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Ask Slashdot: How Do You Stream/Capture Video?
datavirtue writes: I am starting to look at capturing and streaming video, specifically video games in 4K at 60 frames per second. I have a Windows 10 box with a 6GB GTX 1060 GPU and a modern AMD octa-core CPU recording with Nvidia ShadowPlay. This works flawlessly, even in 4K at 60 fps. ShadowPlay produces MP4 files which play nice locally but seem to take a long time to upload to YouTube -- a 15-minute 4K 60fps video took almost three hours. Which tools are you fellow Slashdotters using to create, edit, and upload video in the most efficient manner?
There is no contest. All of the other recorders incur a significant performance hit. With ShadowPlay I might get a 1% performance hit because it uses the hardware encoding on the GPU which is otherwise not being used.
In fact, I never turn ShadowPlay off. That way if I'm playing a game and something cool happens, I can hit a key and save the last 20 minutes.
OBS Studio
You realize that 4k at 60fps is equivalent to 8 1080P HD streams?
Itâ(TM)s going to take a while to upload.
Though mainly a streamer myself, I've done some recording in the past. I've got a setup fairly close to yours, though my 1060 is a 3GB. Using OBS (Open Broadcaster Software - https://obsproject.com/) I've simultaneously streamed (720p @ 60FPS) while recording (1080p @ 60FPS). You can record in multiple formats, though while recording as MP4 you may end up losing video if OBS crashes. I've done recording both with NVENC as well as x264, both while streaming with little issue.
There's a bunch to your "simple" question. :-) Starting from the end of your post: your uploads are taking so long because of the fill size. If you're recording 4K/60 and you haven't changed any of the default ShadowPlay settings, you're likely recording at 50Mbit/sec. A 15 minute 50Mbit/sec file, even a compressed MP4, is gonna be a bit large. There's no way around that. And you *want* that bitrate given the 4K resolution that you're recording; lowering that will make your raw recordings lose some details.
If you're happy with ShadowPlay, keep using it. The "accepted" software solution that most use is OBS Studio, and it has access to the same NVENC encoder that ShadowPlay uses. But it's vastly more configurable and way more flexible. ShadowPlay is literally made so that anyone can fire it up, hit a button, and go. OBS takes a bit of tinkering with at first, just to get everything configured the way you want it. But once you learn how flexible it is, you'll never go back. It'll produce the same h.264 files ShadowPlay can with the same "no load on the system". IOW: it won't affect your gaming.
This is a YOOOGE topic, however. And it can go in so many different directions depending on what your final goal is. Some folks record and stream using a single PC. Others (such as myself) record one one machine and stream with another. There's lots of flexibility available with this, it just depends on what you're after, what you're willing to run, and how much money you're willing to spend.
Jason Van Patten
Super 8 cine camera on a tripod.
Agreed on all points. If you're happy with your current workflow then look at getting faster internet, mainly your upload speed.
Your video files are likely huge, so it's no surprise it takes a while to upload to youtube.
What games are you playing that you're able to get 60fps at 4k with a single gtx1060?
" look at getting faster internet, mainly your upload speed."
HAH. good luck on that one if you are not in area that provides symmetrical internet connections.
A 15-minute, 4K 60-fps video sounds like a huge thing to upload, especially if Youtube will be doing some post-processing on it.
"a 15-minute 4K 60fps video took almost three hours."
How big is the file?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I have tried so many shitty screen recorders during the last decade and once I found OBS I have never had any reason to change.
Configurable, can both stream and record, hardware accelerated, can record multiple video and audio devices at the same time.
It fills all my use cases and is fast and easy to use, I don't see a reason to use anything else.
> HAH. good luck on that one if you are not in area that provides symmetrical internet connections.
Well, like it or not, Malenx's post is on point. Sure, it may not be easy to "get better Internet", and that's fair. But ultimately, to upload a video file to YouTube in less time, you either need:
1. Faster upload speeds
2. To reduce the resolution/size of your files.
Our OP seems intent on 4K/60, which requires a *LOT* of bits to deliver clean and clear video. That's gonna make the file sizes quite large, thereby eliminating choice #2.
