Streamers with jobs

I stream in 720p at 3,500K which is what OBS recommends. I'm lucky enough to have 10Mbps upload though.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

I stream in 720p at 3,500K which is what OBS recommends. I'm lucky enough to have 10Mbps upload though. :)

That's really really high. With that upload rate you could be pushing 1080p at 30fps. I'm thinking you're limiting your potential viewer base by uploading at such a high bitrate. While I have great internet, I know for a fact that many of my viewers don't. They wouldn't be able to watch me if I was doing a 3500kb/s stream.

I can try a lower one for sure. I was reading in a lot of places that you should do 3,500K in order to get a decent image but I could definitely knock it down. I was told you needed like 7MB/sec at least to do 1080p. I assumed most people who watch streams had well over 5Mbit/sec Internet but you've been doing this for a while so you would know. I'll try turning it down for Pile Driver tonight and see what happens.

For people like us who aren't partnered you really have to compromise between having an ultra high quality smooth stream and one that the majority of viewers can watch. I'm not sure if you've ever checked my channel out but the most I upload is 2200 kb/s and it's decent quality. Granted I don't usually stream the most graphically intensive of games but I find it to be a decent compromise.

Actually if you have *amazing* hardware in a dedicated streaming PC you can do 1080p 60fps and get a pretty clear picture. With the same 3000kbps bitrate.

But we're talking probably $5000 for the separate streaming rig.

IIRC, Widgitybear streams BF4 at 3000 or 3500, 1080p 60fps.

But his streaming PC is a dual xeon rig and he spent like $2000 on just the capture card itself because it's the only consumer grade hardware on the market that will do it. Between it and the super beastly PC dedicated to just compression and encoding... well you get the idea.

I dropped my bitrate to 2,000 and I'll see what happens when I finish Red Faction Guerrilla tonight.

EDIT: Moved this back to Saturday instead of Sunday. We were originally supposed to do Mother's Day stuff on Saturday this week but they got moved to actual Mother's Day on Sunday so now I'm going to do this a day earlier. Hopefully it brings in a few more viewers.

Cross posting this from the Extra Life 2014 thread just cause I thought it would work and more viewers always helps.

Last year, one of my Extra Life stretch goals was that if I hit $1,000, I would play through Daikatana in one session on a live stream. Real life being what it is, it's taken me way too long to fulfil that promise but no more excuses! I will be doing the live stream this Saturday, May 10th, starting at 9am EST and going until the game's done! I've never played it before and all I really know of Daikatana is what history says so this is going to be an adventure and trust me, it'll be good television. You can watch the show over on my Twitch channel. Also, Extra Life 2014 opened registration super early so my profile is already live. I haven't figured out the theme for this year's event or what my stretch goals will be but if you want to donate early to my campaign this year (which also goes toward the Gamers With Jobs team), that would be way awesome. This is gonna' be fun (though potentially only in an ironic way) so come hang out on Saturday!

Quick update. I got partnered! Yayyyyy!

Trainwreck wrote:

Quick update. I got partnered! Yayyyyy!

Congrats dude! Well earned I'd say.

Yeah, congrats man. You've certainly been at it long enough and streamed more consistently than most.

Trainwreck wrote:

Quick update. I got partnered! Yayyyyy!

Great news! You've put plenty of time in it. Glad to see it is paying off this way as well

Trainwreck wrote:

Quick update. I got partnered! Yayyyyy!

Congrats! As others have said, you definitely earned it.

Trainwreck wrote:

Quick update. I got partnered! Yayyyyy!

Awesome news Train! Congratulations!

Trainwreck wrote:

Quick update. I got partnered! Yayyyyy!

I'm late to the party, but CONGRATULATIONS!

I'm streaming my La Mulana playthrough tonight and mebbe future nights if anybody's interested. I'm open to any feedback about quality issues if any of you vets take a look.

Anyone have experience with streaming from two different PC's into one?

I'm running a qualifier tournament for BlizzCon with the folks from Extra-Credits and I would like stream it as much as I can. So here is what I think is the right way to do this but wanted to see if anyone here knows about this.

