I WANT a delay :-)

[pawel95]

Hello,

I have a problem. I am streaming a professional tournament of an older game. However to avoid watching the stream, by the oposing team: I wanted to make a delay like for 30-50 minutes :D I saw that OBS has a delay function, however I was shocked when I saw that it reseted automaticly, when it´s over a number(like 100 or so).

So please my question, how to make it possible to have a bigger delay than these 2 min :P We really need that, I like to hear all posts from you guys, you could help/ us(the game community) very well :-)


Pawel95

 

[BtbN]

Configure a delay on twitch. Or just upload recordings if you don't want to stream live anyway.

 

[dodgepong]

It's probably a bug that OBS doesn't warn you when you set too high of a delay, so that's something worth fixing.

OBS delays video by buffering the video in RAM. You're not going to want to buffer 30-50 minutes of video in RAM. If you want to delay it that much, then at that point you might as well just record it locally and upload it to YouTube...

 

[Boildown]

OBS is limited to 900 seconds of delay.

I've ran into this before, and people generally didn't understand why I'd want to delay that much. Here's one gaming community's reaction to someone declaring they want to live stream: http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/inde ... 566.0.html . In Aces High, even 15 minutes is probably too short of a delay, as 15 minutes is still enough time to jump someone's mission or find someone's aircraft carrier given its previous location and heading. If I were participating in a scenario, there's no way I would stream with a delay of less than the expected total duration of the event, in which case I agree with those who said I may as well just save to the hard drive and "live stream" it later (NBC Olympic Coverage Approved).

Check the Video Source Plugin: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=4711 . You can save to your hard drive at a high quality and then stream it later, if 900 seconds (15 minutes) isn't enough.

 

[Boildown]

It's probably a bug that OBS doesn't warn you when you set too high of a delay, so that's something worth fixing.

OBS delays video by buffering the video in RAM. You're not going to want to buffer 30-50 minutes of video in RAM. If you want to delay it that much, then at that point you might as well just record it locally and upload it to YouTube...

Last night I recorded 1080p60 video at an average of 4000 bitrate, and it took up 150MB in 5 minutes. So 50 minutes would be ~ 1.5GB. I think most people have enough RAM for a greater delay than 15 minutes... at least on the 64-bit version.

 

[pawel95]

Would be cool, if its possible to fix that somehow. I know about those possibilities guys, about streaming a recorded movie(And I have a youtube channel with full of non-live movies also with Fraps for example that were very big) :D But I want it this "semi live" way on twitch.(Like in many tv shows, where the shows have a delay of 15 min often)

And No I can´t set a delay on twitch, because I have to be a partner of twitch, don´t want to ask for partnership yet(too few streams/week up to here).

About Ram, you mean normal ram? Have 12 GB of ram and I´m usiing the 64 Bit version of OBS(And windows :P ).
So actualy I would very like, if that would be fixable. I mean, most players don´t want a delay after all and some are crying because having 5 sec delay or so :P But I hope you can understand me, that I want also for the future to be able, to set delays like 15 min or so.(Or like in that case like 30 min).

So would be cool if you could fix that "limit" :-)

 

[FerretBomb]

For the current incarnation as a workaround, I'd consider a two-system setup... but not the typical type.

Instead, have a copy of OBS on the gaming system recording locally. Play your game, then 'stop recording' at the end. Copy the file across to the other machine. Add it to a Video Player playlist, and play it back. Keep a 'waiting for next match to end/loading video' image as a background behind it. Then just swap back and forth to load the new video and play it.

Not exactly elegant or clean, but it'd get the job done for the time being.

 

[pawel95]

Ok, but Have I to post something in the idea topic, to get zhat somehow implemented for the future, or the devs read posts/ideas here also?

 

[Krazy]

If you like I can move this post to the Feedback forums instead

 

[pawel95]

Yeah, it was more a "question" at the beginning, but now it´s like an idea/feedback :-)
Would be nice Krazy.

 

[Krazy]

Done.

 

[Lain]

Why not just record the file and then use the video file source plugin to stream it after you're finished? Having that long of a delay is going to eat up all your ram. It's not ideal.

 

[pawel95]

Let tell me an important reason: It's not really user friendly XD
Also like I said, if obs has a delay function, in my opinion it should work without any limit, and when you choose a delay over 5 min for example, a warning like: "only recommend for big ram memory" could appear, but still let the streamer set that delay, if he is sure his pc will do that :-D
I understand how many recources that can it, but if i save it on my hdd and have to stream it later , after recording, and to delete that file afterwards from my hdd or just to spam my ram temporary, then i rather like the last option.

Btw what I forgot to "add" as an important reason. Sometimes these games go like 2 hours (in average 80 min). So with that nice obs delay, it would just start streaming 30 min later, and I could normaly continue talkin and streaming without any break. Otherwise I would have to switch to windows, open a 2nd obs (isn't possible by default on windows 7 even, to have 2 obs opened at one time) and start to stream the saved file, while I'm still recording the rest of the game on my HDD ;-) so also the cpu usage could be quite high by ""streaming"" 2 times parallel at one time.


