Tommy Seal's guide to streaming

Capture card experience:

Dazzle DVC 100
Hauppauge HD PVR
Black Magic Intensity Pro
Streaming directly with a capture card to flash media encoder(Dazzle DVC 100, Bl
ack Magic Intensity Pro):
Resolution:
Available resolution depends on the capture card you are using. If you using bla
ck magic
intensity pro With a fast PC (i5 or better) I would recommend to select an input
of 1280x720 and output
of 630x354 (jtv box size). Always keep "keep aspect ratio" checked. You can also
experiment using
higher resolution such as 800x450 or 960x540 as output, or maybe even 1280x720.
But the higher
the resolution the more upload speed you will need to keep the quality up.
With the dazzle it's quite simple I suggest keeping your input and output resolu
tion the
exact same. if you cant handle 640x480 then go for 320x240 on both.
FPS:
Frames per second. For this I would recommend anything from 24 to 30(for dazzle)
however the black magic
intensity pro will lock itself on 59,94 fps. An alternative is to view the previ
ew and
capture the video off your desktop but I will adress that later on. Anyway using
it directly
will mean you will need a significant amount of upload speed to keep the quality
high
(at least 2000 kbps for decent quality at 630x354 resolution)
Also another way to lower the framerate is to convert the HD input to SD, but th
is means you
will be streaming interlaced video at a different aspect ratio (the video will b
e in a wrong
aspect ratio and even using fme's deinterlace won't make it look as good as HD's
progressive)
Audio:
The first most obvious way to stream audio with the BMIP is to just select deckl
ink audio
in fme. However this wont allow you to mix in a microphone. If you wish to do so
there's
several ways to do this. If you have a stereo mixer on your pc(check your audio
devices
right click to show disabled devices to make sure if you have it) you can plug i
n the
component audio cables into a standard jack converter into your microphone or li
ne in
(preferably line-in cause if you use the microphone port you will probably have
lower
quality audio and you will need a usb microphone to be able to use a mic) If you
do not
have a stereo mixer you can use software called Virtual Audio Cable to mix your
game
and microphone. Finally when properly configured you have to select your stereo
mix or virtual
audio cable in FME. Best audio quality settings is pretty much always 44100 hert
z at 96-128 kbps.
If you do notice it isn't enough you could raise the bitrate but it seems 128 sh
ould be
more than enough.

Streaming from your desktop(Hauppauge HD PVR, Black Magic Intensity Pro, anythin
g else):
Resolution:
For this I recommend free software called VH screen capture driver. You should g
et it with
VH toolkit so it does not have a watermark. Ignore the other software that comes
with it and
a program named vh multicam should pop up when you start using VH scr capture, g
o through the
menu to find an option called something like stop open annoying mixer. Either wa
y that should
stop it from starting up.The way I do it is just uncheck every option on the 2nd
tab then on
the 1st tab selectwhat you want to stream. This is where it gets tricky. To do t
his properly you
are gonna want to select one of the available options VH scr cap has in FME(inpu
t resolution). for
instance one being 640x480. Let's say the window you want to capture is 512x448.
Drag around
the window untill you have selected 640x480. Then close VH and start up FME. Che
ck
the box that says "output preview". (the fme window might be covering what you w
ant to
stream if so you will have to move things around try never to move the window yo
u want to
stream though). Then check the box somewhere at the bottom left that says "crop"
. then
accordingly crop (remove) pixels on the top/bottom/left/right. Now you should ha
ve captured
640x480 with VH also selected input resolution on fme 640x480. But you have crop
ped off
32 pixels in height and 128 in width in this case(because the actual video is 51
2x448).
Therefore select output resolotion of 512x448. If you do not have a lot of uploa
d speed you
can also select something lower than 512x448 just keep "keep aspect ratio" check
ed and enter
a number instaid of 512 (like 400) and the second number will adjust accordingly
.
FPS:
You can input your own FPS in vh screen capture however whatever you select in f
me will
change whats in VH (even if you closed vh it still changes it and it basically s
till runs)
The benefit of using this software is that you will always be able to select you
r own
framerate. 24 or 25 fps looks pretty smooth and is in my opinion the most desire
d amount.
You could also go for 29,97 / 30 fps but I suggest not going higher than that. R
emember
just as resolution the higher the framerate the more upload speed you will need
to keep the
quality up.
Audio:
The way to stream audio on your PC is to also use a stereo mixer or virtual audi
o cable.
If you use virtual audio cable you are probably gonna have to select "Virtual Au
dio Cable 1"
as default device. If you are watching a preview from your console using softwar
e that came
with hauppauge or black magic IP you should hear the audio as well. Set virtual
audio cable 1
as your default device and you should hear it no longer, then select it in fme a
s audio input
people on the stream will hear it but you wont. Which is ok because you should a
lso have the
capture card connected to your tv where you will hear the sound from. Then you c
an also go
to your audio device settings and right click properties on your microphone then
listen to this device
into virtual audio cable 1(or stereo mix)