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About six months ago I became infuriated with Flash player while watching some Dota on Twitch. It basically ate system resources like they were free food at an office party. After digging a little I found an amazing tool called livestreamer. Livestreamer lets you play streams in your own video player bypassing Flash player all together. I personally use VLC but you can use something like MPC if your way soooper cool. It supports a ton of streaming services including all the big players in eSports like Twitch, Azubu, Dailymotion, Hitbox, and Douyu. A comprehensive list can be found here. Another upside is that you won't get any ads while watching. The downsides are that you won't be counted toward the viewer count on streams and can't participate in twitch chat. You also won't be eligible for tournament item drops in Dota or CS:GO.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/e8dTivI.png) What it looks like mid use.
Alright now that you know why you should be using it I'll explain how (This is a windows tutorial).
1. Download livestreamer here. Just use the installer and install it how you would normally install a program. There aren't any hidden tricks in the installer that get you to download and install adware or anything so feel free to just next your way to the end.
2. At the end of the install it will ask you if you want to open the config file. If you plan on using a non vlc video player open the config file if not ignore it.
a. For MPC scroll down to the Scroll down to the "#player="C:\Program Files (x86)\MPC-HC\mpc-hc.exe"" line and stick that in the button without the # and change it to your MPC install Read the top of the config for more info if you need it.
3. Now that you have livestreamer installed you might be confused on how to actually use it. Your going to have to open up your run command to do so. The format to open a stream is:
Livestreamer StreamUrl Quality
in use it would be
livestreamer twitch.tv/beyondthesummit best
The qualities you can choose from are: audio(Yes it's just audio), low, high, medium, mobile(or worst), and source(best).
After you run your livestreamer command vlc will open up and be playing your stream that's it.
Update:
Recently I wanted to download an old vod from twitch and the only way I could find to do it was with bad websites and plugins I didn't want to install. In the end I found out that livestreamer can save me again. This also works for streams that are currently live. You'll just download from wherever the stream is it won't get what you missed. Another big thing to keep in mind if you want to do this it seems twitch limits download speeds to about 550kb/s so it takes for ever to do.
1. Open up your command prompt.
2. Use the same syntax as you use for viewing streams normally with a little extra.
Syntax
livestreamer StreamUrl Quality -o FileName
In use
livestreamer twitch.tv/aui_2000/c/5486312 best -o AuiVod
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/qVJcHSO.png) What it looks like mid use.
For garbage Joindota tournaments:
MLG
livestreamer --player-continuous-http "hds://mlghds-lh.akamaihd.net/z/mlg7_1@156787/manifest.f4m" best
JD Masters
http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x1b1h6o
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Hey thats pretty cool! Thanks for throwing this out there might use it sometime
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"Downsides: Can't participate in Twitch chat"
Sounds like a feature to me!
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Northern Ireland22213 Posts
I use this for high quality lagless streams, works a charm
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I was always too lazy to fix this, but I did it earlier because of your post and it works insanely smooth. Highly recommended if you don't care about the twitch chat.
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I'll add something that i have done, and alot of people probably don't realise.
I created about 10 .BAT files to just double click and then it will automatically open the stream that you saved, instead of typing everything manually everytime.
To do so do the following:
Open up Notepad
In the notepad type livestreamer ( URL of twitch.tv streamer i.e. twitch.tv/sing_sing ) and then your quality ( i.e best, high etc )
Will look like this
livestreamer twitch.tv/sing_sing best
Then choose to save the file with the option "save as"
Name it singsing.bat and hit save ( important is that you cannot use any blank spaces or special characters in the filename, so no sing sing.bat, or s1ngs1ng.bat or whatever )
Now you can double click that file and it will open up Sing_Sing's stream in your VLC player
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this is also a big battery saver for those of you with laptops. Even if you're plugged in it prevents your laptop from becoming a space heater
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Estonia4644 Posts
hay thx kirsed, this works wonderfully
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Just wondering as I'm not really into the technical aspects behind stuff like this: Does it affect traffic in any way? My traffic is limited, thus I always have to be wary of how and when to spend it. Streaming comsumes so much that I can't really afford to watch a stream for long without lowering the quality. Even then it's quite a lot.
Would be nice if it actually tones down the usage, even just a little bit!
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OMG Kirsed, I LOVE U!!! I always hate on flash when I hear my PC fans going crazy.
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On October 08 2014 22:22 WhX wrote:
Just wondering as I'm not really into the technical aspects behind stuff like this: Does it affect traffic in any way? My traffic is limited, thus I always have to be wary of how and when to spend it. Streaming comsumes so much that I can't really afford to watch a stream for long without lowering the quality. Even then it's quite a lot.
Would be nice if it actually tones down the usage, even just a little bit!
I highly doubt it can help you with bandwidth besides being able to do audio only if you're really desperate.
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Wow, kickass!! Gonna start using this right away. Thank you for this thread!
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This is amazing, this should be spotlighted or something.
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This just blew my mind. I was never able to watch livestreams on source because of flash player just chewing through my computer, but with this, I can just do it with no problems, and it even looks like 60fps or something, just because of how smooth it is.
Thank you from the bottom of my soul!
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On October 09 2014 08:18 kirsed wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2014 22:22 WhX wrote:
Just wondering as I'm not really into the technical aspects behind stuff like this: Does it affect traffic in any way? My traffic is limited, thus I always have to be wary of how and when to spend it. Streaming comsumes so much that I can't really afford to watch a stream for long without lowering the quality. Even then it's quite a lot.
Would be nice if it actually tones down the usage, even just a little bit! I highly doubt it can help you with bandwidth besides being able to do audio only if you're really desperate.
Hmm, too bad. I'll still give it a try though. Thanks!
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would it be possible to get this running on android, and then get an audio-only stream, to save data usage while on the move?
It'd be pretty neat to listen to certain streams while commuting, not necessarily esports, but streams in general.
I find that a lot of the time I don't look at the game that often anyway, just have the audio on while I do other things.
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Edit: NVM
Edit2: double never mind, got it! Thanks a bunch, it works great
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I've updated the tutorial to include how to download vods or livestreams.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/OXo0oiN.png)
