Hardware Requirements

[robertmain]

Hi folks

I've been live streaming my church services from my old windows laptop from 2013. It has a dedicated graphics card, however two newer (and better spec'd) laptops I've tried don't. The only difference I'm aware of is the dedicated graphics chip, so I can only speculate that this is the reason it manages to cope, but the newer laptops don't...

My church is shopping for a dedicated laptop for this purpose, so that it's not dependent on my own personal laptop every week - so my question is this: What hardware should I look to get to handle this? We have a fade from a plain title card into a full-screen webcam, then from there back out to a title card again(nothing too fancy). So what kind of graphics hardware should I be looking for?

 

[qhobbes]

If those newer laptops have an Intel processor, they may have QuickSync and you can use that instead of x264 for encoding. They should be able to cope with 1080 30fps stream if it's just title cards and a webcam.

 

[robertmain]

Thanks for the reply. The newer laptops I've been using apparently do not support QuickSync(at least, it's not an available option in the settings, just x264). I am on Linux right now though, so that may be why. Is there something I need to turn on in the BIOS? Also, could QuickSync cope with 1080p60(if we get a better internet connection and go to 60fps).

Since we're a church, we will never use these laptops for gaming, so I don't care about top quality gaming graphics...it just needs to be able to handle good quality 1080p video(we're aiming for 60fps, but even 30 would be a start).

The plan is to have an NDI feed coming in from a PTZOptics camera eventually so it would be encoding that, then sending the result out to YouTube.

 

[qhobbes]

There's a guide here for BIOS stuff

How to use Quicksync?

If you are not sure what QuickSync is, check this article. Let us first of all check if QuickSync is already available for you. Open up your OBS and go into the settings and then into the Encoding section. Below is an example screenshot of how...

obsproject.com

It looks like blocked the images from loading but if right-click on them, you can view them.

 

[robertmain]

I suppose what I'm getting at here is whether I should be looking for a laptop with lots of CPU and RAM or one with a hefty graphics card. I would've thought the latter, but I'm willing to be wrong.

EDIT: We may also end up bringing something like OpenLP(FOSS ProPresenter) into the mix too...

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Please take other's advice over my newbie comments.
But to share my research, I was looking to buy a PC for church streaming recently. For budget reasons, we went with desktop over laptop (especially considering typically hamstrung laptop GPUs due to thermal constraints). And no, you'll want CPU/RAM over GPU. What I found was that a nVidia GPU 1650 Super was my sweet spot (has most recent Turing/NVENC tech in the TU116). A lower-end GPU would work fine today, but assuming a multi-year life, a 1650S seemed best option. Higher-end GPUs won't really help, if at all for stream encoding. Now, I think I read there may be a version of a 1650 coming out with the TU116... but I may be recalling wrong. The other consideration is whether you'll be just dealing with live video, or inter-mixing pre-recorded videos (which we do for readings, music, announcements, etc... maintain sense of community while being safe), and GPU accelerated decoding of other recorded videos.

When mixing misc video sources, using PowerPoint in windowed slideshow for service bulletin, window capture of PowerPoint, USB webcam, browser session for monitoring stream, etc - it was CPU that was biggest bottleneck for our service. I've posted previously that a non-optimized ('cuz I'm a newbie) OBS setup on a 5 yr old laptop [Core i5-6300HQ, SATA SSD, 8GB RAM, and a GTX 960M] choked, while a 2018 workstation class laptop with a Xeon E-2176M 96c/12t) [slightly faster than i7-8850H] 64GB RAM, nVidia P2000 didn't even break a sweat. With what I know now, I think I could have gotten the older laptop to work for us.. maybe [with RAM upgrade].
Where a beefier GPU would possibly come into play, I suspect, is if you use this same machine ['cuz you have it] for 4K video editing [ie from phones, etc for use in service].
Personally, my recommendation is to avoid consumer grade computers (all vendors). For Win10, 16GB RAM should suffice for simpler stuff. Add more later if need be. I'd recommend a 512GB NVMe SSD for OS, apps, and stream recording [256GB will work, but will require more attention to move content off when not in use/needed/archive, and is only slightly cheaper]. If your budget allows, and you want more than 3 years life, I'd recommend a 6core/12thread CPU. Also, other threads have talked about some laptops GPUs not being able to capture a external monitor for OBS.. food for thought if you are planning dual monitor setup on laptop. I suspect higher-powered business/workstation class laptops wouldn't have this issue... but I don't know that for sure
if your budget is real tight, a consumer gaming laptop 4core/HT or better, with nVidia GPU, and a SSD (not HDD) should work fine (after OBS optimization) for most simple House of Worship streaming use cases
I hope this helps