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Hi, my gamer tags toasti0 and my twitch stream channel is http://www.twitch.tv/toasti0 .
I have almost 200,000 views on my gaming channel on twitch.tv . This area is basically designed to raise awareness of streaming so you guys can get into it, specifically for the adsl 2+ connections out there who only have 1 mbit upload. I am from Australia as well so often the distance from the servers can drop your upload rate and I know how it can be hard to balance your stream settings.
So lets get things started basically you only need:-
4 main things to start streaming.
1. xpslit or other streaming program. (xsplit is currently free while on trial)
2. decent pc i recommend a quad core cpu.
3. twitch.tv account
4. most important item a decent upload speed. I recommend minimum 1mbit upload.
Ok so now that we have the basics lets get more into detail on settings. I'm going to cover xsplit settings as far as 1mbit upload goes.
First download xsplit http://www.xsplit.com/download/ . To download you have to register on the website which is quick and easy. Next you want to make a twitch.tv account and get a url for it mine is http://www.twitch.tv/toasti0 which is just my channel link. Now once you have logged onto xsplit goto tools tab>settings once in there select channels tab than add>justin tv (justin tv is twitch) . Once you have added a stream you now input your user name. Your user name is your account/channel name on twitch so for me it is toasti0. After that input your password for twitch and than put in your channel which is http://www.twitch.tv/toasti0 for me. Next setting is location I like to select main origin cluster this is the closest server to Australia it is in Sinapore asia, san fransisco and LA (depending on your isp and location in Aus), if your unsure select default. Now next comes the most complicated settings. The main things that effect these settings are cpu power and internet upload bandwidth.
Video encoding settings on xsplit
Preset - select xsplit default if your cpu is the suck. If you have a besty 6 core or really nice 4 core you can go upto medium but if your unsure stick to default for now. Slower = more compression less bandwidth. Faster = less compression more bandwidth
quality - 4-10 up to you doesn't make a huge difference to be honest select Lower if
cpu is an issue or lag.
vbv max - now if you have 1mbit upload you should select around 550-850 keep in mind you dont wanna use 100% of your upload as you need some for the game (vbv max in-depth below).
vbv buffer - put same as our max or slighly less e.g 650-550 (confusing setting doesn't make huge difference)
Audio Encoding
format - 44.100 khz 16 bit mono (half's bandwidth needed) mp3
bitrate - 40000 (this is my setting if its laggy turn down to 3200)
If you want to save a copy to your hdd automatically check the box automatically record broadcast.
vbv max more indepth
This is by far the most important setting its important to find out your max upload because if its set to high your stream will lag if its set to low it will look worse. Play around till you find a nice amount. What I do is go to http://speedtest.net/ . And test your closet server location (full server list just below pick the one closest to your lcoation). This is important as you will not get 100% upload all the way to the twitch.tv servers. Once you get your magic number this will be the best setting for your vbv max (minus some bandwidth for game play) E.g so you get 800kb's to San Fransisco put your vbv at 730ish (10% less) to allow for game play upload speed.
List of server locations this will help with finding out which twitch.tv server is closest to your streaming location.
* San Francisco - rtmp://live.justin.tv/app (everything proxies back to this)
* Ashburn, VA - rtmp://live-iad.justin.tv/app
* Miamia, FL - rtmp://live-mia.justin.tv/app
* New York, NY - rtmp://live-jfk.justin.tv/app
* Los Angeles, CA - rtmp://live-lax.justin.tv/app
* London, GB - rtmp://live-lhr.justin.tv/app
* Amsterdam - rtmp://live-ams.justin.tv/app
* Frankfurt - rtmp://live-fra.justin.tv/app
* Dallas, TX - rtmp://live-dfw.justin.tv/app
* San Antonio, TX - rtmp://live-dfw-backup.justin.tv/app
* Los Angeles, CA - rtmp://live-lax-backup.justin.tv/app
* Herdon, VA - rtmp://live-iad-backup.justin.tv/app
* London, GB - rtmp://live-lhr-backup.justin.tv/app
* Asia Singapore - rtmp://live-sin-backup.justin.tv/app
Note: San Fransisco may not be the closest server to your location, also once you select your vbv max remember your sound is added to it. So for example If you choose 730kbs you also have to add 40kbs for your sound giving you 770 total.
(update)
There is an option now to speed test your bandwidth with the beta 6 of xsplit. Here is a link to try it for yourself it is easy to find in the options menu http://www.xsplit.com/broadcaster/help/index.html?bandwidth_tester_guide.htm . Speed test all the closest servers to you to get a good idea of what upload speed you should pick. (please note that beta 6 is only available to subscribers so you may have to use the first method until it becomes available to free users.
