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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?
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?
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.
> 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!
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.
> 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
I only use OBS too. :3c
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
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
I just uploaded a video that was H.265 using the amd encoder in OBS. youtube had no issues with it
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..
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.
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
Fuck Millennials...
Damn straight. Wannabe vlogger can't even be bothered to watch the "How to vlog" vlog, and expects free answers from slashdot.
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
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.
200 down, 10 up
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
1080 HD looks like shit on YouTube. My monitor is a cheap TCL 49" 4K TV--it looks/works great. When I watch video I always look for 4k since the 1080 stuff looks like shit on my monitor. I suspect a lot of other people are in the same boat which is why I want to record and play back in 60fps 4k. 1080 is dead or dying quick.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
I have everything turned up to 11.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
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
1080 HD looks like shit on YouTube. My monitor is a cheap TCL 49" 4K TV--it looks/works great. When I watch video I always look for 4k since the 1080 stuff looks like shit on my monitor. I suspect a lot of other people are in the same boat which is why I want to record and play back in 60fps 4k. 1080 is dead or dying quick.
You need a gigabit upload link. Pony up the dollars if you want to upload 12 GB any faster.
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...
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"
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!
Yeah, the original submission fascinates me. He's worried about 4K content at 60fps but he's using a 1060? Drop resolution to 1080p, turn on all the graphics to make it much prettier and his videos will be much nicer to watch and also much quicker to upload.