[Guide] How to watch streams at a lower quality

flashimba

225 Posts

October 30 2013 12:18 GMT

The following guide will demonstrate how to watch live streams in an external player. It should be useful for a lot of the viewers who cannot watch the other snipealot channels due to a slow internet connection.

The setup is to use a program called livestreamer to feed the video into VLC. VLC is chosen as it is the simplest to set up.

Requirements
VLC - website / download
livestreamer - website / download

Instructions
1. Download and install VLC. Take note of which directory it is installed in.

2. Download and install livestreamer. All the default settings can be left as is.

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Ensure that Edit configuration file is checked.

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After the installation is complete, the configuration should open in notepad. Delete the '#' at the start of the line that matches your VLC installation path. Save the file and close it. This step is optional, but is recommended. If your connection is slow, change the number from 5000 to 10000.

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3. Start > Run. Type cmd.

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4. In the command prompt, type livestreamer twitch.tv/snipealot2 and press enter to see if the program is working.

If you come across an error that says The system cannot execute the specified program, you will need to install vcredist_x86.exe

5. If it works, you will see the different stream qualities available for that channel. Now type livestreamer twitch.tv/snipealot3 to compare the available streams; there should be less here compared to snipealot2.

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6. Now that everything is working, we can create a shortcut to launch the player. Open notepad and enter the following:

Set oShell = CreateObject ("Wscript.Shell")
Dim strArgs
strArgs = "cmd /c livestreamer twitch.tv/snipealot3 mobile_low"
oShell.Run strArgs, 0, false

Save the file in some accessible location such as the desktop. Name the file snipealot3.vbs or something similar.

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In this example, we chose the lowest quality for the stream.

7. Double click the vbs file. In a few seconds, VLC should launch the stream.

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8. (Optional) Create more vbs files for different streams and/or quality settings.

For more information on what is possible, visit the livestreamer website: http://livestreamer.tanuki.se

nbaker

United States1342 Posts

October 31 2013 15:22 GMT

Whoah, haven't tried this yet, but this will be super helpful when I visit home. Thanks for the guide!

sabas123

Netherlands3122 Posts

October 31 2013 15:24 GMT

SO cool,

luckly i don't have to use it but still just amazing

thanks for sharing

Sawamura

Malaysia7602 Posts

October 31 2013 16:04 GMT

wow thank you so much for the guide

Hoender

South Africa382 Posts

October 31 2013 16:47 GMT

Thank you so much, I can finally watch the other snipealots now

It says in the command prompt that mobile_low is the worst quality, but mobile_mobile seems worse. Would this be the best option if you want to preserve bandwidth?

IceCube

Croatia1403 Posts

October 31 2013 17:52 GMT

^ usually the worst quality is the least bandwidth hungry of them all. I mean the lower the quality the less data it needs to be sent = less bandwidth usage.

AleXoundOS

Georgia458 Posts

November 01 2013 13:52 GMT

To complete the no-flashplugin solution of watching streams setup any IRC client to work with twitch.tv chat.
Instructions: http://help.twitch.tv/customer/portal/articles/1302780-twitch-irc

As for Linux distributions, simply install "livestreamer" and "xchat" packages.

theleo_ua

Ukraine150 Posts

November 10 2013 13:45 GMT

On October 30 2013 21:18 flashimba wrote:
The following guide will demonstrate how to watch live streams in an external player.

Big respect! Now I figured out, how to watch Sonic streams on 4:3 movie aspect

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