Tip: For low bandwidth users if you happen to get alot of blur on your sc2 or other games, when you move the camera a lot. Try turning down your graphic quality settings to lower or medium. The more plain looking your sc2/game is the faster and less blurry it will stream. This is due to the variable quality built into the encoder it doesn't have to use as much bandwidth with each frame so it streams a lot smoother and faster.
Resolution and fps settings
Ok now that you have server side sorted out lets sort out your 2 last stream settings. fps and resolution. To access these settings goto View> resolution or View>framerate
Resolution - ok first is resolution this setting is key to getting the right looking picture you can range from 360p (low bandwidth upload) to 720p (high bandwidth upload). Lets say you have 1mbit I recommend 600p first if it fails push down to 480p.
typical resolutions to use
1066x600 is 600p setting this will be nice widescreen and a good overall setting.
853x480 is 480p
others
1024x576
1120x630
1173x660
1280x720
All of these are 16 : 9 resolutions
FPS
Next is fps this is quick and simple choose between 15fps for lower bandwidth to 30fps for super good bandwidth. I use 20-22 fps 22 for shooters 20 for slower games. update I have been experimenting with 30 fps more lately and sometimes it can improve the viewing experience at the cost of bandwidth, if mass blocking is not an issue 30 fps can be enjoyable to stream with and watch.
That's all your settings DONE! yey. Next you just want to choose the add at the bottom left of your screen on the xsplit main screen and than select screen region. Once that is select click the screen you wish to stream and bam! It will appear. You will notice the window starts small just grab the corner of it and pull it out to full screen. Keep in mind when streaming a game you can't stream it full screen unless you pay for xsplit so you will have to run it in full screen window mode. Most games you just press alt+enter and it will make it window mode ready to stream!
Ok that's the bulk of all the information for xsplit the hardest part is balancing your upload bandwidth settings play around and get the right settings for your internet connection. If you have any trouble message below and i'll try and help you out best I can.
Too easy!
Toasti0
@ http://www.twitch.tv/toasti0
:D If this guide helped you don't forget to follow my stream!!
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Thank you for the awesome guide!
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Excellent guide!! It just helped me optimize my stream even more! :D
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United Kingdom19882 Posts
"you can range from 360p (low quality upload) to 720p (high quality upload). Lets say you have 1mbit I recommend 600p first if it fails push down to 480p."
Resolution has little to do with the direct quality of the upload, it is the video resolution... those who do not understand what this is should probably not attempt messing around with stream settings i think (no offense). Also, if you are set at 500kb upload in xsplit for example and 720p lags because of your internet connection is insufficient, lowering resolution wont actually fix anything, xsplit will still try to use the same bandwidth and lag.
Good advice on the preset, i was unaware of that, will help me greatly in the future.
24fps is standard in movies etc, the higher you go the more CPU load you will have, the smoother your stream will look and the more bandwidth it will take, but 30 is quite standard in streams. I wouldn't recommend lower than 24 personally as FPS is quite noticeable, IPL3 used a 60fps stream and it was widely accepted as being amazing but its kinda hard to do that on anything short of an i2500k and would use double the bandwidth of a 30fps stream.
I have xsplit upload speed lower, i have 1mbit upload and if i raise it past about 500kb (+120k audio) it spikes over my upload speed and lags out, so i keep it down at 500.
Overall, i wouldn't really recommend streaming on 1mbit upload, when i jump around a lot with camera hotkeys or watch a lot of movement etc, the whole stream blurs out so you can hardly see anything (no individual units) for a little while as big battles happen etc, at 24fps and slower presets this can be minimized but it always happens when streaming to some extent, 1mbit isn't much bandwidth to play around with unfortunately.
Try to use a resolution with the same aspect ratio as your monitor, and especially one that scales directly into your resolution for better quality, ex, 960x540 is 1/4 the area of 1920x1080, so will look better than some other resolution that has to drop pixels unevenly to downscale into.
If you have 2-3mbit upload you should be great for streaming on a decent quad core CPU or higher, but you can stream with less, it will just look bad during heavy action etc, or worse, if you set up badly, drop your ingame framerate heavily.
You can use task manager and set priority + affinity to run smoother. SC2 should be on high priority (not realtime) whereas xsplit should be on above normal.
If you have a quad core CPU, you will see cores 0 1 2 3 under affinity, and if you have an i7 it will be 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7.
SC2 uses 2 cores, so set it to use 0 and 1, and then set xsplit to use the remaining cores.
i7's use hyperthreading to have 4 virtual cores, so set sc2 to use 0 1 2 3 and set xsplit to use 4 5 6 7.
Use windowed fullscreen mode in starcraft if you havnt already (just wanted to throw that in there)
Lot of info, i probably missed a lot of stuff but thats off the top of my head.
