On behalf of all the people who have problems with streaming, (Whenever its the Ingame problem or Stream problem) I have decided to make this ultimate guide covering as much as i can.
I will be covering stuff in sections that will be easier for you to find the info you need. This is a video guide , actually my 1st one and please do not mind my english accent and everything else including. I have learned my english through playing WoW and i am not sure how good it is.
But first of all , my story ...
One full month i have been working on setting the Xsplit to not make my game choppy and laggy. I spent 6-7 hours per day with no results at all. Every single setting i have tested out didnt worked for me. That was until i found out the problem. Xsplit is in beta version and i am quite aware of the fact its not working the same on every single PC configuration. I posted in Xsplit forums 1 month ago and i had 0 reply from their staff (gj keeping your community Xsplit) and as well i have read thousands of guides that didnt helped me at all. For a moment i thought that my PC is actually crap and cant stream even 480p. But that wasnt the case.
As i am quite sure there are many people having problem with Xsplit , making their game unplayable and choppy while they having some extremely good CPUs and Upload speed to handle even 1080p resolution without a problem.It is frustrating , isnt it ?
Well the whole problem lies in the Screen Source.Some PC configurations dont have any problems with it but as i saw many others do. Even guys with i7 2500k processors having that problem is ridicules. Whenever i was adding a screen region and setting my Xsplit FPS above 15 i had unberable choppy / laggy game performance which i was very much frustrated. Anything below 15 FPS for me was making my game very smooth , but who would like to watch 15 fps stream for more than 10 minutes ?
Well if you are one of those people who have this particular problem than you are on the right place to solve it out.
1. Solving your Issue.
Nothing that you will try to do in Xsplit will solve the current issue you have. Only way to fix it is using another program for screen output such as Dxtory. I have tried VHScreen capture but it gave me the same results just like using Xsplit by itself so i throw it away. Dxtory is paid program but you can get it for a free trial version and you can check it out. I can guarantee you that if you have this problem that i had , you wont have it anymore with this program.
2. Setting Dxtory.
Dxtory is a program that has a lot of options to set and it is allowing you to use it as an output to another program and/or local record your game. Take in mind that Dxtory will not screen capture your Desktop but only your games. I will later on cover how you can stream with Dxtory+Xsplit and still get the Desktop while streaming.
Here is a video explanation of what you need to do so you can set it up.
3.Getting Dxtory working on Xsplit
4. Setting Xsplit regarding your PC configuration and Upload speed.
5. Capturing your Desktop while using Dxtory and adding webcam in the screen.
My PC configuration : i5 760 lyn 3.6 OC MB p55 4gb mushkin 1600 HD5770 1024 ddr5
My upload speed :
Tested to Twitch tv server
Tested to my provider server
Pretty bad Upload right ? A lot of people will say that i wont stream at all with this upload speed. Well i can and as well check the stream quality of my stream and wonder how it is possible.
Finally the end :
Thank you for reading my guide and i hope it helped many people. If you have any questions regarding this feel free to ask me here or PM me.
Also I know a lot of people that learned English via video games - in my old guild back in Burning Crusade one of my best friends in guild was in Brazil (HUEHUEHUEHUE) and he learned something like 90% of his English from WoW.
I might have to re-set my stream up when I get home and see if I can't get better rates out of it.
Once I used dxtory instead of Screen Capture I had around 20 FPS compared to 80 with XSplits default capture method. The 20 not even streaming just running the programs.
On October 08 2011 00:39 Flaiker wrote: Once I used dxtory instead of Screen Capture I had around 20 FPS compared to 80 with XSplits default capture method. The 20 not even streaming just running the programs.
Than i am quite sure you have Local recording turned on. It might be that one if you have slow HDD.
