Streaming and recording setups - An overview

[Jack0r]

Finding the right setup can be hard. There are a lot of factors, not only money, that will help you decide which is the best for you. Below I try to list the mostly used, and mostly useful setups I got to know. Check each of them for their special needs and abilities.

Spoiler

Choose your desired setup type below or go through the different guides to find your perfect setup idea:

• General Streaming/Recording Setups
  • One PC Setups
  • Two PC Setups
    • Capture Card, no Video-splitter
    • Capture Card, Splitter, different sound options
    • Capture Card, no Video-splitter, two-Soundcards/Audio Outputs
    • Capture Card, no splitter, Audio over Lan
    • no Capture Card
  • Console Streaming
• Bigger Setups
  • Event Setups
    • Simple Event Setup - One Event Camera, Several Streamers
    • Server Event Setup - USB Cameras, Server and Streamers
    • Professional Event Setup - Several Cameras, PC's and a Master Server
  • Multi-PC Setups
  • Multi-Source Setups
• Picture in Picture Ideas (2 or more Inputs combined to one or more streams)
  • Do a Picture in Picture Stream with nginx and OBS
  • Possible setup solutions for a Multi-View(PiP) stream

You have an Idea for a setup but its missing atm? Message me on twitter or facebook or here!

And again, I always like feedback.

 

[Blauwhelmpje]

Hi, first of all: very nice guide. You clearly put alot of work into that!

But I have some questions regarding the 2 pc setup.


Could you tell me the (dis)advantages of:
-using a dvi/hdmi splitter to the game pc's monitor and capture device
-using 1 seperate dvi/hdmi port for both devices

Would I be able to use the sli on my gaming computer now since it only supports 2 monitors and i'm using 3 atm(cloning game monitor with hauppauge pvr hd2. And expanding to my second monitor on gaming computer.
But with a splitter I suppose it sort of "automaticly clones" without nvidia "knowing"?! and thus only using 2 ports of one card?

For now I have to choose the "use all monitors" option which I believe disables SLI functionality?!

Also: would my audio still transfer over hdmi to my capture device when using a splitter. If yes, what about the quality loss/delay?!

Or if it would even matter In my case:

game pc:
i5 2500k
2x gtx560ti soc editions
2 monitors

-connects to the hauppauge hd pvr2 gaming edition-

stream laptop(clevo p170em):
i7 3610qm
680m with overclock
Just built in monitor

Sorry if I'm asking to many questions. If someone else could help me on this, it'd be much appreciated!

 

[Jack0r]

Could you tell me the (dis)advantages of:
-using a dvi/hdmi splitter to the game pc's monitor and capture device
-using 1 seperate dvi/hdmi port for both devices

Lets answer this step by step:
HDMI Splitter allows you to use ONE output of your game PC, if you use the HDMI you can send over the audio aswell, no delay is involved with a good splitter (25€+). If you use a dvi to hdmi cable you cant use the audio, but still use an hdmi splitter.
Seperate connections allow you to use the number of connections your graphics card allows you to use at the same time only. While only the HDMI and DisplayPort can send Audio if wanted. So you will loose ONE monitor output you could normally use, because you have to connect it to your HD PVR.

Would I be able to use the sli on my gaming computer now since it only supports 2 monitors and i'm using 3 atm(cloning game monitor with hauppauge pvr hd2. And expanding to my second monitor on gaming computer.
But with a splitter I suppose it sort of "automaticly clones" without nvidia "knowing"?! and thus only using 2 ports of one card?

Yes the splitter is a "clone machine", it reports to your NVidia card normally with the abilities and Name of your first connected device. I made a screenshot with my setup to clarify this a bit more:

As you can see, my second Monitor is just called in Windows as if it would be connected directly without a splitter (LG37LF65). What you have to bare in mind though, your capture card has to support the same inputs as your monitor. If you want to play at 1080p60hz, the card has to be able to use this as its input!

For now I have to choose the "use all monitors" option which I believe disables SLI functionality?!

Also: would my audio still transfer over hdmi to my capture device when using a splitter. If yes, what about the quality loss/delay?!

Im not sure about the SLI setup sorry, but for the delay/loss, a splitter has none to my knowledge. As said earlier, this can be different for low quality splitters and used cables.

 

[Dezmo]

Thank you for this overview. I am looking to use my old PC as the streaming PC in a 2 PC setup.
I was looking for inf on how to accomplish this.
One wrinkle is that I have 3 monitors currently on my Gaming machine and the other PC is a bit older.

C2D 3.2 I think and a GTX 260 with about 8GB RAM.
Would that be sufficient to stream in 720p?

 

[Ragnos]

Hi,

i would like to ask you about a setup i thought about some time, but still see some issues.

Basically its a 3-PC setup.

1.: Streaming Host, containing 2-3 capturecards.
2/3.: Gaming PCs.

My questions:
1.: Can i run two identical CaptureCards (namely AverMedia Game Broadcaster HD) at one host?
2.: Im still looking for a solution to stream the whole audio of a single PC (stereomix and mic) through HDMI into OBS. Also i want to create two scenes (eg. "PC A" and "PC B") and switch the whole sound with it. Is this possible with OBS right now (or will be?)

The backup solution for this would be a live mixer and addtional soundcards for the gaming pc's. Doing it this way would be a lot more cablework and I would need to mix it manually on sceneswitch. The single benefit of this way is the possibility of mixing music from cd's or a seperate notebook into the stream.