Jason Van Patten
Brag time. Moved to a house in the âburbs that has fiber optic to the house. 750Mbps down, 800 up (sustained). Itâ(TM)s glorious, and costs exactly $85/mo. Midwest living, yo!
Depends on you upload connection speed, the amount of compression used.
I use OBS which works great.
I'm recording massively large video clips that no one will watch and it takes forever to upload them to YouTube. I have a 50Mb/s upload speed and can't figure out why this 60 gig file takes three hours. Pleas help me do math.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
If you have a 50 Mbps upload service, and if Youtube server is absorbing it at that full speed, you are looking at 208000 seconds, or 2.4 solar days. You say it takes three hours. That works out to a compression ratio of 20.
Looks like it is not reasonable to expect anything faster, at this resolution and frame rate.
Lots of people don't realize how quickly numbers grow when you chain multiplications. "Four trace widths, three trace gaps, four via diameters, six frequencies, 8 excitations... OK your parametric sweep will run 2304 simulations, each needing half a TB of memory and 2 days of run time".
Or my users asking for 100 micron resolution mesh on a model that is a couple of meters across. "User specified a 8 trillion element mesh. No wonder mesh maker ran for 8 hours and ran out of memory. Not a defect" is the resolution.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It bears noting that #1 doesn't necessarily mean buying better internet access at home. The file could always be transferred to a removable drive and then take that to somewhere with a better upload connection.
The iconograph is the only way to go. The black and white imps are cheaper, but if you can afford color .. go for it.
It may be worth getting commercial account. They often have symmetrical speeds and no data caps.
...and videos helped to capture ME, you insensitive clod!
> It may be worth getting commercial account. They often have symmetrical speeds and no data caps.
That depends entirely on where the OP lives and what ISP(s) (s)he has access to. If in the US and the only choice is one of the major MSOs, then, for the time being, it'll be asymmetrical.
Jason Van Patten
Taking a different point of view: I think for streaming services they recommend 15 Mbps for 4k @ 30Hz and 30 Mbps for 4k @ 60Hz (in terms of internet bandwidth for their customers). So if you wanted to stream a video from, say, Netflix and stream it to another computer (somewhere on the internet), you would need an upload speed of 15 Mbps or 30 Mbps. If you match 30 Mbps, then the time it takes to upload/stream the video will be the length of the video. If you happen to have 60 Mbps upload speed, then the time to upload a 4k @ 60Hz video will be the video's length cut in half. So a 1 hour video would take 30 minutes to upload. And you can keep going from there: 120 Mbps in 15 minutes, 240 Mbps in 7.5 minutes, etc.
The problem, though, is that most ISPs offer far less in upload speeds than download speeds. Based on the OP, and assuming 50 Mbps for a 15 minute video, that's ~45 Gigabits. If it took 3 hours to upload, your upload speed was ~4Mbps. With an upload speed like that, I wouldn't really be surprised if OP has 20, 50, 100, or even 300 Mbps download. ISPs provide far less in upload speeds than download by default. So even if you're paying $$$ for their Premium Turbo ExXxtreme internet service, you might not have much in upload speeds.
If you want to reduce upload times, then what you need is to get a higher upload rate. If these 4k videos are part of your livelihood then you might want to call your ISP to see if they can increase your upload bandwidth. And to state the obvious: if you want to stream something that's recording at 50 Mbps, you need at least 50 Mbps for your upload speed, and you'd likely need even more to have a stable connection.
OBS has shit performance. Everything looks stuttery where Shadowplay is flawless.
I only use OBS too. :3c
Like any normal person I just tell my manservant to do it.
