How to stream. If you have questions PM me.

There's basically two questions when you start to think of streaming your game and it is this. Can I stream and if so how can I do it. This is going to be a very short guide into answering those two questions in the most generic way possible. Some things to note: I will be using Livestream.com to accomplish this. This version of the guide was written AUG 16 2011. I am in no way responsible for anything that changes to livestream.com or to the procaster platform.

Can I stream?
You need to have a good computer and a good internet. If you play the game on medium settings and it's choppy, you probably shouldn't stream. If you play the game on High settings and it runs well for hours on end then you are a good candidate for streaming. Although during your stream you may need to turn your settings to medium.

The way are are going to test your internet is a very useful site called www.speedtest.net. It will allow you to chose a server and then test your connection. I live pretty much in the middle of the country so Kansas City, MO is the preferred choice for me to test my connection. But if you think about it the people watching my stream are most likely not going to be near me. So I am going to chose Boston, Miami, Seattle and LA.
Results
Boston : down 25.38 | 2.95 up | 106 ping
Seattle : down 21.22 | 2.81 up | 102 ping
LA : down 11.15 | 3.11 up | 80 ping
Miami : down 21.93 | 2.79 up | 146 ping

As you can see there is a pretty small discrepancy rate for my speeds, except for the anomaly for LA. We are really only concerned with upload. In order to get quality that is usable for a gaming stream you basically need at least 1 mbps. Know your average though. We are going to use this later. I am going to call my average 2.8 for the sake of this guide. Yours may be 1.2. That is ok.

How to stream?
In this guide I will be using livestream.com. go ahead and sign up. We are going to broadcast. Its gonna ask for a channel name. This is viewable to people and is the name of the livestream.com/?????? so make it something recognizable and slightly small. You don't want "Itheamazinggamershowsoffmyskillsatpathofexileinclosedbetanow" for some pretty obvious reason. The short name should be shorter than the channel name.
My example:
Channel Name : Wickedhood's Game Stream
short name : wickedhood
The link to your stream is www.livestream.com/your short name


Take the blue pill, Launch Free Channel. Fill out all the personal info. Name, height weight, contact info etc. Activate your account and then please point your browser to livestream.com and login. now click procaster at the very bottom of the site. http://www.livestream.com/platform/procaster is the current link.
click download.
install it.
Try to run procaster as admin if it asks. Depending on your windows settings its going to want to.
sign in.

Now for the tricky part, getting it to look great. if you look on the bottom left it says Normal quality. If you click the drop down you can learn that it says 446 kbps next to it. Its not gonna look too good at 446 kbps.

First lets make sure we are gonna show our desktop on the large dropdown in the middle under 'Go Live' select no camera.

then let's jump right into preferences. If you notice there are several tabs at the top. We are going to go through them one at a time.

Livestream Tab:
Live yes
On-demand (good if you want to save your gameplay) otherwise no
Auto-pilot this is for showing movies while its not live. I dont like this so no.
Auto-record this is will your hard drive up quick. no
Mobile stream shows to mobile viewers. No
Enable anti-lag yes I like viewers being able to comment in real time.

Video:
source: No camera (we chose this earlier)

Output resolution is tricky. By default its at 512 x 288 however on the free accounts its hard to get it higher without needing more bandwidth so i like to use 1024 x 576. It keeps the 16x9 ratio and displays a lot of info. Your target rate should be your device rate. Target bitrate is determined by your upload speed. take your upload speed and divide by 2 so mine would be 1.4 mbps or 1400 kbps. Leave keyframes at 60 unless your viewers complain about stuttering or lag. You can lower this to about 25 if needed. I dont like to go below 35 though.

Audio:

I leave this whole tab the way it is.

Desktop:
Show mouse yes
show preview no
highlight mouse no
save videos to file no
start capture on 2nd monitor is useful for those of us with 2.
Switching to basic will save detail therefore so your computer can run faster -> always
restart stream no

Game And Hotkeys don't really matter.
Leave them

Click SAVE.

Start broadcasting.

The only problem with this is that you're not torrenting, you're streaming. So it doesn't matter as much to what your upload speed is to other parts of the world because, correct me if I'm wrong which I probably am, but you're uploading to Livestream servers, which they then broadcast. You're not uploading while everyone else is downloading the video.

actually upload speed is the biggest limiting factor. Sorry your just 100% wrong.

"

wickedhood wrote:

actually upload speed is the biggest limiting factor. Sorry your just 100% wrong.

No, I understand that Upload speed is what matters, I'm saying that it doesn't matter what your upload speed to Russia and Seattle and Miami and Alaska, just what your upload speed to the nearest Livestream server is. You're not torrenting, You upload to the server and that's that, you're not uploading to specific people's computers. That's why You don't need a higher Upload when there's 200 people watching than when there's 2

Very true. Very true.

And what of my 25mb upload pipe?

well currently the free accounts cap out at ~600 kbps. We're really just being optimistic with our 600+ kbps and allowing for spikes. if you pay 350$ a month you can get HD and make use of it.

"

Chainer wrote:

And what of my 25mb upload pipe?

I think you men meg upload pipe.

that would be much for useful for winning 10 different MMO's, but only on a 16 core computer.

everyone should go check out the youtube account "talesoflumin"

he uploads great content usually involving blizzard games but he also does playthroughs of various games.

Right now he is doing path of exile and I just find him engaging and fun to watch!

thought it might be appropriate to mention in streaming of this game

hmm thanks for that. these are actually pretty useful.