PC1 and PC2 run Hearthstone with some sort of software. PC3 is able, via network, to grab the output from PC1 and PC2, mix it, and output a combined stream out to the internet.

Does such a thing exist? I know I could do this with two HDMI outputs and two HDMI capture cards but that is cash monies.

I guess this is the closest thing to a Twitch Catch-All, so I'll post it here.

Changes To Audio In VODS

The Audible Magic technology will scan for third party music in 30 minute blocks

If third party audio is detected anywhere in the 30-minute scanned block, the entire 30 minutes will be muted.

This includes in-game and ambient music.

As expected, the comments section is full of people proclaiming the death of Twitch, thanks to Google. Even one of Twitch's most popular variety streamers, Dansgaming, posted a troll-ish comment: "I can't log into twitch, I forgot my Google+ Password"

Meanwhile, I'll go get my popcorn.

Edwin wrote:

Anyone have experience with streaming from two different PC's into one?

I'm running a qualifier tournament for BlizzCon with the folks from Extra-Credits and I would like stream it as much as I can. So here is what I think is the right way to do this but wanted to see if anyone here knows about this.

PC1 and PC2 run Hearthstone with some sort of software. PC3 is able, via network, to grab the output from PC1 and PC2, mix it, and output a combined stream out to the internet.

Does such a thing exist? I know I could do this with two HDMI outputs and two HDMI capture cards but that is cash monies.

The two outputs and two capture cards is the only solution I can come up with.

MeatMan wrote:

Meanwhile, I'll go get my popcorn.

Twitch is the big dog now regardless of Google ownership they can't go on hosting copyrighted content. All of the people complaining don't have an argument other than "I want it".

Meanwhile I'm living up to my tag and broadcasting here: http://www.twitch.tv/mrwyndstream

I'll have to read the details later. My first assumption was ads or other such nonsense. However, I'm more worried about how this will affect Extra Life streams and streamers. Is there going to be an even more severe delay? Also, do people really use Twitch for anything BUT third party game content?

mrwynd wrote:

Twitch is the big dog now regardless of Google ownership they can't go on hosting copyrighted content. All of the people complaining don't have an argument other than "I want it".

The big difference here is that instead of the video being unaffected, as with Youtube Content ID in which the only thing that's affected is that the ad revenue is given to the copyright holder, with Twitch the video (VOD) has no audio at all for a minimum of 30 minutes, even if the copyrighted audio only lasts for a few seconds, or however long it has to be for the technology to recognize it. Granted, the primary reason people, including myself, go to Twitch is to watch live streams, not VODs.

I have nothing useful to add, except the hope that if they have the technology to identify the music, maybe someday they'll have the means to cut just the music out and leave the rest in.

MeatMan wrote:

The big difference here is that instead of the video being unaffected, as with Youtube Content ID in which the only thing that's affected is that the ad revenue is given to the copyright holder

Not totally true. One of my videos was forcefully taken down due to using footage from a film. I was able to dispute it under Fair Use, but it was still affected.

Maybe I'm not completely understanding what VOD means and should Google it. Your wording makes it seem as if Extra Life streamers won't be as affected after all.

ccesarano wrote:
MeatMan wrote:

The big difference here is that instead of the video being unaffected, as with Youtube Content ID in which the only thing that's affected is that the ad revenue is given to the copyright holder

Not totally true. One of my videos was forcefully taken down due to using footage from a film.

Based on your simple description, that's apples and oranges. The Youtube fiasco and this new Twitch announcement both use technology that only triggers for copyrighted music, not copyrighted video. Having a video taken down completely for video copyright is something unrelated.

VOD = Video On Demand. Twitch automatically records every live broadcast by every streamer. Additionally, the streamer can upload "highlights" which are generally short video clips of their broadcast that they want to, well, highlight for whatever reason. Both of these kinds of videos can be accessed from the streamer's profile page, and the term VOD applies to them.

Ahh. I figured it had to mean something different. In that case, it doesn't really matter to Extra Lifers at all unless you're already a streamer that happens to make heavy use of your backlog of content for highlights and such.

Still, I can see it being pretty crappy, especially for those that don't get a chance to watch the stream live.

