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PRE POST BLABBER
This is a write up of my experience setting up an Xsplit stream with two computers and a capture card. I made this because I couldn't find much in regard to streaming using two computers, and to work everything out and not share it makes me feel like someone who asks a forum for help and then posts “NVM, worked it out”. The worst kind of person in my eyes.
Also if I am doing something wrong, or inefficiently PLEASE let me know, I will alter this and my setup. I'm also sorry if some or all of it is obvious, I just wanted to be thorough.
If you want to see my stream in action, heres a shameless plug: http://www.Twitch.tv/SirDodgy
AN EXAMPLE OF HOW TO STREAM WITH TWO COMPUTERS AND OTHER RELATED DILLY DALLY
HARDWARE
THE COMPUTERS
- First pc (The gaming PC): As long as your graphics card on your gaming pc has two video outputs and can duplicate your screen to both outputs, youshould be fine.
- Second pc (The streaming PC): This computer is only used for encoding. I have aAMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 965 Black Edition overclocked to 4ghz which canstream 1080p with the lowest encoding and 720p with fast encoding preset. I think the limit to streaming 720p is something like a heavily overclockedq6600.
CAPTURE CARD
There are a few capture card solutions available on the market today. You simply need to research them and think about how much you are willing to spend onthis. I bought an Avermedia Live Gamer HD
Devices like the AVerMedia AVerTV HD DVR, AVerMedia Game Broadcaster HD, Hauppauge Colossus, and Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro should probably work fine too, but make sure to research the quality they can output and whether they can handle the resolution you wish to stream at.
Video:
Two cables need to be plugged into your graphics card:
1. The dvi/vga/hdmi cable that connects it to your monitor.
2. The dvi/vga/hdmi cable that connects it to your capture card on your other pc.
You must set your gaming pc to output the same information to both your monitor and your capture card. To do this (on Windows 7 at least) either right click your desktop and click Personalise / Display / Adjust resolution or from the start menu, go to Control Panel / Appearance and Personalization /Display / Adjust resolution. You should have two displays appear, like here:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/kmg5v.jpg)
You must set the Multiple Display option to “Duplicate these displays” like here:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/2RDDw.jpg)
Audio:
I used a 3.5mm Male to 2 x Femalehttp://i.imgur.com/yNt9l.jpg splitter to output my audio from my gaming pc to both my headphones and also the Line In on the streaming pc http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk/vinylstudio/images/line_in.jpg using a shielded 3.5mm Male to Male extension lead.
For your microphone I simply use a second desk microphone plugged straight into the streaming pc.
SOFTWARE
Xsplit:
For general xsplit stream settings, TheGunRun has already created an amazing guide:http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=309480
I personally use 720p, Quality 10, max bitrate 2200, buffer 2200 and Preset at faster. I can actually upload to twitch at over 6000 kbps, however twitch only re encodes partners’ videos and without re encoding the viewer must have 6000 kbps download to view your video. Plus twitch servers are extremely temperamental even with partners streams (720p+ usually means 720p + lag, at least in the uk), so i've found 2200 to work well.
Xsplit seems to only allow one recording device input and both the microphone and the Line In port both count as recording devices. To get around this we must listen to one of the devices. To do this (On windows 7 at least) go to Control Panel / Hardware and Sound / Manage audio devices / Recording and right click either the Microphone or the Line In go to Properties / Listen and tick “Listen to this device”. This makes the gaming pc’s speakers play though the streaming pc’s speakers and allows you to use both the line in and a microphone with xsplit, even though they are both recording devices.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/vLGLD.png)
For this work around to work, you must actually have a device plugged in to act as the default device! I used some old earbuds which don't make enough sound for me to even hear. There is probably a workaround but this way was simple enough.
While you are there I would also recommend going to the Levels tab to ensure it is outputting at 100 and the Advanced tab to untick “Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device”, as sometimes programs will mess with the levels.
Synergy:
Synergy is an extremely useful program which allows you to control both your gaming pc and your streaming pc with one keyboard and mouse, letting you movebetween each computer as if it were an extended monitor.
http://synergy-foss.org/download/?list
AutoSceneChange:
This is a useful program, allowing you to change scenes depending on whether Starcraft 2 or LoL is ingame, in the menu or alt tabbed, even with multi pcstreaming. Damn this program is cool!