Hm I thought I turned it off. But the program layout is very strange and has no save button or anything, so you can't really tell when they are applied and some change back to what they were before?(!) I don't really have a problem with XSplit, I can stream 420p with 1 MB/s upload (which I thought was low when I read all the stream posts with like 20 up xD) but now that I see your upload and your quality I thought I could optimize it even more. Also I really like the feature of only showing the game and not the desktop when you tab out. I know it's in the paid XSplit version, but not sure if it's worth it and Dxstory can do it and remove some lag. Gonna play a bit around with it later. What I hate though is you can't save your old "working" settings in XSplit and need to take screenshots of everything -_-
On October 08 2011 01:52 Flaiker wrote: Hm I thought I turned it off. But the program layout is very strange and has no save button or anything, so you can't really tell when they are applied and some change back to what they were before?(!) I don't really have a problem with XSplit, I can stream 420p with 1 MB/s upload (which I thought was low when I read all the stream posts with like 20 up xD) but now that I see your upload and your quality I thought I could optimize it even more. Also I really like the feature of only showing the game and not the desktop when you tab out. I know it's in the paid XSplit version, but not sure if it's worth it and Dxstory can do it and remove some lag. Gonna play a bit around with it later. What I hate though is you can't save your old "working" settings in XSplit and need to take screenshots of everything -_-
Well you wont be able to achieve the quality that i have with that low upload only using xsplit. If you bump the resolution a lot and increase the quality you will probably get your stream to be lagging. Just see for yourself and hopefully it`ll work. Take care
Very nice guide for those who want to spend the extra dollar on a 3rd party screen capture devices such as DXTory.
I just want to mention that the XSplit people are working in the background to implement their improved capture method called GameSource, and that the other alternative SCFH is free. Still, I think you've done a good job explaining how to setup DXTory.
But the essence of it all, using another capture driver can be good, isn't really breaking news and is already included in R1CH's streaming guide:
Most screen capture options such as XSplit's internal capture and VHScrCap use a significant amount of CPU and rely on GDI which causes your game to lag even if your CPU isn't near maximum. The best option by far is to use DXTory which rips the screen directly out of your video card after it has been rendered by intercepting DirectX calls. This has almost zero overhead associated with it, however DXTory is not free - it will set you back around $50 Source: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=220584
On October 08 2011 02:30 Nepsilon wrote: No not at all i think its the same , it should be the same actually.I just can not get the same quality with xsplit i dont know why really.
I'm skeptical why there would be a difference (I'm assuming we're talking about pure picture quality, not stream lag, input lag, ingame fps drops or similar that affects the overall experience). You're sure its not just a placebo effect? It should be the same. However, the resources you free up by using DXTory, could potentially be used in conjunction with better codec settings and thus providing a better end result.
DXtory just captures the screen and sends it to XSplit, it doesn't alter the pixels in any way. With or without DXTory, XSplit still does the compression and all that affects the quality. As I said, the only way I can explain a better output would be because XSplit have slightly more resources available.
Edit: Could you provide a download link for the DXTory you use? I think that would fit nice in the OP. :-)
Well you might be right on that one , i havent thought about why the quality of when i use dxtory is better than the xplit by itself currently for my configuration but you have a very interesting point. Its not a placebo effect since i was actually testing them out. The one difference that i saw in lower qualities was the text in dxtory output was worser than xsplit itself but at 720p the overall quality and the text got the same in dxtory and xsplit.
wow your upload's just as bad as mine but your quality is so good o_o. thought that type of quality was only for 1.5 mb +. Might have to start using dxtory lol.
I am running it on Windowed(Fullscreen) and i mentioned that one on the videos , as well i explained what happened once u click F12 , that those numbers up left you have instead of green will go orange.
If nothing is shown while you are in starcraft than please do try to set a profile in dxtory if the program didnt made one it self , but it should actually..
On October 09 2011 12:43 blade55555 wrote: wow your upload's just as bad as mine but your quality is so good o_o. thought that type of quality was only for 1.5 mb +. Might have to start using dxtory lol.
Well that was what i wanted to explain to HellGreen , I never could reach the same quality with using only Xsplit and i am still not sure why but nevertheless i am happy to be streaming with a better one beside the fact i am using it to fix my problem ingame.