Question / Help Big Project: Nvidia Surround Triple Monitor 2 PC Streaming.

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maximilious

New Member
Greetings.

I would like to take part of this 2 pc streaming that is going around.

I currently have a gaming PC with nvidia surround (three monitors acting as one) at a resolution of 5950 x 1080.

I am asking everyone in here for help since I have no idea what type of hardware I would need for this kind of setup with my triple monitors.

What I want to do:

I want to capture THE MIDDLE MONITOR of my nvidia surround gaming PC.

I want to use a mini pc such as http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883218027CVF

I need to know what type of hardware I will need to split the image of my MIDDLE nvidia surround gaming PC into my mini pc for recording / streaming to the internet.

Thanks :)
 
Jack0r

Jack0r

The Helping Squad
Not sure what you want to do with that Mini PC, but for the standard 2 PC setup you will need a splitter and then a Capture Card in the second box. The streaming box also has to have some CPU power to do the encoding.
The other way would be to send the footage of the Middle Monitor to the 2nd PC over lan using OBS and quicksync/nvenc to keep the load off your cpu. In that case you still need a powerful 2nd PC of course but no CaptureCard or Splitter. I would recommend the standard setup though for most people.

For the encoding box you will probably want to have at least an i5 processor and could then use its integrated graphics, so no extra GPU is needed.
For the capture card, try to get an internal PCI-Express one, not a USB2.0 device (they are known to have/cause problems). The Avermedia c127 Game Broadcaster HD or c985 Liver Gamer HD are often a good choice.

I guess on nvidia surround you cannot clone your monitor, hence the mentioned splitter you will need. Easiest would be if your middle monitor used hdmi, then connect a hdmi splitter in between, and one output to your monitor, the other to the capture card.
 
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maximilious

New Member
I guess I will have to make a second pc anyways :) I wanted to see if it was possible to use the mini pc but I guess it's not heh.

All my monitors have DVI / VGA, they don't have hdmi.. but I do think one of them have a displayport adapter since I only had 2 DVI outs in my 680 GTX (and one hdmi / displayport)

Will I still be able to capture the middle monitor somehow into the streaming pc?

"I guess on nvidia surround you cannot clone your monitor, hence the mentioned splitter you will need. Easiest would be if your middle monitor used hdmi, then connect a hdmi splitter in between, and one output to your monitor, the other to the capture card."

So the DVI from my gpu (middle monitor) goes into the splitter (using DVI to hdmi cable), then from the splitter take one hdmi to dvi into my middle monitor, then second hdmi to hdmi in capture card...

is this correct?
 
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Jack0r

Jack0r

The Helping Squad
Yea you can either use a hdmi to dvi cable from the gpu to the splitter or from the splitter to your monitor for example.

If you use hdmi out on your gpu to the splitter, you could send audio over it to your second pc while you use a hdmi to dvi cable to connect your monitor. And hdmi to hdmi from the splitter to the capture card.
 
Jack0r

Jack0r

The Helping Squad
In a dedicated rig the i5's will be working great.

The 4670 is probably one of the best i5's at the moment. But costs I think around 50-75$ more. Then add even 50-75$ more and you are nearing the i7/Xeon range. Which would allow even more compression, but I would only recommend that if you have the money lying around anyway :)
 
Boildown

Boildown

Active Member
If you're buying a dedicated streaming PC, I suggest you pony up the extra $100 and get a full i7, it can encode quite a bit better. Short term pain for long-term gain (even if it doesn't matter too much now, "soon" x265 will be here and you'll wish you had the extra horsepower).

You can split DVI similarly to HDMI, but I'm not sure about DisplayPort. HDMI to DVI at 1080p60 is a simple adapter.

The Avermedias are nice cards, but remember they can't record/stream at 1080p60, just 1080p30 or 720p60. No one streams at 1080p60 anyways, but if recording at 1080p60 is important to you, there's a better option.
 
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maximilious

New Member
one more question, when I buy the the "Avermedia c127 Game Broadcaster" as a grabber (for second pc) this card will not be doing any encoding right? everything will be done by obs + the cpu I get for that pc.

Also, in the second PC when I have obs open and Game Broadcaster as source... will this be 60fps? Since it's not recording or anything just grabbing from the gaming pc
 
Boildown

Boildown

Active Member
maximilious said:
one more question, when I buy the the "Avermedia c127 Game Broadcaster" as a grabber (for second pc) this card will not be doing any encoding right? everything will be done by obs + the cpu I get for that pc.

Also, in the second PC when I have obs open and Game Broadcaster as source... will this be 60fps? Since it's not recording or anything just grabbing from the gaming pc
Click to expand...

The computer is doing all the encoding, no encoding will be done on the capture card, even if the card otherwise has such a feature (like the Live Gamer HD). OBS doesn't support using the encoder on the capture card (Avermedia doesn't share the API I think Jim said).

It only supports capturing 720p at 60fps. Not 1080p. 1080p is limited to 30fps. It doesn't matter which synonym you use for "capturing", whether it be recording to the hard drive, streaming, or "grabbing", the answer is as the same.

What frames do you get in Star Citizen with your setup by the way? If I bought another monitor, I suppose I could do triple mode....
 
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maximilious

New Member
I get on triple monitors 30-40 fps with a single 680 GTX 4GB (on 5950 by 1080) with high settings but I am not worried about this as I am planning on going SLI with either the 700 or 800 series coming out.

edit:

my question was:

When I am playing in 1920 by 1080 in my middle monitor, and it's being sent to second PC. Will I be able to do 720p (1.50 downscale) through obs? or will the source be limited to 30fps because of 1080p?

edit 2:

Would it be a good thing if I used a 275 GTX on the streaming PC? or does a video card not matter at all for encoding?
 
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Jack0r

Jack0r

The Helping Squad
To get a 720p downscale at 60fps you would need to get the Live Gamer HD that has this ability.
The Game Broadcaster can only grab 720p60fps if you put your Monitor resolution to those values.

I am not sure if a GTX 275 is any good, but the iGPU of your i5 should be fine for most stuff. (Make sure the mainboard you get supports the iGPU)
 
Boildown

Boildown

Active Member
The GTX 200 series works poorly with OBS, I would get something else. I see a lot of people post for help here when using their iGPU, maybe that isn't an issue in your situation since you're not gaming and streaming on it at the same time.

The GPU does affect OBS though, you need one that doesn't suck, even in a 2 PC setup. I would suggest a GTX750, or on the AMD side, a 260X, as an add-in GPU on your streaming PC.
 
Jack0r

Jack0r

The Helping Squad
As mentioned, the iGPU of a 2nd gen or later Intel Processor is fine. No need to pay unnecessary money.
 
Boildown

Boildown

Active Member
You should get DDR3 in pairs, not just a single module.

You should get a better power supply.

You need a larger hard drive to store your videos. Either swap that SSD for a regular spinning hard drive with at least 1 GB capacity (2 or 4 GB obviously better), or add one on.

I personally don't like Mini ITX cases / motherboards. Its too limiting. Get a mid tower case and full ATX motherboard if it'll at all fit in your environment.

I previously made a partial build for someone recently, you could use the i7 CPU in place of the one in that build and go with it: https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/the-cheapest-possible-dedicated-streaming-pc.18568/#post-96384
 
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maximilious

New Member
I dont need a big HDD, I have a 3.0 usb 3TB external HHD if I want to record, but the PC will be mainly used for streaming only with obs + teamviewer
 
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