@Dezmo: Are those the specs of the old pc using for streaming? If so, it should be sufficient. And the TripleHead-Config on your gaming machine is most likely irrelevant if you use a capturecard.

Kind Regards,
Ragnos

 

[Jack0r]

@Dezmo, the 3 monitors will be no problem if you use a splitter for example. so you can split one output and set it to a capture card. Though like Ragnos said, your CPU might by insufficient in delivering enough power for 720p. You will have to actually do a testrun with OBS and see if it works.

@Ragnos:
1: According to some reports you should be able to do so, though I had problems running to different Avermedia Cards at the same time. I can´t say what the exact cause for this was.
2: I personally use Virtual Audio Cable for this. It allows you to mix the stereo mixer (and all other things you want mostly) into one Line, for example your HDMI output. On your streaming PC you can mix in anything you want with VAC aswell.

 

[dehixem]

Awesome guide :) I didn't know we could use several PC's for livestreaming !

 

[Dezmo]

Thank you for the replies. Now I will need to search for a capture card to try this out.

 

[willll162904]

can you use hdmi from the gaming pc to the gaming monitor and use dvi from the graphics card to the capture card? or is it better to do it with dvi from the gamer rig to the monitor and use hdmi from the gpu to the capture card?

 

[dodgepong]

Most capture cards don't have a DVI capture port, though you can convert DVI to HDMI with an adapter, since they are the same video signal. Note that DVI doesn't transmit audio like HDMI does, so you will have to capture audio with a separate 3.5mm plug into the capture card or your Line In.

As for what's "better"...it's easier to just send the HDMI signal to the capture card so that you don't have to adapt it at all. But if you absolutely want to plug your HDMI cable into your Monitor instead, you can get an adapter for the DVI cable to convert it to HDMI to plug into the capture card.

 

[Jack0r]

Get an active hdmi splitter and you dont need to use DVI and you also dont have to clone/duplicate your monitor in Windows. Just make sure the splitter has good reviews and supports all HDMI standards.

 

[vitecp]

Hi!
Great guide, but to be sure what setup should I have for next situation:
I want to stream with music, but recording should be without it. Every other sound (voice, game sounds) should be in both.
Any thoughts on this case? Is it possible to do on single PC? Or should I have 2?

 

[Jack0r]

It is theoretically possible, but not really simple on a one pc setup.

Probably the easiest solution would be to mix in the music over a seperate audio device and recording the game audio with a seperate program so you can later just overwrite the music/game sound on your video.
A bit more complicated maybe would be using DXtory to create a multi-track file. It records every audio Input into a seperate track. So you could have music / game and microphone in 3 different tracks and input this footage into OBS. (But dxtory costs some money)
You can also use 2 instances of OBS at the same time. Again mix in the music but of course just in one of the instances and let one of the two instances record with a very low resolution, or even just a black picture as you will just need the audio of this recording :)

Hope this gives you an idea, just post if you have questions!

 

[eyenar]

I'm rather new to this but would love to stream! I have some questions though...

1. I have a nice gaming rig planned for dedicated gaming and a decent laptop planned for dedicated streaming. Is there any way for me to set this up using my laptop to stream? I am not entirely sure as to how this would work out!

2. Would I need to use a stand alone capture card for this to work?

 

[Boildown]

I'm rather new to this but would love to stream! I have some questions though...

1. I have a nice gaming rig planned for dedicated gaming and a decent laptop planned for dedicated streaming. Is there any way for me to set this up using my laptop to stream? I am not entirely sure as to how this would work out!

2. Would I need to use a stand alone capture card for this to work?

Your best bet would be a USB 3.0 capture device, I forget the name, but there's one available to import from Japan that reportedly works really well. You also have to make sure your laptop has USB 3.0 ports and the right kind of chipset on those ports. A search on these OBS forums should get you all the info pretty quickly.

An alternative would be to do this: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=6757

 

[dodgepong]

It's called the XCAPTURE-1 and is a fantastic USB 3.0 capture device. Just make sure your USB 3.0 controllers are Intel or Renesas.

 

[MysticSpade]

I use to have a setup running and HDMI splitter setup so one output came to my monitor and the other to my capture card (recording my PC monitor). Now my setup includes 144hz DVI monitors and I'm at a loss as to how to run the same setup. I want to make use of the 144hz so I'm using DVI, I could use HDMI and still use my normal setup but I would only get 60hz on my monitor which would negate my reason for purchasing. Any thoughts here would be greatly appreciated, because right now I am having problems ever getting the "game capture" feature in OBS to hook into alot of my games. I also see that my video is smoother if I run it through the capture card as well on playback.

 

[Boildown]

Don't use a splitter and clone your screen instead. Not sure about AMD but I do it every day with Nvidia. In this way, you can run one of your screens at a different framerate than your monitor (they must remain the same resolution though). So you can game at 144Hz and send 60Hz to your capture device, for example. This is one reason why I never bought in, pun intended, to the splitter solution.

The other solution is to get an extremely high end capture card that can handle 144Hz. For example, the Datapath VisionDVI-DL.

 

[noah abbott]

What if you have a wireless headset (Logitech G930) using the game capture card, no splitter set up. How would I do the audio portion.

 

[Jack0r]

You could send the sound through a Virtual Audio Cable and then forward it once to the headset and once to the capture card. Using two audio repeaters or the listen to function and a repeater.