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=269995
Thank you HellGreen, you are awsome 
RANDOM
BASIC STARCRAFT OVERLAYS:
With control groups:
Protoss: http://files.enjin.com.s3.amazonaws.com/46724/modules/forum/attachments/Protoss Overlay - Paint.Net_1342083185.png
Terran: http://files.enjin.com.s3.amazonaws.com/46724/modules/forum/attachments/Terran Overlay_1342083197.png
Zerg: http://files.enjin.com.s3.amazonaws.com/46724/modules/forum/attachments/Zerg Overlay_1342083231.png
Without control groups:
Protoss: http://files.enjin.com.s3.amazonaws.com/46724/modules/forum/attachments/Protoss Overlay - No Ctrl Groups_1342117911.png
Terran: http://files.enjin.com.s3.amazonaws.com/46724/modules/forum/attachments/Terran Overlay - No Ctrl Groups_1342117921.png
Zerg: http://files.enjin.com.s3.amazonaws.com/46724/modules/forum/attachments/Zerg Overlay - No Ctrl Groups_1342117905.png
OVERLAY TWITCH CHAT ON XSPLIT:
This is a really useful guide on getting the twitch chat to show up on your stream, maybe encouraging conversation.
http://bwana.tv/forums/index.php?threads/how-to-overlay-chat-on-your-live-stream.42103/
TWITCH TV BACKGROUND TEMPLATE
http://minus.com/myguides#1o
These are two useful images created by Ignisar which help align everything when you are creating a background for your stream.
RANDOM THOUGHTS/STUFF
- I use grooveshark and want to put the name of the song playing on my stream. I found this thread:http://www.xsplit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=91&t=13022#p51952 . Theprogram seems to output the song name onto a text file, I wanted to try and output that file only a network folder and use it with multi pc streaming,but I simply can't get the program to work. I'm not sure how to paste the code he specifies into chrome. Ctrl shift I doesn't have a clear place toinput the code. Maybe someone could explain it.
- I tried to output my video into a ~£5 dvi splitter, but it didn't particularly work well for me. I could not get it to output at a high resolutionwithout looking blurry. Someone on the avermedia forum said it would not be possible without expensive hardware. If anyone has any more information onsplitting dvi signal, that would be cool.
- If anyone uses steam, and finds the steam overlay doesn't work since StarCraft got a splash kind of box, in order to bypass that you need to go to Sc2folder, go to /Support and use Sc2Switcher.exe instead.
- To find the limits to what you can stream, simply keep your control panel up showing your processor usage, and test different resolutions while movingaround in a game and make sure the cpu usage doesn't go above 90%.
- Is there a way to copy and paste whole scenes, or even parts from a scene in xsplit? Its making me feel stupid that I can't find out how and its reallyannoying trying to get multiple scenes with the same screen regions in the same positions..
- I personally thought TvZ was FAR more exciting to watch when zerg used muta ling bling instead of ling infestor, but maybe I just think splitting isthe most exciting thing when spectating Starcraft 2.
JUST ME PLUGGING MY STREAM AGAIN :D!:
If you found this useful, or think it might help someone, maybe check out my stream and stay awhile, or if i'm not there, maybe follow me. I streamStarcraft 2 and competitive 6v6 Team Fortress 2, as long as I have any viewers I will never stop talking, it is probably my only skill.
http://www.Twitch.tv/SirDodgy
Here is a link to my original Google Doc's in case there is a problem with my bb code or something: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QvHj0ig_VT2rN9lP-UsXbhntWeKo_KRZ_eJhG6scG6Y/edit
I hope this helps at least one person!
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I hope this helps at least one person!
I am not the one, but after reading that guide I think this should help those guys who are using 2 pcs, if they don't already know how to stream with such a setup.
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United Kingdom20301 Posts
Thanks for the guide, helps with understanding.
Is there a way to copy and paste whole scenes, or even parts from a scene in xsplit? Its making me feel stupid that I can't find out how and its reallyannoying trying to get multiple scenes with the same screen regions in the same positions..
You can right click on them and note both the resolution and the xy position (which is where the image begins, iirc the top left, x extending right, and y down, but dont quote me on that)
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good luck with that electricity bill ;D
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I'm unfamiliar with the grooveshark --> .txt program, but I use a similar program made by a community member that does the same thing but for Spotify. If you're unfamiliar with spotify, go check it out, it's a great music streaming program and has a large library of music even if you have unique tastes in music like myself. The said program is called Songparser and also works for winamp. It's super easy to set up, they guy made a youtube tutorial on how to do it.
http://songparser.codeplex.com/
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Seems like a terribly inefficient way to do it.