While I don't do streaming, I do occasionally record this or that happening on my machine and OBS is great for that. I also happen to use NVENC as the encoder -- while NVENC didn't produce terribly good quality on my GTX660 when I had one, it now does a very acceptable job of it with Pascal - cards -- since it doesn't use a lot of resources. ShadowPlay? No, that shit sucks in comparison, especially since you have to install and use NVIDIA's spyware - application, the Geforce Experience, for it.
or straight ffmpeg for a more low-level/ghetto feel(*).
Regarding the upload:
- Keep in mind that Google will recompress each uploaded video using its whole range of supported codec and varied screen resolution.
(Even if you upload a good H264, it will also generate lower bitrate H264, VP9, Theora, H263, soon AV1 too, etc. Same goes with audio: AAC, OPUS, Vorbis, MPEG Audio Layer, etc.)
- Thus even if you have a ginormous internet connection with massive bandwidth, the recompression *will* take time even if the file transfer itself finishes quickly. You'll have to wait anyway until the various versions become available.
OBS/ffmpeg/ShadowPlay won't change much to that part.
---
(*) actually, it's not only for the lulz / ghetto feel. We're a bioinformatics lab, most of the people here around are more used to run command-line pipeline on the CLI. ffmpeg actualy *does* make sense to them.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
That's a local configuration issue, not something wrong w/OBS. Check your settings.
Jason Van Patten
It is not too much data; like ArchieBunker posted above; simply too much math; at least, OP doesn't sound like he wants us to do his school project, or save the bales, or something like that.
OBS also has the option to record and stream in H265. Makes the file a Lil bit smaller. Haven't played with 4k yet though
The problem is: YouTube can't ingest h.265 files, so our OP would still need to transcode it to h.264. Last I checked, YT had no intentions of adopting h.265 as an allowed ingest, either, as it's insanely computationally expensive to de-encode.
Jason Van Patten
It even works on future games that use DRM to prevent recording!
Wrong. Every single OBS and Shadowplay side by side comparison proves that OBS hits the CPU where Shadowplay does not. You can ask anyone who is familiar with both and they will all tell you the same.
Or you can load up a CPU bound game and see for yourself.
ShadowPlay does not affect CPU performance even while extending its support to higher framerates. On the other side OBS causes great effect on CPU performance even while working on limited frame rates.
https://filmora.wondershare.com/screen-recorder/obs-vs-shadowplay-which-is-better-for-gameplay.html
OBS is definitely more choppy for me. Shadowplay is better for recording
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdAtuMlv-7Y
Shadowplay defiantly wins with just recording
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYXl8FQHdCY
I just uploaded a video that was H.265 using the amd encoder in OBS. youtube had no issues with it
Of course it can. Why would you even think it can't?
Please try Handbrake: https://handbrake.fr/ it's freeware Not sure, if it fits all your needs but I use it a lot to convert my movie files to a format which my TV likes..
Are we really using Ask Slashdot for simple to find answers?
Open Broadcaster Software (OBS). Free, works great. Supports local file capture and online streaming. Extremely configurable but easy to get up and running.
I am a little curious about the licensing. It looks like OBS was forked into OBS Studio? Or was this a rewrite? And if so, what is the currently supported one and what is the license?
These articles and youtube videos were created by folks that literally have no no idea what they're talking about. Set OBS to NVENC. Crank the bitrate to 50Mbit/sec just like ShadowPlay uses for its default. Go.
Zero load on the CPU and zero FPS hit. Full stop.
And yes, I've spent considerable time using both. ShadowPlay is a very useful app for folks who don't want or need the flexibility that OBS offers. OBS, on the other hand, is a "cake and eat it too" app. But you need to put in some configuration effort.
Or, you can ignorantly quote folks who have no idea what they're talking about and carry on using ShadowPlay. It makes no difference to me. :-)
Jason Van Patten
Cool! That's a relatively new thing for them, then. Good to know!
Jason Van Patten
I use OBS and Blender for making work videos. The workflow is not efficient, but the quality is good. I suspect the failure is my own ineptitude and not the fault of the tools.
Is your ego so big you need to upload 4K videos of yourself playing video games? What can't people get from a Full HD video? This is is half sarcasm, half serious question, since I have never watched such videos (and doubt I ever will, there's much better content out there).
