Livestreaming

[Hellfire_WZ]

Anyone had experience with this? I'm planning to set up a Twitch.tv channel to try livestreaming some game footage from PC, PS3 and 360 (And maybe even the Vita if I can set the camera up right). I've already got XSplit with a 3 month license, but I'm a bit in the dark in terms of ideal resolution to stream in based on my 700kb upload speed. Plus I need to find out whether the HD-PVR is okay for streaming from console.

Any tips from experienced streamers? And of course, any suggestions for games to stream? ;)

[rdmx]

Stick to 640x360 with that upload speed. With such a low upload speed, it will be difficult to livestream multiplayer games without causing lag unfortunately - that or the stream will have LOTS of macroblocking.

Once your Xsplit license runs out, there are free alternatives such as Open Broadcaster Software, and FFSplit.

[Hellfire_WZ]

I'm just planning on single player stuff for the moment, might try some multiplayer if we upgrade our upload speed at some point.

[Darkdrium777]

If you're gonna be doing PC stuff you would need something like a core i7 3770K or AMD FX 8320 or 8350 for the extra logical cores (either from Intel HT or AMD's Piledriver architecture). XSplit is very CPU intensive. The AMD option is understandably much more budget friendly, at the cost of some performance loss in specific titles (Skyrim, Civilization V come to mind).
However if the PC is used simply as a gate between a console and the internet for transcoding, I suppose a quad core would do.

[Hellfire_WZ]

My setup should be okay for basic stuff, I've seen recommended settings for my CPU and GPU and everyone reckons I can manage 720p @30fps without much fuss. However, the biggest problem as it turns out is (surprise, surprise) my PITIFUL upload speed. Uploading at 500kb, 360p @20fps I still get constant jumping, yet local recordings are smooth as anything even up to 720p.

Looks like I'll have to knock this on the head until I can convince the folks to upgrade our connection :( Maybe I'll have better luck with significantly less intensive games or on the console.

[Darkdrium777]

Yeah, upload speed is key. You want a fiber connection, so those 2 or even 3 Mbps ones should be avoided. With the current exchange rate you should be able to get a 20Mbps fiber for about the price we're paying here for 10Mbps, so IMO it's fairly cheap. Idk about you though :P

I found this website (http://www.cable.co.uk/compare/fibre-optic-broadband/), seems useful. They make their money off the referral links you click to get to the plans.

[vincoof]

First of all, I'd recommend you to test your settings using local recordings. XSplit local recordings work exactly the same as live recordings except that the file is written to your hard drive instead of being sent to the network (note: you can also record your streams to your hard drive while broadcasting). It's very handy to test different compression settings and see if your PC handles the extra computations without stuttering and/or if the quality of the video seems acceptable (the latter being much more subjective of course).

Then when you think you have something good, you can test your bandwidth with XSplit. The bandwidth tester uses the current bitrate you have defined. It is NOT a tester that will tell you how much your connection can handle (sites like http://speedtest.net provide this kind of info). So you have to setup your bitrate and *then* test your bandwidth. It's a common mistake so I prefer to be clear about that.

Also please note that you can save some bandwidth with sound. For instance if you don't care about streaming sound you may save some extra kbps by removing it. You can also send mono instead of stereo, or send 22 KHz instead of 44 KHz, etc. Again, local recordings will be helpful to determine what others will perceive so feel free to make tests using sound settings too.

As for your upload, make sure not to push your connection to its limits. For instance if you can do 700kbps at best, don't set your bitrate to 700kbps or even to 690kbps, prefer something like 600kbps. This is especially true for network games but also for non-network games because of the inherent unpredictability of the Internet you *will* have problems if you broadcast at maximum bitrate.

Finally, it has been already told here but 700kbps is very low :<
I for one started streaming with 1Mbps and it was pretty crappy. However if you get your hands on a very good connection you may not want to set the full speed because if your upload is too high then some users may not have the sufficient download! Happened to me when I got a 100Mbps connection, I used "only" 4Mbps for upload (which already provides excellent results) but then some viewers with low Internet connection couldn't see it. If you have limited viewers you can ask them what they can download and adjust your upload accordingly (note: just like upload, don't push to the limits - if someone tells he can download at e.g. 3Mbps you'd rather upload at ~2Mbps or 2.5Mbps max). You also have the multi-resolution option. I don't broadcast with twitch.tv but I know viewers can sometimes select the resolution. The thing is, I don't know if it's done automatically by twitch.tv or if you have to configure it by yourself or if it's a premium feature of twitch.tv etc.

With that said, it's been a while since I streamed to the public (~1 year ago) and I'm pretty sure things evolved so my advice(s) may not be completely up-to-date.

Hope this helps.

[rdmx]

Definitely don't scrimp on sound IMO.

44khz 128kbps stereo is usually good enough for streaming, any lower and it gets perceptibly much worse. The selectable resolution on twitch is only available for partners.