Streaming and Recording Guide/Research

Tech Talk
621

Just came here to say that that pc build is complete overkill for any stream setup, especially if it’s going to be handled by a capture device anyways.

You don’t need the latest Sandy Bridge cpu, and getting the K series is kind of pointless if you’re not even going to overclock it. And if you were going to oc it, you should probably get the 2500k instead for like $100 less. That being said, Ivy Bridge is out, so there’s no reason to get last year’s tech unless you find a discount.

Any compatible motherboard (LGA 1155) will be fine as long as it’s stable and does/has what you need; ie: if you need 1,2,3 pci e ports or some number of regular pci ports or whatever, or if you need to it overclock decently you might look for some voltage regulators or mosfet cooling.

You definitely do not need 16gb of ram. I can’t possibly think of any reason why you would need more than 4-8gb unless you run a ramdisk.

Gfx card is also overkill unless for some reason the application or capture card benefits from it (I highly doubt it). I’d suggest at least buying a cheapo $20 gfx card, or relying on Intel HD4000 integrated gpu (on the cpu) and then considering buying a powerful discrete gpu if it’s absolutely necessary.

The primary investment should be with the hard drive setup, assuming you’re saving the video somewhere and not just sending it out to the internet. In that case, depending on your needs/setup, you should either go for a velociraptor, a pair of velociraptors in raid 0, or an ssd. Or maybe two ssds in raid 0. Most modern motherboards come with on-board raid, which should be more than sufficient, though you should double check that your mobo has it just in case. If not then a decent raid card is definitely a worthy investment.

If you got money to blow, then fine. But I feel the need to take action when someone is just blindly listening (halo effect) to some guy just because he does streams. You’re buying a stream computer, not a computer that can play Crysis maxed out on an eyeinfinity setup + rip 10 blurays in the background. At the very least, do some additional research elsewhere such as on Overclock.net forums and ask the people there what kind of firepower you would need for a stream computer.

For reference, I can record videos just fine with my “old” pc, using Fraps. Nehalem i5 750 oc to 3.6ghz (very easy to do with any decent aftermarket air cooler), 16gb ram (I use a ramdisk for the hell of it), 6870 (which simply renders the game; it does not do anything to make Fraps perform better; and if you’re using a capture device, your gpu isn’t even going to be rendering anything except your 2D Windows desktop), and Agility 3 120gb ssd for disk space. You could probably build something like that for like $500 or so.

622

This is in the same vein as Jaxel’s thing, so if you’re looking for a free alternative that does it via a proper XSplit plugin, with positioning by hand and offline editing and all those sort of things, I did a plugin available at: http://www.xsplit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7908&sid=fe4bcf22ca188bfbc52f1e77c864fc97

It’s pretty much done at this point and should work fine for everything that you could need for a FG stream, if there’s any issues or request just post in that thread. There may or may not be an issue with performance that occurs with any XSplit SWF plugin, I heard it was fixed in 1.0 but if not it only effected people already pushing the limits of their processors. I originally did it for Spooky before Jaxel’s thing came out so I don’t know if there’s features you want from his that aren’t in mine, but it has some cool features of it’s own so there’s that.

Ok I hope people use it I think it’s pretty rad,
lots of love,
leakingpear/partybrian5000

623

I never said the computer I had was required… simply that its what I got… I stream more than just PS3/360 on my computer… I also stream PC games… I can run ANY PC game at MAXIMUM quality, and stream it at the same time. The reason for the 16gb of RAM is because I’m running an SSD setup without any sort of pagefile… which means I need to run my pages off of RAM, instead of the SSD (normally it would run off of an HDD).

The PC I built for my 24/7 stream only cost $429 to build… its running an i3 and doesn’t even have a video card!

624

Well, I guess as long as people know that you’re listing a monster gaming computer which is going to be overkill for a basic streaming computer.

I have 16gb of ram as well, and an ssd, and I’m also not using any pagefile. Right now I’m only using 8-9gb according to Task Manager, and that’s after using 4gb ram for ramdisk… even when gaming I don’t think I’ve ever seen it go past like 10-12gb. Again I still cannot see why you need so much ram. Fire up your game + stream or whatever intensive workload you usually do, and then check Task Manager and tell me how much ram you’re actually using.

625

hey guys
i’m pretty new to the whole scene and wanted to start up a small UMVC3 tourney around Orange County, CA i have a location at a PC/LAN center so we have internet and space for about 4 setups. Now, i’m looking into buying a decent laptop and capture card i was thinking about getting a 13in mac and the black magic design w/ thunderbolt. i’m looking for any suggestions people can give me. i’m not looking for all the TOP of the line items but decent ones that can do well for a small tournament. the equipment is coming out of my own pocket!!! thanks again guys :smiley:

626

How much you looking to spend? Small desktop pc would be more economical/powerfull than a small macbook most likely depending on your needs/space.

what is your upload speed for the net? You planning to use hard line or wireless connection?

627

hardline connection and only reason i want mac book is so i can take it around too… and connection speed is great plus can’t i use the camera on a laptop too?

628

i can spend around 1500 for everything computer, capture card i mean if i can spend less that would be great too hahahah

629

The macbook already blows most of your budget, might not even get the basic setup with only $1500 if you go mac.

