Question / Help Trying to learn how to stream.

T

Thomas Balaban

New Member
Hello, I am trying to learn how to stream or figure out what I need to get to stream.

My specs are....

12gigs Ram
Intel Integrated HD Graphics (I believe I need to buy a actual graphics card)
i5 4335 cpu
105 down and 35 up internet

I can answer anything else I need to as it goes but I believe this is what is important...

I am constantly having very bad lag spikes and 100% cpu usage while attempting to stream. I have been given several things to look into and am curious which path you guys would recommend. I have about 500$ to spare but would like the spend the least of it as necessary to do a high quality league of legends stream.

Solutions
1. Replace PCU, CPU, Graphics card
2. Replace PCU and Graphics card. I was told because I don't have a real graphics card my CPU is receiving 100% of the tax while trying to stream.
3. Buy http://www.amazon.com/AVerMedia-Recorder-C985-Capture-Stream/dp/B007UXJ6LE/ref=cm_rdp_product

If 3 works it seems like the simplest but I figured 2 sounded like the most real solution. Any advice would be great :) Thank you.
 
A capture card is not going to offload anything from your CPU. This is marketing snake oil that Avermedia keeps pushing. The only time a capture card is going to help you is if you plan to stream console games, or if you are using a 2-PC streaming setup.

A proper graphics card will most likely have the biggest effect on your system, and definitely should be your first consideration. Past that, we would need to see a logfile; there are a lot of 'guides' out there with very bad advice, and OBS can behave very badly when misconfigured.
 
I am very happy you led me the right direction with that then :). The reviews on the capture card said the opposite, but I rather trust someone that knows what they are doing rather then a fan base.

I will try the graphics card and new psu route if its the recommended one after trying to reconfigure my OBS.
 
In the interests of full disclosure:
Some Avermedia capture cards have on-board video encoders, which can ONLY be accessed by their software (NOT OBS or XSplit). They also deliver a VERY low-quality image at a given bitrate, as compared to software x264. This will indeed offload the video encoding from the CPU.

So in short, yes, they technically *can* reduce CPU load, but you're stuck with outgoing video that looks extremely poor and cannot be improved without throwing ridiculous amounts of bitrate at it (something which is one of the prime bottlenecks in livestreaming for many reasons), and using very primitive, feature-barren software on top of the low quality.

Their marketing is worded very carefully to avoid these points, similar to how they blaze 'ACCEPTS 1080p@60fps!' across the front of the box (so to speak), and hide that the device only actually captures at 1080@30 in the small-type specs on the back.

It's one of the reasons I tend to steer people away from AverMedia in general at this point, even if their hardware would be a good fit for a given application... their marketing methods brand them as a shady company just looking to sucker people in.
 
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