36: The Frankencoder Liiiiiiives

00:00SPEAKERI'm feeling a little insecure about my grind, man.

00:03SPEAKER- What are you grinding?

00:05SPEAKERYou got like blade grinder, you got like burr grinder,

00:10SPEAKERyou got like a mortar and pestle, you got a mill,

00:13SPEAKERwhat are you doing?

00:14SPEAKER- Do people really use mortar and pestle to make coffee?

00:16SPEAKER- God, I hope not, but I'm sure some asshole is.

00:19SPEAKERActually, if you make Turkish coffee or,

00:25SPEAKERlet's see, there's other places they do that too,

00:27SPEAKERwhere you grind the coffee incredibly fine,

00:29SPEAKERoften you do that in a mortar and pestle.

00:31SPEAKER- Wow, that's intense.

00:32SPEAKERWe've got the OXO burr grinder,

00:35SPEAKERthe wire cutter recommended.

00:36SPEAKERI know it's not some fancy Italian brand,

00:38SPEAKERbut it seems to get the job done.

00:40SPEAKER- Well, so the secret on burr grinders

00:42SPEAKERis that you don't need,

00:44SPEAKERlike the fact that it is a burr grinder

00:45SPEAKERis the important thing.

00:46SPEAKERFor a really, really long time,

00:48SPEAKERmy burr grinder was, I think, a Betty Crocker,

00:52SPEAKERor it was like a grocery store brand burr grinder

00:55SPEAKERthat you could get for like $35 in 1995.

00:59SPEAKERAnd I used that thing until the motor died.

01:05SPEAKERThe quality of the grinder matters a ton

01:07SPEAKERif you're doing espresso,

01:09SPEAKER'cause you want an even distribution of ground sizes.

01:11SPEAKER- Yeah, very, very consistent granule size, right?

01:15SPEAKERBut okay, that makes me feel a little bit better.

01:17SPEAKER- Yeah, the mere act of burr grinding is enough.

01:19SPEAKER- Before this, we had a $30 Capresso,

01:22SPEAKERwhich we only stopped using

01:24SPEAKERbecause it was super loud and made a big mess.

01:26SPEAKERBut it's less about the consistency of the grind,

01:30SPEAKERand oh man, you're using that crate mug that Fitz gave you.

01:32SPEAKERI think it's awesome.

01:34SPEAKEROh, so we're doing drip, but it's like a nice drip.

01:36SPEAKERIt's a Bonavita, I believe.

01:39SPEAKER- Oh yeah, those are great.

01:40SPEAKER- It's like a pretty good percolator, I guess, but-

01:43SPEAKER- Well, it's not a percolator.

01:43SPEAKERIt's just a dripper, yeah.

01:45SPEAKERA percolator is a whole different thing.

01:46SPEAKERA percolator heats the water up

01:47SPEAKERand it bubbles up from the bottom.

01:48SPEAKER- Well, I guess a percolator is a different, right, right.

01:51SPEAKERBut it is percolating, right?

01:53SPEAKERLike isn't that-

01:54SPEAKER- I don't, huh, I don't know if it percolating

01:57SPEAKERthe act of moving water through sediment.

01:59SPEAKERI think it might be.

01:59SPEAKER- That's what the coffee scientist man on YouTube said.

02:02SPEAKERSo I'm gonna go with it.

02:03SPEAKER- Okay, well, to me, a percolator is that

02:06SPEAKERchrome stacking thing that plugs into the wall

02:08SPEAKERand you put the coffee basket in the top

02:10SPEAKERand then it boils up through the bottom

02:11SPEAKERand it makes horrible coffee.

02:13SPEAKER- A percolator is a specific term for a device,

02:15SPEAKERbut percolating is-

02:17SPEAKER- Yes, I think you're correct.

02:18SPEAKER- I'll run it by the coffee advisory board

02:19SPEAKERand get back to you.

02:20SPEAKER- Look, we're the experts here, goddammit.