630

While I believe your word on a lot of the tech specifications such as RAM, some capture cards do require GPUs to offset load while trying to handle the data from an HD capture card. BMI’s website does state it has requirements for a graphics card, although it doesn’t need anything like a 680, it’s still relevant.
Also, Wirecast, a streaming program, also has a feature to offset it’s load to the GPU called GPU compression, another reason a good GPU would be helpful to your stream setup. It’s not vital, but depending on the setup, it might be a good choice to have.

I’ve had a better experience with Wirecast and streaming with upgrading my GPU a bit, but I do agree that a lot of the specs given isn’t needed. However, why would you want to invest hard earned money on a desktop built for only for streaming? Might as well just spend on a 2500k to last a year or two, ya know? That way if streaming isn’t your thing any more, at least you wont have relatively obsolete hardware. Just for the sake of having a utility PC you can use for other things for the next year or so.

631

If that’s the case, then someone with Wirecast or other streaming program should verify that its program actually uses the gpu, nevermind stresses it, by running a stream and then using something like gpu-z to check gpu usage. If usage is not even past 50% then chances are you probably spent too much on your gpu. Looking at the “system requirements” on the Wirecast page, it says any gpu “made in the last four years” will do. 2008 tech = something like Radeon 4850, which you can probably find on ebay these days for like $50 used.

Bottom line is that buying a Sandy Bridge (or Ivy Bridge) K series processor is likely a waste of money if you have no intention of overclocking. There’s also no mention if these streaming programs are even thread optimized, so you don’t know if even getting a quad core is worth it (again looking at the Wirecast website, it lists a 2.3ghz dual core as required). With no information on how well these streaming programs scale with cpu power you don’t know if you should be putting more money in because the program requires it, or because you want to futureproof your computer.

I guess you are right about if the streamer wants to do more than stream. If so, then by all means get yourself a nice powerful computer.

632

well what do i need besides a computer and capture card? i do have a mixer and headphones and mics

633

I agree with sandy bridge being too much and not being used for OCing. I believe it’s more on the lines of encoding the data for streaming, but I can’t be for sure. I know encoding video is pretty CPU intensive, but I don’t know the facts.

As for the GPU load, i just checked with GPU-Z when using Wirecast. With a 550ti, I’m getting 52-65% load when a Marvel Match is being streamed. Mind you I’m using the 9650, 8 GB, and the 550ti. It’s not maxing out the clock speed of the card though, but I see your point that I can definitely get away with an ATi 4k series or an Nvidia 4xx series.

EDIT: Just to elaborate on the 50-60 load. I was only streaming at 480p30 at 1mbps.

634

Merging!

Next time, check the Info Thread before making a new post.

635

Then I guess it depends on the encoder or codec you use. Some encoders are very happy with tons of cores + cpu power (eg: x264), whereas some are single threaded and don’t scale too well (eg: LAME). I don’t know if these two encoders are applicable, but just to give you an idea.

Did you mean 6950? Did you test with two different gpus? For reference, (now AMD) Radeon 4xxx series is similar to (Nvidia) Geforce 2xx series. Geforce 4xx series is only 2 years old, 2010.

Also can you try streaming at 1080p60? I want to see how your pc performs under increasing conditions, so that maybe we can try to narrow down the bottleneck. Also check Task Manager to see cpu usage, disk usage, etc. while you’re streaming.

636

x264 is designed for multi-core threading… and thats the codec that XSplit uses.

With my CPU, I can stream at 1080p 60fps, playing pretty much any game at maximum quality settings.

637

Using wirecast, here’s my results. Mind you I’m at home so my actual stream quality on justin.tv isn’t the same, but overall, my CPU is under some pretty heavy load. I usually stream at 360p30 because of something like this.

No real action or moving was taking place, if that matters.

638

Since there is now confirmation from many that a GPU is pretty necessary in a streaming PC, doesn’t that mean AMD APU’s would better suit streamers if they built a PC for portability while streaming. Right now the NZXT Vulcan, Micro AM3+, PCIe capture card of choice, 8gb of ram, and the 3ghz APU would be the best setup, if I am not mistaken. Add in a fairly cheap(but reliable) PSU, and you’ve got yourself a pretty decent streaming setup.

639

I think there’s a limit to how threadable x264 is. I can look into it in a bit.

640

Hmm, so you’re encoding the data in real-time, and then streaming it, all while playing the game on your pc? Sounds really inefficient. Maybe there should be an option to simply save the footage somewhere like on a network drive, and then have a secondary computer do the encoding + streaming.

This should make 1080p60 pretty easy with cheaper configurations. I understand that your gdlk pc can handle anything and everything. What I want to find out how to do the same thing but with less.

Thanks for the screenshot. Looks like we can debunk the notion that we need lots of ram for streaming. Can you post your computer’s specs? Also what if you tried a slight under/overclock on your cpu/gpu? I didn’t think streaming would be this cpu intensive, when I thought your capture device should be doing most of the work.

The lack of motion probably doesn’t make a huge difference, but you can test anyways. I think the same x264 algorithm(s) are applied regardless of what’s happening on the screen.

Oh now I know what you meant by 9650. You meant Intel q9650, right? The now 4-year old 3ghz quad based on Wolfdale 45nm I think.

A gpu integrated into the cpu wouldn’t help much, especially since

  1. they’re vastly underpowered compared to discrete graphics cards
  2. it’s going to suck up cpu power, which you apparently need tons of for the encoding