Thanks for making thread to help people, and feel free to add some of the stuff i wrote into OP if you want 
GL streaming people
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I changed the upload quality to upload bandwidth for your response. As far as fps setting goes you do not need 30 fps to have a smooth stream I use 20 fps for sc2 & lol and other games and the animation of the units is lag free and not noticeable. If you play fps or racing games you can go closer to 24 fps but if you have 1mbit upload you can't afford to waste bandwidth on 30 fps.
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United Kingdom19882 Posts
On November 07 2011 11:48 toasti0 wrote:
I changed the upload quality to upload bandwidth for your response. As far as fps setting goes you do not need 30 fps to have a smooth stream I use 20 fps for sc2 & lol and other games and the animation of the units is lag free and not noticeable. If you play fps or racing games you can go closer to 24 fps but if you have 1mbit upload you can't afford to waste bandwidth on 30 fps.
I agree, you can perceive ~16fps as smooth motion, but there is a reason movies use 24 plus the streaming standard is ~30, it looks a lot smoother and better.
With the IPL3 stream at 60fps, a lot of people were freaking out, claiming the game was on a speed higher than faster etc, it is beyond noticeable and makes watching a lot more enjoyable if the video is higher framerate
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Here is another trick for low bandwidth users if you happend to get alot of blur on your sc2 when you move the camera the best thing you can do is turn down your graphic quality settings to lower or medium. The more plain looking your sc2 is the faster and less blurry it will stream.
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Guys, I'd like to have some opinions of experienced users here.
I've got 1mbit upload atm and I can't seem to stream SC2 with good quality without having my ping up to a second or smth, which is OFC unplayable.
My current ISP which i cant rly change yet can only provide a maximal upload of 1.6 mbit.
Is it worth upgrading from 1.0 to 1.6 ? Will I be able to stream sc2/dota (my screen is 1680x1050)
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On November 18 2011 05:23 Nancial wrote:
Guys, I'd like to have some opinions of experienced users here.
I've got 1mbit upload atm and I can't seem to stream SC2 with good quality without having my ping up to a second or smth, which is OFC unplayable.
My current ISP which i cant rly change yet can only provide a maximal upload of 1.6 mbit.
Is it worth upgrading from 1.0 to 1.6 ? Will I be able to stream sc2/dota (my screen is 1680x1050)
It's not "ping" latency, it's input lag from using the capture driver in XSplit. See my first post in this thread for links to change the capture driver.
On the upload, it depends on what resolution you want to stream in. If 480p, you're fine - if 720p you need to upgrade, preferably to 2,5 Mbit/s for a perfect result, but 1,6 will do.
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hey do you have any idea why i lag super hardcore when i try to stream brood war in windowed mode (magnified, non magnified its ok) and just sc2 in normal fullscreen windowed mode?
q6600 quad core @ 2.4
gforce gtx 470
4gb
win7 32
my cpu's go up to like 99% when i run bw magnified or sc2 when i try to stream. sc2 on lowest setting etc etc.
its just my cpu, my connection is great
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i just find it very hard to believe that my q6600 cant stream broodwar on 2x magnify when i can play skyrim at 1900x1200 on ultra lol
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It's not that complex to believe/understand.
1. Skyrim is less CPU intensive than streaming.
2. Most games are GPU dependent, not CPU.
3. Streaming is exactly the opposite of (2) and your CPU is pretty bad.
Compare your CPU to ie. my i7 920 (link) and you'll see that I got almost twice your power, and I max out my CPU easily when streaming SC2. I don't know if there's a bug for the x2 magnify of BW, but I think you underestimate what streaming requires.
According to this article, Skyrim requires quite a lot power to run on ultra at 1920x1080. At minimum your CPU would have to be OC'ed heavily to keep up.