02:22SPEAKER(upbeat music)

02:52SPEAKER(upbeat music)

02:54SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.

02:56SPEAKERI'm Will.

02:57SPEAKER- Brad, we're doing it again.

02:58SPEAKERWe said we were never gonna do

02:59SPEAKERanother early morning recording and yet here we are.

03:02SPEAKER- I like early morning podcasts.

03:03SPEAKER- I don't mind it, it's just that when I hear it back,

03:05SPEAKERI'm like, man, that sounds like a couple of sleepy heads

03:07SPEAKERjust rolled out of bed.

03:09SPEAKER- You know what we don't do anymore

03:11SPEAKERis we don't explain what the show is anymore up front.

03:13SPEAKERWe, you know, that was the thing we did that we were like,

03:14SPEAKERthis is the internet's number one podcast

03:16SPEAKERabout a single topic technology topic every week.

03:19SPEAKER- It's because we've reached every person

03:21SPEAKERon planet earth now, there's nobody out there

03:23SPEAKERwho doesn't know what this podcast is

03:24SPEAKER'cause they're all listening to it.

03:26SPEAKER- We only got a hundred thousandth of 1% of people

03:29SPEAKERto sign up for the Patreon, I'm really disappointed.

03:31SPEAKER- It's pretty bad conversion rate.

03:33SPEAKER- Yeah, if we had 7 billion reach and we only got like,

03:36SPEAKERI mean, I'm really happy with the number of people we have,

03:38SPEAKERbut if we got 7 billion potential listeners out there,

03:41SPEAKERwe've reached all of them,

03:42SPEAKERbut like we maybe need to rethink things, Brad.

03:45SPEAKER- We've got pretty bad ARPU around here.

03:49SPEAKER- What are we gonna talk about this week?

03:51SPEAKERWhat's on the agenda?

03:53SPEAKER- We're talking about streaming video on the internet

03:56SPEAKERfrom your home, which is all I do these days.

03:59SPEAKERIt turns out. - You are a pro streamer,

04:01SPEAKERit turns out. - I guess so.

04:02SPEAKER- Yeah, me too.

04:03SPEAKER- I have a friend who is a very successful

04:06SPEAKERlike full-time streamer who reached out to me at one point

04:09SPEAKERin the last few weeks and just said like,

04:11SPEAKERit's like I'm really getting a kick out of watching you guys

04:13SPEAKERhaving to become streamers from home, like really fast.

04:18SPEAKER- So you're not all the way down the Twitch,

04:22SPEAKERlike, hey, thanks for following XYZ 69, 420.

04:26SPEAKER- But we're not quite liking subscribe just yet.

04:29SPEAKER- Well, but I was watching a former,

04:32SPEAKERan unnamed former Giant Bomb team member the other day

04:35SPEAKERwho has been doing some Twitch streaming

04:37SPEAKERand it was fun watching him,

04:40SPEAKERlike he was actively talking about like adjusting

04:43SPEAKERto the norms of the platform and talking to chat

04:46SPEAKERand things like that, that kind of like,

04:48SPEAKERyour traditional gaming site doesn't do while you're doing,

04:50SPEAKERlike if you're doing a live recording of Giant Bomb,

04:53SPEAKERyou're maybe watching chat, but you're not like.

04:55SPEAKER- Oh, we definitely don't watch that.

04:56SPEAKER- Having a conversation with the.

04:57SPEAKER- Sometimes we'll have like one person on a laptop,

04:59SPEAKERbut like. - Yeah.

05:00SPEAKER- By and large, it's a bad idea to see

05:02SPEAKERwhat people are saying about you while you're doing it.

05:05SPEAKER- It depends on the size of your community, but yeah.

05:08SPEAKER- Sure, sure.

05:10SPEAKER- But yeah, so this week we're gonna talk about,

05:12SPEAKERA, a little bit about how to get started streaming,

05:14SPEAKERsome more advanced streaming stuff,

05:15SPEAKERlike how to do a two stream setup.