Pawel

 

[soslick]

Just curious, but why do you need a 30 minute delay? For any game that I can think of, a minute or two should be fine to prevent the enemy teams stream watching from being effective.

 

[sado1]

Just curious, but why do you need a 30 minute delay? For any game that I can think of, a minute or two should be fine to prevent the enemy teams stream watching from being effective.

Knights and Merchants Remake. The game is a RTS with emphasis on city building. The usual way to play multiplayer games, is with peacetime (PT) of 1 hour (1 hour is standard for professional games, 70-90 minutes is what less experienced players prefer), over which time you have loads of things to do in your city - you have to make sure your citizens won't die of hunger, and you need to make sure you have enough weapons in your city when peacetime is over. A bunch of random stats to let you imagine, why exactly the citybuilding period takes whole hour at least:
-usual city has around 80-100 serfs (which are the main unit bringing resources from house to house)
-number of weapons for single troop range from 1 (militia - has only an axe) to 4 (knight - has iron sword, iron armor, iron shield, and a horse), and armies on peacetime range from 60 to 100 units, so usually you have to produce around 150 weapons before PT (depends on the choice of army you want to produce), to stay relevant.
-etc.

Now, why we need whopping 40 minutes of delay for streaming the games? Well, around 20-25 minutes into the game it is possible to guess what strategy is the player going for, and we cannot disclose that info to anyone, before the peacetime is over. So we have to use 40 min delay, which means that 5 minutes before peacetime, the stream will be 15 minutes into the game. This is enough to make streams not relevant enough, as there is not much info you can read from a 15-20 minutes city.

 

[pawel95]

Indeed. Sado just explained everything :D However there are more Strategy games, like that one, where economy has high priority and you shouldn´t show your enemy, that you going for "horses only" for example(In kam that means, to make mass pikes to counter them easily, and the game for mass horse team is over :P )

 

[Boildown]

As I explained earlier, the Aces High flight sim is the same way, one reason why I've never streamed myself playing it, is the lack of ability of putting in a delay of more than 15 minutes. A half hour would probably be enough.

And as for streaming later, while an option certainly, if I play for 4 hours, I don't want to dedicate the next four hours when I'm not playing to streaming what I just did, I'd rather only have to wait a half hour for it to catch up. 30 minutes would be a perfect amount of time to grab some food or watch a TV show, four hours would get in the way of things.

My streaming computer also has 12 GB of RAM. Even 8 GB would be enough for many hours of recording, even considering what the OS, OBS, and any game all need.

 

[soslick]

Just curious, but why do you need a 30 minute delay? For any game that I can think of, a minute or two should be fine to prevent the enemy teams stream watching from being effective.

Knights and Merchants Remake. The game is a RTS with emphasis on city building. The usual way to play multiplayer games, is with peacetime (PT) of 1 hour (1 hour is standard for professional games, 70-90 minutes is what less experienced players prefer), over which time you have loads of things to do in your city - you have to make sure your citizens won't die of hunger, and you need to make sure you have enough weapons in your city when peacetime is over. A bunch of random stats to let you imagine, why exactly the citybuilding period takes whole hour at least:
-usual city has around 80-100 serfs (which are the main unit bringing resources from house to house)
-number of weapons for single troop range from 1 (militia - has only an axe) to 4 (knight - has iron sword, iron armor, iron shield, and a horse), and armies on peacetime range from 60 to 100 units, so usually you have to produce around 150 weapons before PT (depends on the choice of army you want to produce), to stay relevant.
-etc.

Now, why we need whopping 40 minutes of delay for streaming the games? Well, around 20-25 minutes into the game it is possible to guess what strategy is the player going for, and we cannot disclose that info to anyone, before the peacetime is over. So we have to use 40 min delay, which means that 5 minutes before peacetime, the stream will be 15 minutes into the game. This is enough to make streams not relevant enough, as there is not much info you can read from a 15-20 minutes city.

Ah, I see then, thanks for the explanation. Interesting sounding game. I will have to check it out, if there are any streams of it on twitch.

 

[sado1]

At the moment, we don't have many options. Video source plugin would be our best shot, but when connection gets dropped and OBS tries to reconnect, plugin just plays the file over since the beginning, instead of continuing it. It's really a no-go given my connection likes to do that once in a while. I am quite disappointed, but I guess there's nothing we can do. I'd like to ask the developers of OBS to consider implementing longer delays support in the future, it probably will be of little use to us, since we need it right now, but I guess you might make someone else happy later on. If the 15 minute cap is something easy to change in the source (so we can compile an unofficial version of OBS), I'd love to hear some clues on that. Not really a programmer here, just someone who tried to become one, maybe that'll be enough.