Encoding Hardware -> Live Streaming

[kai99]

Hello,

Since some weeks I want to stream what I see on my screen. To take the load off the CPU i bought an Hauppauge Colossus to encode the video stream. The problem was my screen's resolution of 1920x1200 - Colossus only supports up to 1080. Now I downgraded my screen to a 1920x1080 screen to make it compatible to the Colossus. But when telling the graphics card to clone to colossus it automatically changes to 1080i30 which is not supported by my screen (56-61Hz) -> it starts to flicker. This time I don't want to buy another new screen because I don't want to go with 30Hz all the time. I did a short research and it looks like 26''+ screens usually don't support 30Hz. Problemsolving should be an encoder card which can handle 1080p60. I did not find one below four-digit costs. When researching in the gamer scene where broadcasting becomes more and more popular there are many people using colossus or avermedia or blackmagic intensity pro. How can they do that? I don't think they all go down to lower resolutions!

hardware:
i7 920
8gb ram
hd7970 1x hdmi, 2xmini display (+adapter to dvi)
Samsung SA550
(hauppauge colossus)

Thank you for any help!

 

[bunnyfubbles]

they're likely capturing 720p60, and likely playing off of a TV

don't get too caught up with trying to stream in too high of a resolution like 1080p, the higher the resolution you go the higher the bitrate you need to keep the feed from artifacting to crap. A 480p stream can ultimately end up looking better than a 1080p stream as long as it has a better balanced bit rate to go along with it.

Heck, most people don't have the upload speed to do a proper 1080p stream anyway, and you also need overhead as you're not always going to get exactly your reported speeds over time.

Personally I wouldn't stream 1080p with anything less than 5K bit rate, which would in turn likely require 7+ Mbps upload bandwidth on your end to properly handle.


That being said, if you're PC gaming, you're likely better off just doing everything purely in software, such as with Xsplit or Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder.

 

[kai99]

Thank you bunnyfubbles,

It's not that i WANT to stream 1080p, 720 would be enough for my purpose. But if I clone my output at the grphics card i can only use 1080.

Using software (tried xsplit and fmle) seems to cost very much performance. In the second i open xsplit and telling the software to capture the whole screen i loose about 70% frames no matter which resolution or bitrate i choose, frames drop before starting stream but maybe xsplit starts encoding even without streaming. I came to the conclusion that with my hardware software-streaming is not possible and i need a hardware solution. Upgrading the whole pc would be a four-digit invest, too, because my pc isnt that slow (it's just strategie games which do not need so much ressources).

i really cant understand how people manage to get these nice streams. I have an upstream of 10mbit but for example with 500-720p, i cant use bitstream above 2000. my brother (enough downstream) helped me testing and if use higher bitstream the stream does not stay fluently. I thought the cause might be a lack of ressources, encoding to slow. maybe bad connection to the server, i dont know.

i would hate to wait for hardware that is not yet released that but it looks like that is the only possibility and other streamers have 1000+ dollar encoding cards?!

update: heard avoice that avermedia will only rcord 1080p30 which means it will not be usefull..
/update

kai

 

[bunnyfubbles]

most PC game streamers won't be using a capture card

I have a Blackmagic Design Intensity Shuttle capture card but hardly ever use it, turns out it was mostly a waste of money because I hardly ever stream console games, and the last time I did it was for Zelda Skyward Sword and I did that through Dolphin emulation on the PC as it looks 10x better, so I didn't even use the capture card.

one thing you need most from your PC will be CPU speed. And while your X58 rig is no slouch and your i7 920 CPU has a lot of potential, its not going to be ideal if you're just running it at its stock speed.

First thing I would do would be to try and overclock your 920 if you have not already. So the first investment would be to get better cooling if you don't already have something good. I'd recommend an AIO water cooler like the Corsair H80 or even H100. After that your next option would perhaps to be to try and grab an i7 970 or 980 as a CPU upgrade if the overclock on the 920 doesn't give you performance you like.

 

[wahdangun]

i thing here is your answer