I've had success streaming 1080p while playing using even my old Q6600 with DXTory and FMLE. A bit tricky to set up, but then again it's probably simpler than this.
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Is there a way to copy and paste whole scenes, or even parts from a scene in xsplit? Its making me feel stupid that I can't find out how and its reallyannoying trying to get multiple scenes with the same screen regions in the same positions..
If I recall correctly, there is an text/xml file in Xsplit's directory and you can edit that manually to copy full scenes. It isn't too scary once you find it. It has been a few minor version increments since I last tried this, so your mileage may vary.
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United Kingdom20301 Posts
On September 29 2012 00:52 Veritas wrote:
Seems like a terribly inefficient way to do it.
I've had success streaming 1080p while playing using even my old Q6600 with DXTory and FMLE. A bit tricky to set up, but then again it's probably simpler than this.
But capturing the screen has massive performance hits and complications. There are reasons people look to use a 2pc setup, and most of that isnt CPU usage related if they have a high end PC.
I can pull off a good 1080p@40fps (or 720p60 a preset bump slower) on my first gen i7 well inside of cpu limits while playing sc2, but if you are capturing at high framerates while trying to play the game at a high level, you're gonna have a bad time. Screen cloning and capturing from the second PC gets around that afaik
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On September 29 2012 01:28 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2012 00:52 Veritas wrote:
Seems like a terribly inefficient way to do it.
I've had success streaming 1080p while playing using even my old Q6600 with DXTory and FMLE. A bit tricky to set up, but then again it's probably simpler than this. But capturing the screen has massive performance hits and complications. There are reasons people look to use a 2pc setup, and most of that isnt CPU usage related if they have a high end PC. I can pull off a good 1080p@40fps (or 720p60 a preset bump slower) on my first gen i7 well inside of cpu limits while playing sc2, but if you are capturing at high framerates while trying to play the game at a high level, you're gonna have a bad time. Screen cloning and capturing from the second PC gets around that afaik
Im not sure how that guy gets playable fps while streaming 1080p.
The cpu I have in my streaming pc is far better than the old Q6600 and streaming 1080p with a capture card itl reach 90% usage rate on the lowest compression profile.
Maybe link the stream?
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@OP
Thank you for taking the time to write this guide. We definitely approve - thumbs up from me and from the rest of the XSplit team! And for the shout out for my scene switcher app - the dual computer feature in it is (obviously) designed for the kind of setup you describe, and it's great to see someone use it!
Is there a way to copy and paste whole scenes, or even parts from a scene in xsplit? Its making me feel stupid that I can't find out how and its reallyannoying trying to get multiple scenes with the same screen regions in the same positions.
It's not possible within XSplit atm. I do have a working prototype of an app that can do this. I'll see if I can polish it a bit more and let you know when it's ready for testing. We plan to add this functionality in later version of XSplit.
Thanks again
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United Kingdom20301 Posts
On September 29 2012 02:08 sirdodgy wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2012 01:28 Cyro wrote:On September 29 2012 00:52 Veritas wrote:
Seems like a terribly inefficient way to do it.
I've had success streaming 1080p while playing using even my old Q6600 with DXTory and FMLE. A bit tricky to set up, but then again it's probably simpler than this. But capturing the screen has massive performance hits and complications. There are reasons people look to use a 2pc setup, and most of that isnt CPU usage related if they have a high end PC. I can pull off a good 1080p@40fps (or 720p60 a preset bump slower) on my first gen i7 well inside of cpu limits while playing sc2, but if you are capturing at high framerates while trying to play the game at a high level, you're gonna have a bad time. Screen cloning and capturing from the second PC gets around that afaik Im not sure how that guy gets playable fps while streaming 1080p. The cpu I have in my streaming pc is far better than the old Q6600 and streaming 1080p with a capture card itl reach 90% usage rate on the lowest compression profile. Maybe link the stream?
Ive got a VOD a couple minutes long showing 1080p60 at superfast - with certain camera movements or high stress scenes though CPU usage goes up too high, and superfast needs around twice as much data as veryfast for only like a 5-10ish% performance increase, so rock solid, i could do around 40-45fps at 1920x1080 and Veryfast in sc2 i think. Superfast 1080p60 in the video had me floating around ~55% CPU usage with scvs mining, and spikes from camera movement etc are controlled pretty easily, though i found while i had no problems with a few of my replays, a friends dragged those settings to hitting 100% cpu (hence the lowering framerate) when he death scrolled across the entire map with mouse drags on minimap and a few other situations.
