Streaming setup

[kalmarjan]

Curious what people.out here in FG land use to stream their games?

I have a crappie laptop (for now) that is an Acer E1-522 hooked up to 2 monitors...it has and A4 and 6 gigs of ram.

I tried using OBS and it didn't stream to twitch at all. I ended up having to record the session and ended up only getting my voice for the recording (d'oh!!!)

I'm using FG, OBS studio and teamspeak 3. My Internet connection is Fibe 125...

Is there anyone out there that can help a fellow frustrated DM out?

[kalnaren]

If you have a dedicated nVidia GPU you can use Shadowplay. That's what I've used for FG.

What issues did you have with OBS? I've successfully streamed with it, though I was rather disappointed in the quality.

[kalmarjan]

The laptop has onboard graphics...that's it.

For the issues...I was not able to stream/host teamspeak/use fantasy grounds without bogging the system down to like 5 fps...and there was a huge feedback loop.

Using OBS for recording only recorded my Mic voice and not the voices of the players on the Teamspeak.

I am not well versed in these applications and I almost need some form of tutorial that doesn't expect a great deal of technical knowledge from me.

All I want to be able to do is record our gaming session and upload it to YouTube. Twitch would be a bonus. Lol

[Ken L]

iirc you were asking about a tower upgrade before no? For streaming, you need a powerful laptop or a tower desktop that has a good video card. Pushing 2 additional monitors on your integrated graphics is already taxing it, it's struggling to even attempt recording even if it has to thrash on system ram outside its vram.

[kalnaren]

For streaming you're not likely going to be able to use a laptop with integrated graphics. Fantasy Grounds is a resource hog as it is, and to stream you have to transcode on the fly. My MSI gaming laptop bogged down in FG before I enabled the dedicated GPU, and that was with no streaming.

You're going to have a similar problem with just recording, although to a lesser extent.

First thing is to set up your audio devices. Make sure BOTH OBS and TeamSpeak are using the SAME audio device for playback:

https://i.imgur.com/URwLhjO.png

https://i.imgur.com/rq6twd2.png
I realize I actually had that screenie on SPDIF -it should be on 'Speakers Sound Blaster Z'

Then do the same for the recording device -make sure both are using the SAME microphone device. If you're NOT using a headset, your microphone must be on push-to-talk. Laptop microphones pic up EVERYTHING. They're incredibly annoying for streaming. I can't recommend getting a headset enough. I actually enforce the PTT rule on my teamspeak server with my players unless the have a very good quality mic (basically, if I can tell you're not using PTT, you get muted).

Depending on your resolution, you may want to downscale (that is, set your recording resolution to lower than your desktop resolution. Instead of 1920x1080 for example you might opt for 1280x720)

https://i.imgur.com/tiIHu9I.png

Make sure your broadcast settings are file output only

https://i.imgur.com/3Zxf32c.png

You'll have to mess with your encoder settings to get performance/quality ratio you like (DO NOT use the ones I have below ;) )

https://i.imgur.com/GciZtSX.png

I'm recording almost 1:1 quality there, so don't use those. Drop the vid and audio bitrates to about half of what I have there (I wouldn't go below 128 on audio), and toy with the buffer and video bitrates until you get an acceptable performance/quality recording.

Under 'Scenes' in the main window, you're going to want 'Monitor Capture'. Otherwise you're not going to capture audio and video from all sources. You have to use this since none of the programs run in exclusive fullscreen.

https://i.imgur.com/n9TiTL7.png

Try that and let me know if it works for you.

Alternatively for audio, when I'm doing Youtube tutorial vids and the like, I actually use Audacity to capture audio and then mix it with the recorded vid later.

EDIT:

As per Ken L's comment above, if you're pushing two monitors on a laptop with integrated graphics, I'd give up on trying to record. The laptop simply will not have the horsepower to do it.

For reference, I couldn't get acceptable streaming/quality broadcasting from OBS on my desktop with a GTX 780ti, which, at the time, was the third or fourth most powerful GPU on the market. I get fine quality out of Shadowplay using the NVEC codec but you have to have a dedicated nVidia GPU to do it.

[kalmarjan]

Awesome! Thank you for the write up. I have a tower that runs Ubuntu that could connect to the laptop for streaming purposes...but it's also a duo core with a dedicated nvidia card...but I haven't started it in over a year.

OBS will work on Ubuntu?

[kalnaren]

Awesome! Thank you for the write up. I have a tower that runs Ubuntu that could connect to the laptop for streaming purposes...but it's also a duo core with a dedicated nvidia card...but I haven't started it in over a year.

OBS will work on Ubuntu?

I'm not sure what you're getting at there? If you're running FG on the laptop, you need to stream from the laptop. You can't run the laptop off the dedicated GPU in the desktop.

[Ken L]

OBS will work on Ubuntu?

Perhaps pending your hardware/setup, but you'll need a new tower based on the CPU alone as video encoding is still primarily a cpu intensive labor. Your GPU will likely needed to be upgraded to handle the buffering for streaming.

[kalmarjan]

I'm not sure what you're getting at there? If you're running FG on the laptop, you need to stream from the laptop. You can't run the laptop off the dedicated GPU in the desktop.
I can run Fantasy Grounds in Demo mode and record that though, right? Join the game on local host and stream or record that one.

[kalmarjan]

Hmm...something to work towards then.

For right now, what's the best setup with what I have?

To be clear, I have:

Acer Aspire E1-522

And

HP a6030n with 8 gigs ram and geForce GT 610 (the Ubuntu desktop)

[taoistpunk]

If you have a dedicated nVidia GPU you can use Shadowplay. That's what I've used for FG.

What issues did you have with OBS? I've successfully streamed with it, though I was rather disappointed in the quality.

Trying to use shadowplay but it keeps alerting me that my game (FG) is not full screen, which it is,but it's not being detected by FG...

any ideas? thanks

[kalnaren]

Trying to use shadowplay but it keeps alerting me that my game (FG) is not full screen, which it is,but it's not being detected by FG...

any ideas? thanks

FG doesn't run in exclusive fullscreen. You have to set Shadowplay for monitor capture.

[Halaku]

I can run Fantasy Grounds in Demo mode and record that though, right? Join the game on local host and stream or record that one.
Yes you could set the desktop as basically another player with no character, have it join the teamspeak server without a mic and record/stream from the tower.
it could even be an advantage as it wouldn't show any GM eyes only content.
It is more things to manage tho.