Author Topic: Broadcasting AH on Twitch works great on even a cheap computer system  (Read 4325 times)

Offline Brooke

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I want to broadcast the upcoming Scenario.

So, this weekend, I tried it out one of the biggest game-streaming sites -- Twitch.

It turns out you don't need much in the way of computer hardware for this to work well.

I am running AH3 beta on default settings and getting 55-60 fps on a 1-2 year old $500 Dell computer (i5-2400 CPU) with a $130 GeForce GTX 750 Ti.

Surprisingly (to me, anyway), broadcasting the game on Twitch at 720p and 30 fps (using the free OBS Studio broadcasting software) didn't give me *any* reduction in frame rate.

I had a friend of mine watch the stream as I made it, and he said it looked great.  Sgtwolf (who plays AH) also by chance happened to be on Twitch, saw some of it, and said it looked fine.

I was amazed.  The software is doing on-the-fly compression of full-screen video.  You can use it to create a movie file, too (in addition to streaming it to Twitch or Youtube's game-streaming), and it doesn't even seem to slow anything down.

This is by far the easiest way to make videos as well, in my opinion.

Offline Brooke

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Re: Broadcasting AH on Twitch works great on even a cheap computer system
« Reply #1 on: April 09, 2016, 07:05:13 PM »
By the way, the upcoming scenario starting June is:



One of the biggest battles of WWII.

109's, 190's, La-5's, Yaks, P-39's, Tu-2's, Il-2's, Ju 88's, and (if you run out of your 3 lives in aircraft) unlimited lives in Panzer IV H's and T-34/76's for a massive tank battle (Kursk style).

This is a battle where most of the top German and Soviet aces fought.

Offline Drano

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Re: Broadcasting AH on Twitch works great on even a cheap computer system
« Reply #2 on: April 09, 2016, 07:09:04 PM »
I tried it out a few months back. I was looking for something to record video that had smaller output size than the FRAPS I had been using. OBS worked out fine. Video isn't as sharp as FRAPS, but they're a fraction of the size. Set up twitch thinking the extra workload would be a killer. I hardly notice it's running and the feed is consistent on cable.

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Offline Brooke

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Re: Broadcasting AH on Twitch works great on even a cheap computer system
« Reply #3 on: April 09, 2016, 07:28:36 PM »
If you want to try Twitch of Youtube game streaming, here is how you do it.

-------------- Create a Twitch account ----------------

Go to:
https://www.twitch.tv/

Create an account.

In the Settings for your account, go into the "Channels & Videos" tab and make sure "Automatically archive my broadcasts" is selected (so that your streams are saved on Twitch for a while).  That way, after you stream, you can keep the video of it on their site for a while, edit it, etc. if you want.  Very handy!

Open your Dashboard.  Click on "Stream Key" tab.  Click on "Show key".  Copy that stream key (as you will need to paste it below).  Click on the "live" tab.  Type a name into the title of your broadcast you are soon to start (such as "My test AH broadcast" or whatever).  Click on "Not playing" and select "Playing" instead.  Click the "update" button -- you are now ready to start streaming to Twitch with OBS.

------------- To get OBS up and going -------------------

Download OBS Studio (not the older OBS Classic):
https://obsproject.com/

Install it.

Run the 64-bit version (or 32-bit as appropriate for your system).

In File->settings->Stream, select the streaming service you want to use (such as Twitch).  Select the server closest to you.  Paste in your stream key.

In the "Scenes" box on lower left, add a scene called whatever you want.

In the "Sources" box in the middle, add a "Game capture" and name it anything you want.

Put your mouse pointer into the preview-screen section (which is probably blank currently), and right click.  Scroll down to "Transform" and select "Fit to screen".  This way, your AH session will (after OBS rescales it to 720p) be fit to the final format correctly.  (This is the only confusing part of OBS, as it allows you to put your game stream into only part of the screen if you want, and it's a little finicky on that setting.)  If you have problems later with it looking like OBS is making a video of only a portion of your AH full-screen graphics -- this is the likely cause.

------------------- Start AH --------------

Start up Aces High.

In OBS, click "start recording" or "start streaming" (whatever you want to do).

Go into your full-screen Aces High, and away you go.

----------------------------------

If you want to check streaming, go to twitch.tv and go into the Dashboard for your account.  There is a window there that shows what you are broadcasting.  Press "alt-tab" to get out of AH full screen and take a look at what is showing in that Twitch Dashboard video preview.

If you want to make a video and see if it looks OK, that's a good test, too.   By default, OBS makes flv files, which you can play with the free VLC media player available here ( https://www.videolan.org/vlc/ ).  Press the "start recording" button in OBS, and you are creating a movie file on the fly.  Go back into AH full screen, fly around a bit, then stop recording and play the video in the VLC player to see how it looks.
« Last Edit: April 09, 2016, 07:30:35 PM by Brooke »

Offline Brooke

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Re: Broadcasting AH on Twitch works great on even a cheap computer system
« Reply #4 on: April 09, 2016, 07:37:05 PM »
Drano, I agree:  I am *amazed* that OBS creates videos (good ones) and high-quality streaming on the fly without any noticeable change to playing Aces High.