I use Handbrake for those things which uses the ffmpeg libraries. Never used ShadowPlay but ffmpeg generally compresses much more than anything I've seen before.
For recording, I would use an external HDMI encoder, you can stream it into a separate machine to stream composed video out with OBS Studio, you don't need anything fancy in regards video cards, I've seen it used on a Core i7 rig with a relatively cheap video card.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Maybe this will help you: https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/game-capture-4k60pro
Fuck Millennials...
Damn straight. Wannabe vlogger can't even be bothered to watch the "How to vlog" vlog, and expects free answers from slashdot.
I had this problem too. The solution was to enable V.44 compression rather than the standard V.42bis on my modem.
I'm capturing on my 486/SX (DOS 6.22). Make sure your modem is a US Robotics, can't skimp on the hardware!
News that matters?
I still capture RAW video with UT Video and do my compression afterwards. I only capture brief 10-15 minute gameplay clips of boss encounters while raiding and only up to 2560x1440 60fps so that still works for me.
I've never liked capturing with these hardware assisted Mpeg4 codecs because they all do chroma subsampling and I hate losing that data. I want my archived videos to be perfect and not look like youtube garbage.
I'm not a lawyer, but recording gameplay is a DMCA smackdown waiting to happen.
The one thing I have to add there is that ShadowPlay doesn't incur a roundtrip through the CPU if you use it directly in GeForce Experience, hence why it can capture video even when the frames drop.
If you make OBS capture the game, it goes through the CPU first for mixing/scaling and then goes through the nVidia encoder and then has to come back through the CPU again to be written to disk. So to use OBS in any capacity requires two "free" CPU cores, where as Shadowplay doesn't use anything.
You're trying to put up videos in quality that rivals major motion picture quality, they use freakin super-computers, they upload through multiple fiber lines bridged. I know a guy that worked on the movie 'The Equalizer", his job was to edit the character, Robert McCall's wristwatch and the blood splatter. You can't match that kind of staffing levels and equipment.
The Big-time youtubers have dedicated editors, camera operaters and directors working on sets specifically designed for video production. The staff is professionally trained at places like Specs Howard and Columbia school of Broadcast arts.
If you upload a 4K, 60fps video to youtube, they're just going to compress the shit out of it anyways
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
He forget to say he only play chess..
Yeah. I was just thinking there might be another format I should target or convert to before attempting the upload. On top of uploading, YouTube has to process the videos and I was also thinking that step could possibly be reduced or eliminated if targeting a specific format/encoding. I maxed out the bitrate on ShadowPlay but the resulting file for a 4k 60fps video was only 12GB. Took a while to upload and process initially and took many more hours before the 4K version was available.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
I can poke around the library for hours or get set straight in a few minutes by someone who knows what the fuck they are doing. Who knew such vitriol would be unleashed by asking a question. My ID number precludes millennial you dumb cunt--unless they were on slashdot instead of riding their tricycle.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
I made a script that uses FFMPEG called "StreamPi" to make it easier to stream for people that can't run OBS Studio because of the OpenGL requirements. https://www.bitchute.com/video....
Only an idiot goes after free advertising.
Nah. It helps them. When you show noobs how to play their game they are less likely to run away crying. Witnessing the success of Creimer on YouTube, I had to get in on the action.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Plus, after the upload is complete, YouTube will be spending LOTS of cycles to transcode that video into all the various formats and scales they support. Just because the upload is done, doesn't mean the video itself is available until they've created all the sets of video files they need to support all the devices in the universe.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Last I knew, YT transcodes everything to webm, though that may have changed since I checked. So unless you're sending them a webm file (which will bring your PC to its knees to create), you're still going to have to wait for YT to transcode.
