Greetings TL,
I have been having some rather frustrating issues in attempting to get a functional decent quality stream running. Before I describe my issues, as per Tech Support Forum standards I will post the following information regarding my system.

•Streaming software used :

I have been using combinations of all of the above in order to try and fix my problem. I have used both Xsplit and FME (Versions 2.5 and 3.2, will elaborate on this in a bit) I have VAC and have used VHScreencap. I have described in further detail later on in the post the combinations I used.

•CPU type/speed and amount of RAM:
i7 930 @ 2.66 (Stock, no OC) with 12 GB Ram

•Windows version (eg: Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit)
Win7 Pro x64

GPU(s): Asus Radeon 5870 and 5830 in Xfire. (Not a cost effective, nor optimal setup I know, but I can't see this being the issue)

•Download / upload speed as measured by www.speedtest.net to California, USA and ping, packet loss and jitter as measured by www.pingtest.net to California, USA.

Wired connection with the following stats


This is actually supposed to be 100/5 (on hold on the phone with tech support now, which is why i have time to write this thread)
Ping test to San Fran, CA


•Settings used in all your streaming software:
When I was using FME i would capture my whole screen then try and output it as 1280x720
Bitrates used were 1500 for video and 192 for audio

In Xsplit I set quality to 10 and played around with a variety of bitrates ranging from 1500 to 2500 with audio at 192 kbps. As an aside what does the VBV do? I had no idea what to set it at., I just kept it as the same as my upload bitrate.

•Streaming service used: Justin/Twitch.tv

I have played around with essentially 3 different streaming configurations.

1)FMLE 3.2 with VHSC
This one confuses me. The second I open FMLE my FPS in SC2 instantly hit 30 (even just on the loading menu). I don't even need to be streaming and SC2 will lag like crazy. Video quality to the stream is great but sc2 is just horribly laggy. This one easily caused the most FPS drop as a whole on my computer.

2) XSplit
THis one works ok, I get about 25-45 fps in SC2 and it feels kinda laggy but my stream has been choppy with the settings I used. It also looked worse than FMLE videos even when I was using higher bitrates. The choppiness was the big issue here.

3)FME 2.5 and VHSC
This one had so much promise. Unlike 3.2, opening 2.5 would not make Sc2 lag at all. I would get a bit of an FPS drop when I started "streaming" but it was playable. However even though it claimed it was encoding my stream would simply display a black screen (even though it says l am live). If I could get a non black screen from this would be the best solution IMO.

All I want to do is get a reasonable 720p stream without major performance drops in Sc2. I definitely understand by streaming my FPS will drop but these fps drops are quite tough to work with.

Based on my hardware am I asking too much for a 720p stream with good in game performance? I have never seen my cpu usage exceed 60 when trying these methods (had task manager open and checked). I would understand if I were getting big performance drops if my cpu usage was maxed, but I have never seen it max. I have tried setting priorities and affinities on task manager, which slightly improves performance, but not much.

I have searched through tons of threads on TL with similar issues as well as other forums and have been unable to come up with a solution or suggestions

I don't care which program I use, though I do like FME 2.5 the most.

Do any of the tech gurus here have any ideas as to what I could try? If I missed any details I will gladly edit them into the OP (which I hope is somewhat organized and detailed enough)

tldr: Any attempt at streaming causes major in game performance issues without CPU being maxed.