Question / Help Help With Two PC Steaming.

[TheCalculatorTi84]

Hey guys. I am currently streaming with one PC atm. *I will list my gaming and streaming rig to be below* I am feeling the hit on my cpu when I'm streaming DayZ. So I would like to stream with 2 PC's. But I don't have a capture card or know how to make the 2nd PC into a stream machine. I am SLI'ing with NVIDIA Surround (Triple Monitor) atm. And I would like to keep it that way if it is possible. I can grab a 4th Monitor which is in the closet somewhere. Will also buy a Capture card if needed. Where do I start? PLEASE HELP!


Gaming Rig

Monitor: 3 x Asus VG248QE (Nvidia Surround) *using 3 DVI ports atm*
Motherboard: ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition
Operating System: Windows 8.1 Pro
CPU: i7-4930K @ 3.40Hz (OC 4.6Ghz)
GPU: EVGA Titan Blacks Superclocked (SLI)
Sound Card: Sound Blaster X-FI Titanium HD
Mixer: Behringer Xenyx 802
Microphone: Rode NT1


Streaming Rig (Soon to be)

Monitor: Asus Monitor something something =)
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V Pro
Operating System: Windows 7 Pro
CPU: i7 3770K @ 3.5 (OC 4.6Ghz)
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 670 2GB



twitch.tv/thecalculatorti84

 

[Sapiens]

Get a capture card. A Live Gamer HD would work fine, or you could splurge and import an XCAPTURE-1. You may have some issues trying to send 144 Hz to the capture card as pretty much all consumer level cards top out at 1080p60 input, so 60 Hz may be in your future. Send the output for the center monitor to the capture card, using either the capture card's passthrough or some type of splitter (HDMI for the center monitor may be in your future as well).

 

[TheCalculatorTi84]

Get a capture card. A Live Gamer HD would work fine, or you could splurge and import an XCAPTURE-1. You may have some issues trying to send 144 Hz to the capture card as pretty much all consumer level cards top out at 1080p60 input, so 60 Hz may be in your future. Send the output for the center monitor to the capture card, using either the capture card's passthrough or some type of splitter (HDMI for the center monitor may be in your future as well).

Sorry I'm new to the streaming scene. I don't quite understand what you mean by sending the output for the center monitor to the capture card, using either the capture card's passthrough or some type of splitter. I'm currently using the DVI ports which supports 144 hz when I game. I'm totally fine streaming at 60 Hz. But gaming at 60 Hz I don't know about. Does that mean I have to use HDMI for the center monitor? Will my current setup will be changed around?

 

[Videophile]

Get a capture card. A Live Gamer HD would work fine, or you could splurge and import an XCAPTURE-1. You may have some issues trying to send 144 Hz to the capture card as pretty much all consumer level cards top out at 1080p60 input, so 60 Hz may be in your future. Send the output for the center monitor to the capture card, using either the capture card's passthrough or some type of splitter (HDMI for the center monitor may be in your future as well).

I would recommend the SC-512 DV PCI card over the Xcapture-1, PCI is, yes, more reliable. Who knows which of his or even if his USB ports are the right type.

 

[Videophile]

Sorry I'm new to the streaming scene. I don't quite understand what you mean by sending the output for the center monitor to the capture card, using either the capture card's passthrough or some type of splitter. I'm currently using the DVI ports which supports 144 hz when I game. I'm totally fine streaming at 60 Hz. But gaming at 60 Hz I don't know about. Does that mean I have to use HDMI for the center monitor? Will my current setup will be changed around?

Getting a capture card(or a splitter) with support for 144hz is unlikely, and or very expensive. You will most likely need to give up 144hz for 60hz. :(

 

[Sapiens]

Who knows which of his or even if his USB ports are the right type.

I do, because I looked up the specs for his P8Z77-V Pro before making the recommendation. The SC-512N1-L/DVI would probably be fine as well.

 

[Videophile]

I do, because I looked up the specs for his P8Z77-V Pro before making the recommendation. The SC-512N1-L/DVI would probably be fine as well.

