Question / Help 2 / 3 or even 4 channel streaming pc

[sambir]

Hi all,

What kind of pc setup do I need if I want to stream 2, 3 or even 4 1080p25 streams simultaneously at around 8Mbps?

I was considering the latest generation i7 6700 at stock speed 16gb ddr4 ram with up to 4 avermedia game capture cards

OBS @ 1080p25 or 720p50 fast preset.

Will this cpu be able to process more than 1 stream realtime at this setting? if possible i would even consider i5 6400T for low power consumption because that cpu has a tdp of only 35W

If quick sync will mean that more than 1 stream is possible I wil consider to use it since the latest generation quick sync seems to result in less quality loss.

 

[VooDoo]

From personal experience more than 1 avermedia pretty much doesn't work, they are consumer grade not professional. I'd suggest something a lot more expensive for this, and no a brand new i7 6700 is going to struggle w/ 2 actual streams, thats a massive amount of real time data being encoded. I'm sure there is a solution for this, but I doubt it is outside of the enthusiast bracket.

 

[Boildown]

This is a good usecase for a Xeon CPU with lots of cores. A quad core won't be able to do more than 2 different encodes at any semblance of decent quality. Also is that 8Mb/s statistic for all your streams in aggregate, or each individual stream? If each individual stream is at 8Mb/s, you could get away with encoding on SuperFast or even UltraFast preset and might be able to handle it on a quad core. If you have only 8Mb/s for all four streams, then you'll want to get a CPU with lots of cores and aim for a decent preset on all of them.

I think its probably true that you'll need a better grade of video capture card to do 3 or 4 video inputs at once... not to mention keeping the audio separate for each of them. Check the Datapath AV line, they have capture cards that can do 4 1080p60 inputs at once. Its not cheap though.

 

[sambir]

Thanks for the replies! Jep i aim to do 8mbps for each stream. I had a amd 8 core 8120? once and was able to do just 1 stream at 720p50 with vlc. and at fast movements it was also not able to cope with it and reached 100% very fast. I tought maybe new generation cpu's can do better. I guess maybe it's better to look for a professional grade encoder? but those are more more likely 2,3 or even 4k $

But 2x 720p50 at 8mb/s with preset ultrafast would be possible? And do i need a dedicated gpu? I ought the cpu did al the job and the gpu support was just marginal.

and ultrafast preset means i have to encode using x264 and not quick sync I guess?

 

[Boildown]

OBS uses the GPU for added speed, essentially, unlike most other similar software that only use the CPU. This means you do need a semi-decent video card. I recommend a GTX 750, as its both cheap and fast enough, and has the better Maxwell NVEnc tech, in case you want to use that. But I've never tried to do multiple different input videos at the same time either. Maybe you need a really fast GPU because of that, I really don't know (but I suspect a GTX 750 would still be fine).

Quicksync might allow you to do one encode, but not sure it can do many of them at the same time. You'd probably still have to do the other three using x264. Assuming the CPU you end up getting even has Quicksync available.