not be a problem. And how would I control my game audio through the mixer? My game audio runs through my HD PVR :-/. I figured if I were to reroute my audio through a mixer, it would cause a sound delay, since my video from the PVR is delayed by a good 3 seconds once on my computer.
I bought a Blackmagic Intensity Pro(I won’t be streaming anything other than 460p at most though), so I’ll let you guys know how stuff works out for me. I need to order a new HDD to capture to though. I have little space left on my Main HDD.
A mixer’s not going to introduce a delay, so don’t worry about that. USB microphone/headsets will actually introduce less of a delay than your HD PVR, which means commentary and gameplay will be mismatched if you don’t buffer the audio to re-sync it in software somehow.
A mixer set-up is pretty simple to use, especially since you’re already using analog audio with your HD-PVR. The audio pair (White/Red) would need to be split using RCA splitters; one pair would go to the television, so that commentary isn’t coming through that. The other pair would be routed into your mixer inputs; this may require a pair of RCA -> 1/4" TS adapters, depending on your mixer; otherwise, it might just take the RCA inputs directly. The master mix output of the mixer would then go back to your HD-PVR. Commentary microphones (read: probably dynamic microphones, not headsets) would then be plugged into the other channels of the mixer, and levels could be adjusted from there.
This is one way to do it; there are other solutions, and most likely better ones too. As has been established, I’m fairly new to the audio engineering side of things, so I’ve probably either missed something or over-complicated things, but this has worked for me in the past. Anyone else want to chime in?
I’m using HDMI from my xbox to my monitor (asus vh236h). Also, my PVR causes a delay already on my pc. There’s like a 3 second delay from what’s going on my tv to what’s on my computer.
Game audio would go straight to the mixer, and you would output mixer audio through rca into the pvr to keep the audio video sync.
Edit: does the hdmi converter also convert to analog audio? If not get sound output from the 360 through rca.
What’s a good program that will be friendly with Wirecast if I wanna stream stuff from my computer’s screen? I wanna stream some GGPO/Starcraft 2 matches.
okay so ive recently upgraded my stream pc to the following:
i7-950
x58a-ud3r rev2.0
3x2gb pc3-1333
black magic intensity pro
now the problem is when i stream through wirecast the stream sometimes freezes for almost 1 sec, but the sound stays in sync. anyone got any ideas on why this is happening? i tried all diff kinds of bitrates ranging from 1100-2000 and its all the same. first tried 854x480 then lowered it to 640x360, still get the freezing.
layout is xbox to powered hdmi splitter, one goes to vh236h other goes to black magic intensity
I need a nice coolio person to capture some of my ssf4 ae matches o.o (ps3)
[details=Spoiler]
Ninja merge.[/details]
Wirecast is known to be pretty unstable, the safest bet is to restart the stream once ever 90mins to 2 hours. Wirecast gets more and more buggy the longer its been streaming.
How’s XSplit’s long-term stability, outputting to Justin.tv/Twitch.tv? I’m going to be doing a very long stream in about a month; I’m having to run it on a Windows box this time, and most of my experience has been on Mac in the past. Luckily, I have a friend who can supply a legit copy of Wirecast if I need it, and I can grab a copy of XSplit (have they announced when their Beta ends? I can’t find it anywhere :|) if need be. Restarting the stream every couple hours wouldn’t be the end of the world, but if XSplit can get me better reliability, I’ll probably opt for that. I’m gonna start testing on both this weekend in preparation.
I’ve ran Xsplit for 8 hours straight no issues, but obviously its no wirecast in terms of features. Xsplit tends to have its fair share of issues, but thats mostly hardware and software compatibility issues. Once it gets running its pretty stable.
Flash Media Live Encoder is the most reliable program there is, but you’ll need to use other software along with it to capture.
Yeah, I’ve used FMLE on the Mac to great effect, paired with CamTwist and a suite of other helper programs, but this stream’s got to be run on a PC. It’s multi-cam/capture device fiasco, so I need some elegant features; luckily, it looks like all the hardware involved should work with XSplit, so I think I’m just going to pick up a license for that (once I confirm everything is indeed supported) and be done with it. Luckily I don’t need any of the super-fancy stuff from Wirecast, so I should be good. Thanks for the input.
problem is this started when it was not even 30 minutes in. i have a samsung f3 1tb 7200rpm as the current hdd installed, but im going to try using a ssd instead see if it improves.
Try FME. Yeah I know, it’s not anything advanced, but I use FME to stream for just hours on end with no problems.
i got myself a dazzle dvd recorder plus from best buy and i’m trying to record using Pinnacle 12 but i keep getting the following error:
"A valid Input Signal has not been detected Please Check your Cables"
i have everything setup from my previous capture device
or is there another way to capture/record gameplay?