The VOD was crf30 (as bitrate doesnt affect cpu usage) with task manager always-on-topped near the bottom showing all cpu core usage with a 1v1 replay playing at 2x, early game, but cpu wasnt anywhere near maxed in those situations. If anyone has a good site, il upload it? Youtube transcodes to 30fps i think and messes with the video in other ways.
There are better CPU's out there though, significantly better, this is only a first gen quad (950). I cant stream it, just VOD's, because ive only got ~700kbit up, and my latency triples if i use even 500k of that
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Canada2654 Posts
I plan on setting up 2 computers in the future thank you for writing this guide ^^
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Wow. this is incredible...
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On September 29 2012 02:55 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2012 02:08 sirdodgy wrote:On September 29 2012 01:28 Cyro wrote:On September 29 2012 00:52 Veritas wrote:
Seems like a terribly inefficient way to do it.
I've had success streaming 1080p while playing using even my old Q6600 with DXTory and FMLE. A bit tricky to set up, but then again it's probably simpler than this. But capturing the screen has massive performance hits and complications. There are reasons people look to use a 2pc setup, and most of that isnt CPU usage related if they have a high end PC. I can pull off a good 1080p@40fps (or 720p60 a preset bump slower) on my first gen i7 well inside of cpu limits while playing sc2, but if you are capturing at high framerates while trying to play the game at a high level, you're gonna have a bad time. Screen cloning and capturing from the second PC gets around that afaik Im not sure how that guy gets playable fps while streaming 1080p. The cpu I have in my streaming pc is far better than the old Q6600 and streaming 1080p with a capture card itl reach 90% usage rate on the lowest compression profile. Maybe link the stream? Ive got a VOD a couple minutes long showing 1080p60 at superfast - with certain camera movements or high stress scenes though CPU usage goes up too high, and superfast needs around twice as much data as veryfast for only like a 5-10ish% performance increase, so rock solid, i could do around 40-45fps at 1920x1080 and Veryfast in sc2 i think. Superfast 1080p60 in the video had me floating around ~55% CPU usage with scvs mining, and spikes from camera movement etc are controlled pretty easily, though i found while i had no problems with a few of my replays, a friends dragged those settings to hitting 100% cpu (hence the lowering framerate) when he death scrolled across the entire map with mouse drags on minimap and a few other situations. The VOD was crf30 (as bitrate doesnt affect cpu usage) with task manager always-on-topped near the bottom showing all cpu core usage with a 1v1 replay playing at 2x, early game, but cpu wasnt anywhere near maxed in those situations. If anyone has a good site, il upload it? Youtube transcodes to 30fps i think and messes with the video in other ways. There are better CPU's out there though, significantly better, this is only a first gen quad (950). I cant stream it, just VOD's, because ive only got ~700kbit up, and my latency triples if i use even 500k of that
How does it loook? IIRC, 1080p superfast looks like crap.
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Thank you for writing this guide. I recall when researching streaming months ago, I figured a 2 pc setup would be the best way to go to keep optimal performance for the player. I could not find a definitive source of information on what hardware and software is needed and the setup process. From now on, the internets thank you.
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Great tutorial man! I will so test this when i get my new hardware.
About grooveshark, im currently developing a desktop version which has xsplit support.
Screenshot: http://piclair.com/data/x5jg8.jpg
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Wow amazing guide with incredible details for all knowledge levels! As someone who often has to write detailed IT guides documenting my processes this is a job very well done.
Is it fair to say the 2nd PC requires atleast an i5-2500k if I don't want to overclock the processor?
I have nothing against OCing I'm just trying to get an idea of hardware specs for the 2nd PC to stream at 1080p.
Also how important is RAM on the secondary PC? 4GB minimum?
Last but not least please sticky
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As this is my first post to TL I thought I should make it a useful one.
On September 29 2012 06:06 Un[r]eal wrote:Wow amazing guide with incredible details for all knowledge levels! As someone who often has to write detailed IT guides documenting my processes this is a job very well done. Is it fair to say the 2nd PC requires atleast an i5-2500k if I don't want to overclock the processor? I have nothing against OCing I'm just trying to get an idea of hardware specs for the 2nd PC to stream at 1080p. Also how important is RAM on the secondary PC? 4GB minimum? Last but not least please sticky
Such praise
No, not entirely. The processor I mentioned ran absolutely fine without overclocking (even though I did a very soft overclock, even for 0 voltage changing), I just felt like doing it for that extra kick.