Sucks that USB 3.0 is like this. Due to those compatibility issues Elgato did not go for USB 3.0 with the HD60.

However, I still do recommend the SC-512, my Xcapture-1 started acting weird the other day, not sure why yet. Right USB ports, disabled USB sleeping, etc. Might just be bad unit, but now i'm trying the PCI card.

 

[TheCalculatorTi84]

Thanks for the reply guys. You guys helped a lot! But I'm not sure about going with the SC-512. Because I have to import it, Ehh. $325 + 10-25 days business days. Wheres the Specs?

My main concern is having 144 Hz to my monitor and having Nvidia Surround.

I did come across this though. Gefen 1:2 Dual Link DVI Distribution Amplifier.

So my plan is using that DVI Splitter (Keeping 144 Hz Nvidia Surround)
Output 1 will go into the monitor and output 2 will go into the Capture card.
I might go with the Avermedia Live Gamer HD. It comes with a DVI to HDMI Adapter.
What do you guys think?

Also how will I send my audio over?

 

[Jack0r]

Well, if you have a free port on your GPU you could connect the CaptureCard as a 4th Monitor anyway, outside of the Surround setup and for example run an instance of OBS on the machine, let it capture your game but just run a preview (Enable "Disable encoding while previewing") and finally put it to fullscreen preview on the 4th Monitor (uncheck "Enable Control Panel"). That way you can easily, and with very low ressource usage, clone your Main monitor to the capture card.
Without the surround setup you could probably just clone the monitor with different hz settings.

 

[TheCalculatorTi84]

Well, if you have a free port on your GPU you could connect the CaptureCard as a 4th Monitor anyway, outside of the Surround setup and for example run an instance of OBS on the machine, let it capture your game but just run a preview (Enable "Disable encoding while previewing") and finally put it to fullscreen preview on the 4th Monitor (uncheck "Enable Control Panel"). That way you can easily, and with very low ressource usage, clone your Main monitor to the capture card.
Without the surround setup you could probably just clone the monitor with different hz settings.

Thanks Jack0r for the reply. Yes I will have a free port for accessory on the GPu's. Do I run the OBS on the gaming rig or streaming rig? Do I plug in my 4th monitor to the streaming GPU?

 

[Sapiens]

You would connect the 4th port on the gaming PC to the capture card in the encoding PC, and clone your gaming PC's primary/center monitor to that 4th port. The capture card will be treated as an additional monitor on the gaming PC. OBS would run on the encoding PC, with the capture card added as a video capture device source, so it can encode and stream out the content being sent to it from the gaming PC.

 

[TheCalculatorTi84]

THANK YOU SAPIENSTV!

But will it carry the audio over?

 

[TheCalculatorTi84]

omg.. now im leaning towards the SC-512N1-L/DVI. Would the pass through for this card support 144Hz? anyone?

 

[TheCalculatorTi84]

Bump.

 

[Boildown]

No capture card other than the Datapath DVI-DL model previously linked is going to allow you to run at 144Hz, or even anything higher than 60Hz. You need to sacrifice the fast refresh rate in order to capture the stream like you plan.

You should check carefully that you can clone your middle screen while using surround mode, I thought that wasn't possible.

I think you should try the 2 PC streaming over ethernet guide before you buy a capture card. Its much more likely to work while allowing you to keep your high refresh rates. If you can solve the problem of capturing just the middle monitor, regular game capture probably won't work because the game resolution width is greater than 4096 pixels, which is a limit for H.264 encoding.

 

[TheCalculatorTi84]

Hey guys,

It's been awhile since I was back here. Thank you guys for being there for me when I needed help. Everything seems to be working pretty good I think? (I'm still new to streaming and still have a lot to learn). I haven't been able to stream a lot lately due to real life shit. Let's see where do I start? First off, this my battlestation : http://www.twitch.tv/thecalculatorti84 You guys like? I have a couple videos there so please check it out and let me know what I can do to improve my page.
My setup is listed below.