Like you, I have used FRAPS in the past, but I can't do much of it because of how gigantic the files are in no time -- like a few minutes of game play resulting in a 50 GB file (or something like that), which you then need to get resampled and formatted down to something reasonable (a time-consuming pain in the neck).

OBS is a *breeze* to work with in comparison to what I used to go through.

Offline Brooke

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Re: Broadcasting AH on Twitch works great on even a cheap computer system
« Reply #5 on: April 09, 2016, 08:01:49 PM »
I forgot to mention this, but you do need about 3 Mbits/sec bandwidth on your upload to broadcast at the default output video bitrate of 2500.

For a lot of people these days, 3 Mbps upload is a trivial amount.  My $40/month basic Fios account gives me about 10 times that, for example.

Anyway, you can test your upload stats here:

http://www.speedtest.net/

If you don't have 3 Mbps upload, you can still stream, but you need to reduce the output bitrate to 80% of your upload bandwidth.  So, 2 Mbps should have an output video bitrate of 2000 x 0.8 = 1600.  You can set that in OBS in file->settings->output.

Offline Brooke

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Re: Broadcasting AH on Twitch works great on even a cheap computer system
« Reply #6 on: April 09, 2016, 08:55:20 PM »
And here's the result of streaming:

https://www.twitch.tv/brooke314/v/59649558?t=05m01s

Offline Chalenge

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Re: Broadcasting AH on Twitch works great on even a cheap computer system
« Reply #7 on: April 09, 2016, 11:33:58 PM »
Good way to attract "spiez" too.

If you want to record better videos nothing beats the Elgato, unless you want to spend a LOT more money and get into SDI cards. Elgato also supports streaming directly and records at up to 1080p60 if your soul purpose is YouTube postings. I do this by echoing a mirror of my screen to a second computer that writes directly to SSD.

If you are prepared to spend into the thousands for a second system to support higher recording speeds you might be able to hit 2160p60, or 2160p59.97 ideally. I can do this, but my Internet upload speed is insufficient even to upload 4k to YouTube and there is no 4k streaming (although YouTube is headed in that direction).
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Offline Brooke

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Re: Broadcasting AH on Twitch works great on even a cheap computer system
« Reply #8 on: April 10, 2016, 12:37:34 AM »
Good way to attract "spiez" too.

There is that.  I'm eager for Scenarios to get some publicity.  Hmm. . . . what to do . . .  Go for it and hope there is no spying?  Don't go for it an miss out on trying a publicity angle?  Try to turn off the streaming just when I'm giving out critical info?  Hmm . . .

Offline Chalenge

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Re: Broadcasting AH on Twitch works great on even a cheap computer system
« Reply #9 on: April 10, 2016, 01:06:52 AM »
I can't answer that. I had planned on making AH videos for YouTube myself, but when I asked about it I was told they wanted to keep things under wraps. As far as I know that embargo has not been removed, so I have been working other games.

Otherwise, I think publicity would be well in hand.
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Offline Skuzzy

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Re: Broadcasting AH on Twitch works great on even a cheap computer system
« Reply #10 on: April 10, 2016, 06:29:45 AM »
I can't answer that. I had planned on making AH videos for YouTube myself, but when I asked about it I was told they wanted to keep things under wraps. As far as I know that embargo has not been removed, so I have been working other games.

Otherwise, I think publicity would be well in hand.

Oh, we asked people to keep videos to a minimum when we were in Alpha as the graphics were constantly being changed, but things have stabilized now.  Go ahead and make all the AH3 videos you like.  Please assert they are from AHIII.  Might even include the actual version in the lower right corner of the video, when possible.
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Offline Chalenge

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Re: Broadcasting AH on Twitch works great on even a cheap computer system
« Reply #11 on: April 10, 2016, 09:53:21 AM »
Thank you, Skuzzy.

Brooke, is the upcoming scenario a Beat test event, or still AHII?
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Offline Brooke

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Re: Broadcasting AH on Twitch works great on even a cheap computer system
« Reply #12 on: April 10, 2016, 11:38:26 AM »
Thank you, Skuzzy.

Brooke, is the upcoming scenario a Beat test event, or still AHII?

If AH3 isn't out prior to June, we probably will run it in AH2, but there is a chance we'd try for AH3 beta if that is possible depending on details.

Offline Ratsy

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Re: Broadcasting AH on Twitch works great on even a cheap computer system
« Reply #13 on: April 10, 2016, 11:57:20 AM »
Brooke -  Thanks for the information share about Twitch TV.  I followed your instructions and had my own streamed video complete in about an hour.

There is much to learn ahead but getting a huge head start from you is a gift.  Thanks again.

 :salute
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Offline Chalenge

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Re: Broadcasting AH on Twitch works great on even a cheap computer system
« Reply #14 on: April 10, 2016, 12:02:48 PM »
Thanks, Brooke. Sorry for the hijack. I'll have our XO look into the scenario.
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