Skyrim simultaneously taxes CPU and GPU resources. So, if you’re looking to run at ultra detail settings using 1920x1080 and texture transparency AA, you need a Sandy Bridge-based CPU and a Radeon HD 6850 just to hit a 30 FPS minimum
Source: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-9.html
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United Kingdom19882 Posts
On November 18 2011 18:49 HellGreen wrote:It's not that complex to believe/understand. 1. Skyrim is less CPU intensive than streaming. 2. Most games are GPU dependent, not CPU. 3. Streaming is exactly the opposite of (2) and your CPU is pretty bad. Compare your CPU to ie. my i7 920 ( link) and you'll see that I got almost twice your power, and I max out my CPU easily when streaming SC2. I don't know if there's a bug for the x2 magnify of BW, but I think you underestimate what streaming requires. According to this article, Skyrim requires quite a lot power to run on ultra at 1920x1080. At minimum your CPU would have to be OC'ed heavily to keep up. Show nested quote +Skyrim simultaneously taxes CPU and GPU resources. So, if you’re looking to run at ultra detail settings using 1920x1080 and texture transparency AA, you need a Sandy Bridge-based CPU and a Radeon HD 6850 just to hit a 30 FPS minimum Source: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-9.html
I sustain 60fps (and often 100+ if i unlimit) just fine with a first gen i7 on maxed details plus ini tweaks at 1920x1200... that article is only comparing SB to Phenom II, and it is a well known fact that Phenom II cant match intel CPU's in gaming
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On November 18 2011 19:53 Cyro wrote:
I sustain 60fps (and often 100+ if i unlimit) just fine with a first gen i7 on maxed details plus ini tweaks at 1920x1200... that article is only comparing SB to Phenom II, and it is a well known fact that Phenom II cant match intel CPU's in gaming
I'm not sure I get your point. While his CPU may be a little better than a Phenom II, the article states that it requires a much faster CPU (SB) to obtain 30+FPS on average. Even if you are able to get that with a first gen. i7, that CPU is roughly 90-100% better than the Q6600. What did I miss here?
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United Kingdom19882 Posts
On November 18 2011 20:35 HellGreen wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2011 19:53 Cyro wrote:
I sustain 60fps (and often 100+ if i unlimit) just fine with a first gen i7 on maxed details plus ini tweaks at 1920x1200... that article is only comparing SB to Phenom II, and it is a well known fact that Phenom II cant match intel CPU's in gaming I'm not sure I get your point. While his CPU may be a little better than a Phenom II, the article states that it requires a much faster CPU (SB) to obtain 30+FPS on average. Even if you are able to get that with a first gen. i7, that CPU is roughly 90-100% better than the Q6600. What did I miss here?
Nothing, i just wanted to point that out, sorry
Infact im pretty sure its far bigger performance gap, with the IPC difference and the fact im running at 4ghz with hyperthreading too
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On November 07 2011 11:51 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2011 11:48 toasti0 wrote:
I changed the upload quality to upload bandwidth for your response. As far as fps setting goes you do not need 30 fps to have a smooth stream I use 20 fps for sc2 & lol and other games and the animation of the units is lag free and not noticeable. If you play fps or racing games you can go closer to 24 fps but if you have 1mbit upload you can't afford to waste bandwidth on 30 fps. I agree, you can perceive ~16fps as smooth motion, but there is a reason movies use 24 plus the streaming standard is ~30, it looks a lot smoother and better. With the IPL3 stream at 60fps, a lot of people were freaking out, claiming the game was on a speed higher than faster etc, it is beyond noticeable and makes watching a lot more enjoyable if the video is higher framerate
Yeah you can perceive 16 fps is smooth motion...if you never saw anything above that. I have a 720p 60fps stream and you can CLEARLY tell a difference from ANY other fps setting. It looks like you're watching someone play from your computer instead of watching a stream. Check it out sometime...and follow.
www.twitch.tv/brovermind
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On November 18 2011 22:48 ZvGRH wrote:Yeah you can perceive 16 fps is smooth motion...if you never saw anything above that. I have a 720p 60fps stream and you can CLEARLY tell a difference from ANY other fps setting. It looks like you're watching someone play from your computer instead of watching a stream. Check it out sometime...and follow. www.twitch.tv/brovermind
Thanks for sharing your 60FPS stream - I've been looking for one
I actually got a few questions.
a) What kind of upload speed do you have available, and how much is used for streaming (I'd like to know the min/max/avg value of the number in the XSplit title bar)
b) What 'Preset' setting are you using? I watched your latest VOD, and while it's smooth, I'm pretty sure that you can improve the picture quality quite a bit, if you would use 'medium', but do of course monitor your CPU usage - you must have CPU resources to spare if you're going to try this.
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On November 07 2011 11:40 Cyro wrote:
You can use task manager and set priority + affinity to run smoother. SC2 should be on high priority (not realtime) whereas xsplit should be on above normal.
If you have a quad core CPU, you will see cores 0 1 2 3 under affinity, and if you have an i7 it will be 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7.
SC2 uses 2 cores, so set it to use 0 and 1, and then set xsplit to use the remaining cores.
i7's use hyperthreading to have 4 virtual cores, so set sc2 to use 0 1 2 3 and set xsplit to use 4 5 6 7.
Just a minor improvement on this, which is really great advice for people. Set SC2 on cores 2 and 3. Un-optimized processes will all try to go for core 0 first, so put SC2 on the bottom cores for less conflict. Otherwise you're spot on!
Gonna set up my rig later, hope to get 720p working on my 2600k with 3Mbit/s. Will be using this guide as an instruction manual, basically!
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EPT