I am currently cloning the middle monitor. This is how I got it setup:
Monitor <=DVI=> Titan. (144Hz)
Titan <=HDMI=> Capture card. (60Hz)

I realized I won't be using 144 Hz when streaming since my settings will be 720P and 30-48 frames per second. What still boggles me is the screen tearing and video encoding section. I am currently using 2000 Max Bitrate/Buffer Size and 30 FPS. My videos are recorded at that settings as well. Should I ante up the bitrate to 3500/4000 buffer size and 48FPS? Btw I'm not a patner of twitch.tv if that makes any difference?

Here is my Log: https://gist.github.com/414c85ea5f7f7da5bc28

Some questions I still need help with:

1. How do I fix that screen tearing that's occurring on my stream/videos?
2. Up my bitrate and stuff?
3. Does it matter if my audio is set to bitrate:160, format: 48Hz?
4. I feel like I'm not using it's full potential, someone overclock me!

How are you getting on with your setup Calc?
How did you decide to transmit the audio?

d

Hey Drunkie. I'm currently using the "Listen to" Windows function to send the What U Hear/Stereo Mix recording device to the capture card's playback device in the Windows sound panel. But I will be changing my setup today when my DVI splitter comes in. http://www.gefen.com/kvm/ext-dvi-142dln.jsp?prod_id=14721
You're probably wondering why I'm doing this.

1. I don't want to take ANY performance hits on my GPUs.
2. I'm always on 5760x1080 (NVIDIA Surround) when I'm not streaming. So the splitter I'm using, is for the middle monitor. Saves me the headache with my OBS overlays, windows themes, rainmaker, etc when I switch on/off surround mode.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to run into issues with this setup. But It shouldn't be too bad. Will keep this posted.

Why you asked about the audio Drunkie?


Dream Machine:

• MONITOR : 3 X Asus VG248QE (Nvidia Surround)
• STAND : XFX FXTRISTAND
• CASE : NZXT Phantom 820 Enthusiast Full Tower Chassis w/ Custom Bolt-On Window
• COOLING : XSPC Copper Raystorm AX360 Extreme Intel CPU Water Cooling Kit w/ Twin D5
  7 x Noiseblocker NB-eLoop B12-P 120mm x 25mm Ultra Silent Bionic Blade PWM Fan - 800-2000 RPM
  Alphacool NexXxoS St30 120mm / XT45 240mm / XT45 120mm
• MOTHERBOARD : ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition
• CPU : i7-4930K @ OC 4.6Ghz
• OS : Windows 8.1 Pro
• MEMORY : Corsairs Dominator 32GB @ 2133 MHz
• SSD : Samsung Evo 1TB
• HDD : WD 4TB SATA 7200 Black Edition
• PSU : EVGA Supernova 1300 G2
• GPU : EVGA Titan Blacks Superclocked (SLI)
• GPU WATER BLOCKS : Aqua Computer Kryographics Full Coverage Liquid Cooling Block w/ Active XCS Liquid Cooled Backplate, Nickel / Clear Acrylic Version
• SOUND CARD : Sound Blaster X-FI Titanium HD
• HEADPHONES : AKG K712 Pro
• MICROPHONE : Rode NT1
• SPEAKERS : Logitech Z506
• KEYBOARD : Razer Deathstalker Ultimate
• MOUSE : Razer DeathAdder 2013
• MOUSE PAD : Razer Vespula

Stream Machine:

• CAPTURE CARD : SC-512N1-L/DVI
• CASE : Cooler Master Storm Trooper ATX Full Tower
• MOTHERBOARD : ASUS P8Z77-V PRO ATX LGA1155
• CPU : i7-3770K @ OC 4.5Ghz
• OS : Windows 7 Pro
• MEMORY : Corsair Vengeance LP 16GB @ 1600 Mhz
• SSD : Crucial M4 256GB SSD
• HDD : Seagate Barracuda 3TB
• PSU : Corsair TX750
• GPU : Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 2GB
• KEYBOARD : Logitech G510
• MOUSE : Logitech G700

Some eye candy for you guys. After reading my boring posts. heh.