05:17SPEAKERAnd then we're gonna get into this crazy project

05:19SPEAKERthat you've been working on.

05:20SPEAKER- Oh my God, man. - The Frank encoder.

05:21SPEAKER- Holy crap, I just, I came up with that name

05:23SPEAKERas we, I was writing the show notes here

05:25SPEAKERand it's pretty apt, I think,

05:26SPEAKER'cause it's basically assembling an encoding pipeline

05:29SPEAKERout of the body parts of various cadavers.

05:33SPEAKER- Yeah, that sounds right.

05:34SPEAKERJust dig up those old open source projects

05:36SPEAKERand glue them all together.

05:37SPEAKER- That is like quite literally what I am trying to do.

05:40SPEAKERI've had a lot of time while I was convalescing

05:43SPEAKERand couldn't really talk into microphones much.

05:46SPEAKER- So you're trying to get the heavy lifting

05:49SPEAKERof the OBS encode process to run on your FreeNAS box,

05:56SPEAKER'cause everything comes back to NASs here.

05:58SPEAKER- Absolutely, well, in my case,

06:00SPEAKERI just don't have room for another computer.

06:01SPEAKERYou know, like you could just get a second Windows machine

06:03SPEAKERand this would be easy peasy, but where am I gonna put it?

06:06SPEAKERWho's got the space?

06:07SPEAKER- Well, that's what I did.

06:09SPEAKERAnd like the pros are really good,

06:11SPEAKERmeaning that like I don't have a lot of latency on input

06:13SPEAKERand stuff like that that you get when you use OBS

06:15SPEAKERon the same machine, but I generate twice as much heat

06:19SPEAKERwhen I'm in here streaming.

06:20SPEAKERAnd like, we live in a place

06:21SPEAKERwhere we don't have air conditioning in our houses.

06:23SPEAKERSo at the end of a four or five hour stream,

06:25SPEAKERif I have the door shut,

06:26SPEAKERit gets to be 90 or 95 degrees in here.

06:28SPEAKER- It gets pretty toasty around here, yes.

06:30SPEAKER- Yeah, it's just on a...

06:32SPEAKER- Your setup, there's some stuff I'm envious about

06:33SPEAKERwith your setup.

06:34SPEAKERIt's got some pros and cons of its own.

06:36SPEAKERAnyway, we'll get there.

06:36SPEAKER- Yeah, let's, so, okay, so start with services,

06:40SPEAKER'cause like, you're not gonna,

06:41SPEAKERas much as we like rolling our own stuff,

06:43SPEAKERI'm not gonna roll my own streaming service.

06:45SPEAKER- Yet. - 2020.

06:46SPEAKER- I don't know, man, I'm pretty close to being able

06:49SPEAKERto do the restream.io thing from here, but...

06:52SPEAKER- But then you're still using restream

06:53SPEAKERto stream to the other stream.

06:54SPEAKERLike I want you to set it good.

06:56SPEAKER- I'm saying doing what restream does,

06:58SPEAKERbut without using restream.

06:59SPEAKER- Can you RTMP that to the clients though, man?

07:02SPEAKERCan you get it straight to the people?

07:04SPEAKER- Oh, you mean every single person out there?

07:06SPEAKER- Yeah. - All at once?

07:07SPEAKER- Perhaps. - That's running

07:08SPEAKERyour own streaming service.

07:08SPEAKER- Yeah, you're right.

07:09SPEAKER- That's what grad dot is.

07:10SPEAKER- Yeah, so this is a weird one in terms of figuring out

07:13SPEAKERhow to balance like what, how much should we talk

07:16SPEAKERstreaming one-on-one versus how much should we really

07:18SPEAKERget into the weeds on a lot of this stuff, so.