Without the overclock I could stream at 1080p with superfast preset (the lowest) and 720p at the fast preset. If you dont already know how xsplit and twitch work (if you do, ignore this), the higher preset you have, basically it compresses it more, meaning you need less bandwidth to stream compared to a lower preset. If you can upload at like 6000kbps, it basically doesnt matter what preset you use really (dont quote me on that but I could stream 1080p), but there are 2 reasons most people dont do that:
1: Unless you are partnered twitch.tv will not rebroadcast your stream at lower resolutions, meaning your viewers will have to have 6000kbps download (which most dont).
2: Twitch servers are extremely random and even if you can get 6000kbps at one point in the day, you will most likely not get it at another. When I was testing stuff out, I streamed 1080p 6000kbps at the lowest preset, and even though it looked great, twitch servers couldn't seem to keep up.
If you do want to stream at 1080p the i5-2500k will probably be able to stream at far better presets as its a far better processor. I wouldnt say it would require at least a i5-2500k, but thats a very nice and solid processor to use.
If you have the time, I would suggest just making a budget, looking at some benchmarks of cpu's and find a nice one in your budget. Or maybe ask a more tech oriented forum, telling them your budget and that you want to be able to use xsplit (video converting), which is what I would do.
The ram isnt that important, I would say 2gb minimum, it actually runs windows7 and xsplit while streaming using less than 1gb of ram, but you might as well get 2-4 gb. I personally bought Corsair Memory XMS3 4GB, pretty much at random.
On September 29 2012 00:45 TrColeTrain wrote:I'm unfamiliar with the grooveshark --> .txt program, but I use a similar program made by a community member that does the same thing but for Spotify. If you're unfamiliar with spotify, go check it out, it's a great music streaming program and has a large library of music even if you have unique tastes in music like myself. The said program is called Songparser and also works for winamp. It's super easy to set up, they guy made a youtube tutorial on how to do it. http://songparser.codeplex.com/
Yeah, the thread I linked essentually took that program, or a similar program and made it work with grooveshark, I just cant get it working.
On September 29 2012 05:41 makkesk8 wrote:Great tutorial man! I will so test this when i get my new hardware. About grooveshark, im currently developing a desktop version which has xsplit support. Screenshot: http://piclair.com/data/x5jg8.jpg
Do want!
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Awesome guide!
With the grooveshark thing, I think it would be easiest to change the title with a greasemonkey script. I put the following together which seems to work on google chrome with the "TamperMonkey" extension (and i believe should work in any browser with greasemonkey). This just means you don't need to run the javascript manually each time you open grooveshark.
// ==UserScript==
// @author daniel222222
// @name Grooveshark Title
// @version 1
// @description Adds title to grooveshark window
// @namespace GroovesharkTitle
// @include [url=http://*grooveshark.com*]http://*grooveshark.com*[/url]
// @grant none
// ==/UserScript==
var groovesharkTitle = function($, window, undefined) {
$.subscribe ('gs.player.playstatus', function(status) { if(status.activeSong){$('title').text('GrooveShark - ' + status.activeSong.SongName + ' - '+ status.activeSong.ArtistName);} } );
}
var script = document.createElement('script');
script.textContent = '(' + groovesharkTitle + ')(jQuery, window);';
document.body.appendChild(script);
I then made a batch file to read the title from the open processes, and output the grooveshark song/artist to a file. This is for google chrome but can be modified to firefox/rockmelt by changing the chrome.exe to firefox.exe, etc. Just save the code below into a batch file (eg "grooveshark.bat") and run.
@echo off
:start
FOR /F "tokens=3,4 delims=-" %%G IN ('TASKLIST /V /NH /FO TABLE /FI "imagename eq chrome.exe" ^| FIND "GrooveShark"') DO (
ECHO %%G by %%H > Grooveshark.txt
cls
ECHO Current song is %%G by %%H.
)
TIMEOUT 1 > NUL
goto start
This file can be included into xsplit by inserting a title.
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Sweden33719 Posts
So, helping Huk setup dual PCs for streaming, and we've run into some trouble....
His main PC (the gaming one), insists on the capture card being counted as the MAIN DISPLAY... I went into resolution settings, changed the extend display thingy... and then went to make the actual monitor his main display... except it wouldn't let me, and now whenever the HDMI cable from the capture card is plugged in, his screen is black, but I have no way of changing the settings back to what they were because lol can't detect the capture card if it isnt connected.
Halp meh 
NOTE: I know this can be an issue if you have multiple monitors on one pc, but we only have one for each PC so it shouldnt be related to that...
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EPT