 

[Boildown]

1) Looks pretty!

I found that until I captured at the same Hz/fps I ran to the monitor, I got tearing. Nvidia screen cloning allows the cloned monitors to run at differing framerates (but not different resolutions), but I found that it wasn't perfect. My setup had my monitor at 120Hz and my cloned screen to the capture card running at 60Hz. At times it "felt" like 60Hz on my monitor even though all indications were that 120Hz was being sent.

I also "overclocked" my old capture card and sent it 105Hz (highest it would go) while my monitor was at 120Hz. The "feel" was much improved but the tearing on the capture was bad.

You might see if your capture card can do 72fps captures, at least that's exactly half of 144Hz. Otherwise experiment with running your monitor at 120Hz and capturing 60fps. I think that reduced or eliminated the tearing, but had the problem that my games didn't "feel" 120Hz to me. Not sure if it was all in my head, or Planetside 2's hitching problems, or if it was real. Alternatively try capturing at 48fps, i.e. 1/3rd of 144Hz, but beware if it "feels" off, like 48Hz instead of 144Hz.

In any case, there's no way around it, you're on the bleeding edge here. You have to experiment and find out what works best for you, too few people attempt what you're doing for there to be consensus. You'll probably just get a lot of theorycraft responses which aren't of a lot of value seeing how you've already bought, installed, and set up your hardware. Just try it, experiment, and let us know how it works, that's the fun!

2) Your log file shows that you haven't actually encoded any frames, that's gotta be fixed first.

3) Doesn't matter if you use AAC audio encoding.

4) First get a basic setup up and running, then incrementally add more and more advanced features step by step instead of skipping to the end setup.

 

[TheCalculatorTi84]

1) Looks pretty!

I found that until I captured at the same Hz/fps I ran to the monitor, I got tearing. Nvidia screen cloning allows the cloned monitors to run at differing framerates (but not different resolutions), but I found that it wasn't perfect. My setup had my monitor at 120Hz and my cloned screen to the capture card running at 60Hz. At times it "felt" like 60Hz on my monitor even though all indications were that 120Hz was being sent.

I also "overclocked" my old capture card and sent it 105Hz (highest it would go) while my monitor was at 120Hz. The "feel" was much improved but the tearing on the capture was bad.

You might see if your capture card can do 72fps captures, at least that's exactly half of 144Hz. Otherwise experiment with running your monitor at 120Hz and capturing 60fps. I think that reduced or eliminated the tearing, but had the problem that my games didn't "feel" 120Hz to me. Not sure if it was all in my head, or Planetside 2's hitching problems, or if it was real. Alternatively try capturing at 48fps, i.e. 1/3rd of 144Hz, but beware if it "feels" off, like 48Hz instead of 144Hz.

In any case, there's no way around it, you're on the bleeding edge here. You have to experiment and find out what works best for you, too few people attempt what you're doing for there to be consensus. You'll probably just get a lot of theorycraft responses which aren't of a lot of value seeing how you've already bought, installed, and set up your hardware. Just try it, experiment, and let us know how it works, that's the fun!

2) Your log file shows that you haven't actually encoded any frames, that's gotta be fixed first.

3) Doesn't matter if you use AAC audio encoding.

4) First get a basic setup up and running, then incrementally add more and more advanced features step by step instead of skipping to the end setup.

1) Thanks.
2) I will do a lil stream later on tonight to see how it goes with 3500 Bit Rate / 4000 Buffer Size / 48 FPS.
3) Ok Thanks will keep my settings then.
4) Too late for that. LOL. Calc goes hard.


Okay the DVI splitter was a success. It captures my middle monitor while I'm running at 5760x1080p (Nvidia Surround).
So the middle monitor is 1920x1080p @ 60fp to the capture card. When I'm streaming all I have to do is change my refresh rate to 60 and we're good to stream. And when I'm not streaming I change it to 144. Done.

Audio was a pain though. At first there was a lot of static, wierd sounds, and crazy echoing. But I think I got it down. Will try different settings later on. Going to take a nap. All this tech shit makes me sleepy.