What software do you use for Twitch game streaming?

Cromulent

Cromulent

Cromulent

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I'm thinking about trying to do a game stream (just to see how well it works really and whether anyone is interested in watching it) and was wondering what software you guys used to broadcast the game?

The Twitch website seems to recommend Xsplit Broadcaster which looks OK and has a nice free option but it looks a little complex for my needs. All I really need is to be able to stream my game at 1080p at 30fps with audio recorded from the game and my headset and maybe a video of me in the corner from my cheap webcam.

Are there any other software recommendations or should I just stick with Xsplit Broadcaster?
 
I use OBS - Open Broadcaster Software.

Streaming to Twitch your maximum bitrate is 3500kb/s unless you are a partner. And even at 3500 I think viewers are likely to get loading/freezing during watching your stream.

720P@30FPS@3000kb/s is what I use.

Depends on the game of course. An RTS where lots of the screen doesn't change would be fine at 1080P with lower bitrates. Fast paced twitchy FPS games would need more bitrate.

You could try streaming to the new YouTube service. Can use higher bitrates and your stream is transcoded into many quality levels. Only partner channels on Twitch get that.
 
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Fanatic said:
I use OBS - Open Broadcaster Software.

Streaming to Twitch your maximum bitrate is 3500kb/s unless you are a partner. And even at 3500 I think viewers are likely to get loading/freezing during watching your stream.

720P@30FPS@3000kb/s is what I use.

Depends on the game of course. An RTS where lots of the screen doesn't change would be fine at 1080P with lower bitrates. Fast paced twitchy FPS games would need more bitrate.

You could try streaming to the new YouTube service. Can use higher bitrates and your stream is transcoded into many quality levels. Only partner channels on Twitch get that.
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Awesome. Thanks for the tips.

I'm actually planning on only streaming RTS games (I've pretty much ditched the PC for gaming apart from strategy games which don't really work on consoles) so I might be able to get away with the lower bit rate settings as you suggest. I didn't realise Twitch placed so many constraints on your streaming, that kinda sucks.

I did consider YouTube Gaming but thought I'd go with Twitch instead. If as you say YouTube Gaming is much better than Twitch then I might change my mind. I have quite a fast upload rate on my internet connection (10Mbps) so should be able to stream at reasonable quality.

I'm doing this as an experiment to see how well it works. If it works out well I might do it more often.
 
I use OBS for my streaming.

Very easy to use and add things liek overlays etc :)

Youtube gaming at the minute seem's a little new for the market - I like the Idea, but it's chat is very buggy and it needs work to be as polished as Twitch is from a viewer perspective. yes it has better encoding to allow more viewers to watch in terms of internet performance.

I'm toying with the idea of simulcasting on both - if it's possiable.....
 
Using Xsplit for my son's youtube gaming site but not used for streaming.
However I did find XSplit easier than OBS so horses for courses :)

I thought it was easy to set up a nice screen side by side so one showed my son's webcam whilst the other showed the game he was playing.
Thinking about paying monthly to get a better resolution.
 
I use OBS, but only for gamdev rather than gaming. Pretty straightforward to setup and show webcam overlay etc, although the interface is a bit clunky.
 
I too found XSplit Broadcaster simpler than OBS.
There's also XSplit Gamecaster which is even simpler. Without paying I think you can only do 720p or 1080p with a watermark, but if all you want to do is stream then you can't get much simpler.

Also has an inbuilt feature where you can show Twitch chat in an overlay. Also enables microphone and webcam.

The big difference, other than the simplicity, is that it doesn't require a second screen. There are a few bits that you can overlay onto your game screen but it's quite unobtrusive.
 
I've used OBS but also tried using Nvidia Shadowplay, options are limited with it I think 720p @ 60fps is the highest and then you have an adjustable bitrate. You can add a camera but placement is limited to one of the corners of your screen. It's basic but it does the job.
 
Thanks for the advice everyone.

I'll try both OBS and Xsplit and see which one is best. Unfortunately I don't think Nvidia Shadowplay is an option for me (even though it sounds like exactly what I want) since I have AMD GPUs. I guess Shadowplay requires an Nvidia GPU. Oh well maybe when I upgrade my computer.

I think I'll have to stick to Twitch for the time being since it is the most popular game streaming service and everyone know what its about.

I guess if I do start doing this I'll have to upgrade my headset and web cam to something reasonable. At the moment I spent £20 on the headset and £15 on the web cam so they are all pretty cheap.

I'm quite looking forward to this actually. I've wanted to stream strategy games for ages but haven't had the chance to get round to it until now.
 
Spuddy said:
what sort of budget do you have in mind for a new microphone?
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I wouldn't buy a separate microphone, I'd look for a new headset. But at a guess (and I haven't really worked out my finance yet) it'd be less than £100. It would have to be USB so I could use it on the PS4 as well.

Of course this depends on whether I can get some listeners to join when I'm getting everything set up. If no one joins I won't really bother with spending any more money.
 
Twirlywoos said:
Shadowplay

I'll watch your stream but depends on 2 things

1) what games you play?
2) are you from Newcastle?
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Haha.

1) Strategy games like Empire: Total War, Shogun 2: Total War, Rome: Total War (the original one), Hearts of Iron 3 and Supreme Commander probably to start off with. Maybe a few RPGs if the fancy takes me.

2) No I'm from the South East :).
 
The hardware encoders (Nvidia NVENC and AMD VCE) have much worse quality compared to X.264 software encoding at the same bitrates. There will be a lot more pixelation on moving scenes. Good for local recording at really high bitrates, but not very good for streaming. Intel QuickSync is a better hardware encoder, but still not quite as good as software X.264, I found it wasn't very stable though.
 
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