07:21SPEAKER- I assume if people are listening to this,

07:22SPEAKERthey know about Twitch and they know about YouTube

07:24SPEAKERand they know about Facebook.

07:25SPEAKER- Probably. - And they know

07:26SPEAKERabout Mixer, Microsoft's entry into the Uber.

07:30SPEAKERThey probably don't know about stuff like Caffeine.

07:32SPEAKER- I've never heard of Caffeine.

07:34SPEAKER- Oh, so Caffeine is like, Caffeine looked at like

07:38SPEAKERwhat streaming looks like and was like,

07:40SPEAKERwhat if we made this service actually work

07:43SPEAKERfor the way people stream?

07:44SPEAKERSo like you can stream different RTMP or RTC feeds

07:48SPEAKERof your camera and your gameplay and other things

07:52SPEAKERso that people can like control the size of the windows

07:54SPEAKERand things like that.

07:55SPEAKER- We're talking Caffeine.tv apparently.

07:57SPEAKER- I believe it's Caffeine.tv.

07:58SPEAKER- Are you telling you Drake is on Caffeine apparently?

08:02SPEAKER- Drake, Drake is, I don't know if you're aware,

08:05SPEAKERbut Drake is a streaming juggernaut.

08:07SPEAKER- Oh wow. - Post-Fortnite.

08:10SPEAKERAnd I believe he took a fat check, as they say,

08:14SPEAKERfrom the Caffeine.tv people to slap his name on there.

08:17SPEAKER- I see.

08:19SPEAKERSo we're using Twitch mostly right now.

08:22SPEAKER- That seems to be where the gamers are.

08:23SPEAKER- Twitch seems to be the de facto thing.

08:26SPEAKERI don't know that, does YouTube gaming even still exist?

08:28SPEAKER- YouTube gaming is still a quite large thing.

08:32SPEAKER- Okay.

08:32SPEAKER- Facebook has spent a lot of money getting people

08:35SPEAKERto come over and stream games on Facebook

08:36SPEAKERso that like 12 people can watch them.

08:38SPEAKER- Yes.

08:39SPEAKERI think Mixer is pretty cool.

08:41SPEAKER- Mixer's neat.

08:42SPEAKERI think the early benefits of Mixer,

08:45SPEAKERmeaning like the low latency and stuff,

08:48SPEAKERis mostly available to people who stream on Twitch now.

08:51SPEAKER- Yeah, it's not the same exact tech though, right?

08:54SPEAKERLike Mixer, they have their own protocol, I found,

08:57SPEAKERas I've been digging around, putting stuff together.

08:59SPEAKER- Yeah, their FTL thing was done

09:02SPEAKERbefore the RTC stuff was done, I think.

09:04SPEAKERI find to be a fairly cheeky name for protocol.

09:08SPEAKER- The point is, if you wanna stream games

09:11SPEAKERor if like your kid is like,

09:12SPEAKER"Hey dad, I wanna stream Fortnite."

09:14SPEAKERThere's no, like pick the, like none of the,

09:18SPEAKERlike just get on the surface if the kid wants to be on it.

09:21SPEAKERLike if you are trying to do a stream,

09:23SPEAKERif you wanna do like a stream of you making stuff,

09:25SPEAKERlook at where people watch that kind of thing

09:27SPEAKERand then put your stream there.

09:28SPEAKER- Yeah, that's the important thing.

09:29SPEAKER- That's on YouTube or Twitch or Mixer.

09:30SPEAKER- Like other than Mixer and it sounds like Caffeine,

09:33SPEAKERthey're all kind of the same, right?

09:35SPEAKERLike those two have some sort of unique tech features,

09:38SPEAKERbut other than that, they're all kind of the same thing.

09:41SPEAKER- The neat thing about all of this is that,

09:43SPEAKERA, like it's the stuff that you would have needed

09:46SPEAKERto do a local access TV station without the radios

09:50SPEAKERand you don't have to figure out any of the hard stuff.