I'm not confident that this is what will finally push streamers to move to another service en masse but I hope so. Beyond this, Twitch is just a terrible service with lousy tools, lousy bandwith, a horrendous web site, useless discoverability tools and pretty much non-existent support. I use them because they're essentially a monopoly in this space but they haven't been good to use basically ever.

An interesting theory about all the big, sudden changes happening at Twitch lately. Essentially, the author thinks the Google deal fell through and Twitch is trying to rapidly cut costs, possibly to survive because Google doesn't like to delete anything, yet Twitch has done just that in spades. Keep in mind, the Google acquisition has not happened yet. Google is a public company and as someone who worked for a company that went public and got many briefings about press requirements, Google has to disclose and announce the acquisition of Twitch before the deal closes. If they haven't, then the deal hasn't happened yet. Given the likely massive cash burn rate Twitch has, without an acquisition, they may not survive long if they don't severely curtail costs. I remember that YouTube was burning $1M/month of their venture funding before Google bought them and they were poised to go under before being bought.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

I'm not confident that this is what will finally push streamers to move to another service en masse but I hope so.

I'm sure Twitch will retain most of their established streamers, at least for a while, but at the same time, I bet Hitbox will see a sudden large increase in streamers and users.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

An interesting theory about all the big, sudden changes happening at Twitch lately. Essentially, the author thinks the Google deal fell through and Twitch is trying to rapidly cut costs, possibly to survive because Google doesn't like to delete anything, yet Twitch has done just that in spades.

That's certainly a plausible theory, but the author of this article at Ars Technica thinks differently.

Ars Technica wrote:

The new policy comes as rumors about Twitch and Google continue to swirl around. The advertising giant is believed to be in negotiations to buy Twitch for $1 billion. While neither company has made the sale official, evidence continues to mount that Twitch is streamlining and tidying up its operations to make it more attractive to a buyer.

In other related news: Twitch's own video series, Twitch Weekly, which is essentially a talk show, has already been hit by this new policy. Half of this hour-long episode is completely silent.

IMAGE(http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/scale_medium/14/148659/2600421-9102809718-Nelso.jpg)

Raptr seems to be switching over to a video/streaming service, so that may be an option too.

And possibly related, http://justin.tv/ (which spawned twitch, I believe) has shut down.

tanstaafl wrote:

And possibly related, http://justin.tv/ (which spawned twitch, I believe) has shut down.

It's definitely related. As you said, Twitch was spawned by Justiv.tv due to the fast growth of the video games category at Justin.tv. In fact, in February of this year, Justin.tv's company name was formally changed to Twitch Interactive, Inc.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

Google is a public company and as someone who worked for a company that went public and got many briefings about press requirements, Google has to disclose and announce the acquisition of Twitch before the deal closes. If they haven't, then the deal hasn't happened yet. Given the likely massive cash burn rate Twitch has, without an acquisition, they may not survive long if they don't severely curtail costs. I remember that YouTube was burning $1M/month of their venture funding before Google bought them and they were poised to go under before being bought.

I've worked in PR for public (and private) companies that both acquired and were acquired. The official announcement only happens once the deal is signed, sealed, and delivered. It is never, ever announced beforehand. To do so would give the acquiree added leverage in the final negotiations as well as leave both companies vulnerable to looking foolish or weak if final terms could not be agreed to.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

An interesting theory about all the big, sudden changes happening at Twitch lately. Essentially, the author thinks the Google deal fell through and Twitch is trying to rapidly cut costs, possibly to survive because Google doesn't like to delete anything, yet Twitch has done just that in spades. Keep in mind, the Google acquisition has not happened yet.

I'm kinda thinking that Google did its due diligence and, rightly, found that Twitch was another $1 billion lawsuit over copyright infringement waiting to happen.

Part of the terms of the deal may be that Twitch has to make these changes in order to ameliorate the threat of potential lawsuits (with the added benefit of having the heat directed to Twitch management, not Google).

I also imagine that Twitch's own lawyers have probably told them that they are a copyright infringement time bomb and that is going scare any potential buyer, so they'd best fix things in case the deal with Google goes south.