Jason Van Patten
This will be helpful but I used to stream from home. I used OBS studio to stream a 24/7 bot playing Df. It was fine in the beginning but this year my ISP comcast started implementing data caps. I would have switched but right now there is no other option I can take. The upload actually could test towards my data. I tried to move to occasional streaming but I had to decide on whether my uploading stuff that would eat my data was worth it considering I only had a handful of viewers. I killed my stream for a bit but fortunately got someone to host it elsewhere.
Moral of the story is be conscious of changing rules governing your net usage. If you want to stream from a home connection check on any data caps or other dumb things ISPs do like throttling. Adjust your stream rates accordingly and consider how often you will do it. This especially if you are using your connection for other things. It can get pricy nowadays to try to do things on the net, especially if you aren't a wealthy person.
Then why didn't you do the basic research? You are the typical Luser. Instead of helping themselves they expect others to hand feed them the answers.
Also, your reply makes no sense. So you don't want to use google and search thru a couple of pages for the answers. But you'd rather ask the question on slashdot and search thru a couple pages to find your answer.
Hint: if you did the basic research required, you wouldn't have had to ask this question. There are thousands of guides and how tos on how to set this shut up. What you are doing isn't new and is in fact a solved problem.
TLDR: stop being a lazy fuck and google for the god damn answer.
Shut up; I don't want to hear it. My options are wireless carrier, satellite, or the local fixed-wireless vendor that uses the neighbor's grain tower, which is what I chose. I get a decently reliable 12Mbps down and 1.5Mbps or so up. And I only pay $125 for up to 60GB/month (plus my left arm if I go over that).
On the plus side, semi-rural life is nice, and I've got nearly 3 acres backing up to a stream. I'm not staring at another house when I look out the back window or sit on the deck. All that's missing is the mountain view...
In that case, then send truckload of tapes to YouTube HQ, it will be much faster than your Internet connection.
That NN supporting paper insulated network is good for gif and jpeg.
Buy a better pipe to the internet with a real ISP.
Have a seperate CPU and GPU to encode the stream in real time.
Get the result of that encoding to upload within the new network limitations.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
> It may be worth getting commercial account. They often have symmetrical speeds and no data caps.
That depends entirely on where the OP lives and what ISP(s) (s)he has access to. If in the US and the only choice is one of the major MSOs, then, for the time being, it'll be asymmetrical.
There are a few exceptions: Where I live, AT&T residential gigabit service is symmetric where it's actually available. Sonic.net offers unlimited symmetric gigabit for $50 in the SF Bay Area. Verizon FIOS is symmetric at the sub-gigabit speeds they sell. Business fiber is obviously also available at symmetric rates.
On the other hand, Comcast's (DOCSIS) cable 1 gigabit service has a 35 Mbps specced upload for now. Their $300 2 gigabit fiber service is symmetric.
Serious question: why do you want to stream gameplay for others to just watch? Why don't they play the game instead of just watch? My students are frequently just watching a video of someone playing a game. Not doing class work, not playing the game, just sitting there doing nothing while watching someone else play. I don't get it.
Can you recommend a motherboard to buy that supports alot of gpus for streaming and mining?
No, you literally don't have a clue what you are talking about. OBS is objectively worse than Shadowplay in every comparison and that has been demonstrated.
You talk and talk but provide no proof, little boy.
Use OBS. It's Free and open source, easy to use and full of features. I've seen other people post videos that were recorded using Nvidia Shadowplay. You know how I could tell? Because there were fucking popups all the time showing it!
> "ShadowPlay produces MP4 files which play nice locally but seem to take a long time to upload to YouTube"
Yeah, because ShadowPlay limits the upload bandwidth.
Simply go to the folder and upload the video using your browser instead.
ShadowPlay desperately needs 3 things to make it more useful:
* The ability to control the bandwidth utilisation.
* The ability to edit and save instead of only edit and immediately upload
* The ability to cancel an upload.
It's been like that for years.
He is right. You are recording something that isn't CPU-bound. Try recording with both OBS and ShadowPlay doing PS3 emulation and see how it goes. For me OBS kills around 13 FPS while ShadowPlay kills maybe 3 FPS.