Need help streaming

[RyanLEO]

For those of you who have seen me stream before you know I have to use the window option, this is because I'm on my laptop and it uses multiple graphics cards.  When I use the indow option I have to keep it open and it also doesnt let me resize and this results in awful graphics.

I normally use OBS but does anyone else who has streamed with a laptop know any good alternatives I can use to stream with twitch?  I have tried Xsplit too, no luck.  I also tried changing the graphics settings as suggested but it didnt work very well since I have limited options on changing it.  Im using windows 7

[MegaTuga]

That's weird. I always used OBS and it always worked and nobody watching ever complained. The only thing that bothers me is that recording doesn't come as smooth as before which I can't understand why. And yes, I am using a laptop.

[Chiz]

That's one of the side effects of using window-capture - the window must be visible always. Directly capturing with game-capture is ideal when it's available, which SHOULD be for just about any DirectX or OpenGL game.

OBS is the best capture software there is for Windows; while it has its flaws and can occasionally choke at inopportune times, it is miles better than its competition (XSplit has ads and pay-for restrictions; FMLE is a bloaty thing that hardly runs on good computers; FFsplit tends to be less user friendly than OBS for the same options and features; UStream Encoder is a joke and is locked to UStream; VLC is masochism HD remix season pass)

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I've made a rough picture guide for OBS here, should anyone need it. Key points:

• Image 1: Blank Slate. I have VBA-M open, which I'd like to point OBS toward.
• Image 2: Setting up Game Capture. The important thing here is "Stretch Image to Screen", but do not "Ignore Aspect Ratio".
• Image 3: Setting up Window Capture. VBA-M does not work with Window Capture, but FCEUX does. The important thing here is "Inner Window", and having the other options unchecked.
• Image 4: Previewing & Editing Scene. Important step. You NEED to make sure that your image fills the whole scene (black area), and that it does not run over it. Use the red outline and the squares in the corners to see exactly how it needs to be centred and scaled.
• Image 5: Encoding Settings. Many streaming sites want you to use CBR and padded CBR now, so enable those. The other important thing is the bitrate. Separate instructions below for finding the appropriate video bitrate. Audio bitrate is almost entirely unimportant so just crank that down to 48kbps and mono 'cause you're not a radio station and the bitrate can be better used for video.
• Image 6: Video (Resolution) Settings. You want to match the aspect ratio of what you're streaming. A table of appropriate values are below. If you change the resolution, redo step 4! Your old scene placement is now invalid.

Video Bitrate

Go take a speedtest of your connection. Don't use a local server, though. Use a server at the other end of the continent. If you're in or near New York, use a California server. If you're in or near England, use an Italian server. Then start the test.

You'll get 3 numbers; Ping, Download, and Upload.
If Ping is above 300ms, you're gonna have a bad time; if above 500ms, call the whole thing off.
Download is completely irrelevant for what we're doing; remember, it's all about sending video OUT, not receiving it.
Upload is our key value - it is how much data per second you can send from your computer into the ether. The above site gives it in Mbps, as is industry standard. Multiply by 1000 to get Kbps. Then...divide by 3. There, you'll have the highest bitrate you can reasonably be promised on a regular basis, if you factor in other people in the house using internet (lightly), other people in the neighbourhood using internet, bad weather, cheesed speedtest results by your ISP, etc.
So let's say your result said you have "1.25Mbps" upload. That's 1250Kbps, and once you divide by 3, about 420Kbps is the highest you can depend on.
That's not to say you can't go higher, and if you're sure you have a monopoly on your internet connection, feel free to push it as close to the original number ('1250' in the example), but understand that real life may not permit this.

Ideal Video Bitrates for Certain Content

Obviously higher = better in just about any instance, but here's the numbers you should be striving for given certain content. These are rough estimates, though, so don't be shocked if you hit the upper limit of a given range and your stream still doesn't look good. The most important thing separating games appropriate for low bitrates, and games appropriate for high bitrates, is how much motion there is. A bit of movement in one section of the frame requires very little data to look good; the camera wildly panning around and levels moving very quickly requires a LOT of data to look good. Otherwise...

Sort of Game	Approx. Recommended Bitrate
Low-Res, Menu Based Games, low motion (Pokemon, pre-2000 handheld, pre-1996 console)	250-300kbps
High-Res/High-Detail, Menu Based Games, low motion (Visual Novels, most newer 2D stuff)	300-500kbps
Low-Res, Older, mixed low/high motion (really anything pre-HD era that isn't super fast)	350-500kbps
480p/High-Detail, mixed low/high motion (Adventure games on PS2, PSP, Wii)	450-600kbps
480p/High-Detail, high motion (Racing games, Action games)	600-800kbps
720p, mixed motion (Most stuff on 360, PS3, modern PC)	600-1000kbps
720p, high motion (Modern Sonic games, for instance)	1000-1500kbps

A good test to see if you've picked an appropriate bitrate is to find a portion of the game that contains an above average amount of motion or things appearing (explosions, particles, flashing) and see if the stream still looks good.

("Motion" with video isn't so much defined as "things are moving", but "this frame is very different from the last one"; this still has "things moving", but also "things appearing/disappearing", "colours changing", and so on. The bitrate - the amount of data per second spent on the various images - is mostly spent "describing" how different frame N is from frame N-1. If the image is rapidly changing, sufficiently detailed "descriptions" of the changes might not fit into the amount of data allotted for that span of time.)

Appropriate Resolutions

For most old consoles, you should try to match the resolution of the original console, or double it if you have a high bitrate.
Common ones: NES, SNES, GBx is 256x244 or 512x448; Sega Genesis/MD/32x/CD is 320x224 or 640x448. GBA is 240x160 or 480x320. PSP is 480x272.
Most newer games will run on a generic fullscreen (4:3) resolution, like 1024x768, or widescreen (16:9) resolution, like 1280x720;
Lower 4:3 resolutions are 320x240, 400x300, 512x384, and 640x480.
Lower 16:9 resolutions are 320x180, 432x240, 640x360, and 854x480.

Final Instruction

TEST YOUR STREAM FIRST. Test, test again, and then test before you start your stream proper. Get someone else to help by watching your stream and seeing if it's 1) clear, 2) fluid, and 3) actually running. You cannot leave these things until 15 minutes before curtains if you want your stream to be worth watching.

[RyanLEO]

Great guide Chiz, that would be a good post to sticky. I ended up getting VBA to work with game capture again instead of window capture and it's works streaming with twitch too. I'll announce the GB stream in the streaming thread (depending on what game people want).