09:51SPEAKERYou just have to figure out how to make the video

09:53SPEAKERcome out of your computer and go to their server

09:55SPEAKERand then they distribute it out to everybody else.

09:57SPEAKER- How would one do that, Will?

10:00SPEAKER- Well, you need some special software, Brad.

10:01SPEAKER- That's funny you asked.

10:04SPEAKERThere is, of course, built-in streaming software

10:07SPEAKERin pretty much every gaming tool on Windows now.

10:12SPEAKERThe NVIDIA control, GeForce Experience involves,

10:14SPEAKERincludes streaming stuff.

10:16SPEAKERThe Microsoft Game Bar includes streaming stuff.

10:19SPEAKER- Can the Game Bar stream now?

10:21SPEAKER- So look, there are 50 apps on my machine

10:24SPEAKERcalled Xbox right now for reasons

10:26SPEAKERthat I don't need to explain.

10:27SPEAKER- Dude, there are so many.

10:29SPEAKER- One of them will stream.

10:30SPEAKER- Oh, man. - Probably just a mixer now,

10:32SPEAKERbut maybe Twitch, I don't know.

10:33SPEAKER- I didn't know, the Game Bar's gotten kind of good,

10:36SPEAKERactually, in the last like six months or something.

10:39SPEAKER- I haven't had Game Bar, like Game Bar is disabled

10:42SPEAKERis the first thing I do on a new PC.

10:44SPEAKER- I used to do that too, but it's actually got some,

10:45SPEAKERit's got some nice convenience controls in it, but anyway.

10:51SPEAKER- That stuff is good.

10:52SPEAKERThe stuff that's built into the PS4 and Xbox

10:53SPEAKERworks to get your video out there.

10:55SPEAKEROnce you reach a point where like people are paying money

10:58SPEAKERto watch your channel, which happens on different platforms

11:01SPEAKERin different ways, but basically,

11:02SPEAKERusually you have to follow some sort of process,

11:05SPEAKERget a certain number of viewers,

11:06SPEAKERstream a certain number of days,

11:07SPEAKERstream for a certain number of total hours,

11:09SPEAKERand then they'll say, hey, we would like to make this

11:12SPEAKERa formal business relationship with you, customer.

11:16SPEAKERAnd once you reach that point,

11:18SPEAKERyou wanna probably think about switching

11:21SPEAKERto a more PC-based streaming setup,

11:24SPEAKERlike OBS, the Open Broadcasting System, or SLOBS,

11:28SPEAKERwhich is short for Streamlabs OBS, which is a fork.

11:32SPEAKER- A fork of, yeah, 'cause OBS is open source, so.

11:34SPEAKER- OBS is open source.

11:35SPEAKER- Anybody could make their own OBS if they wanted.

11:39SPEAKER- There are other commercial tools like XSplit and vMix.

11:42SPEAKERI don't think we need to get into either,

11:43SPEAKERlike vMix basically lets you turn a PC

11:46SPEAKERwith some capture cards and some dedicated hardware

11:47SPEAKERinto like a-- - Like a TriCaster.

11:49SPEAKER- TriCaster style mixer box.

11:52SPEAKER- It's getting into professional video production territory

11:54SPEAKERand is priced to match.

11:56SPEAKER- Yeah.

11:57SPEAKER- Well, that's not true, actually,

11:58SPEAKERbecause like professional stuff,

11:59SPEAKERwe're talking five figures easily

12:01SPEAKERfor various software packages and hardware devices.

12:06SPEAKERBut vMix is like a few hundred tool.

12:09SPEAKERI think the most expensive license is like 1200

12:12SPEAKERor something like that.

12:13SPEAKER- Yeah, and it comes with like,

12:16SPEAKERa lot of people have bought vMix in the last three months

12:18SPEAKERbecause they're using it like NBC and places like that

12:22SPEAKERare using tools like vMix to route Skype calls

12:25SPEAKERand things like that into their production pipeline.

12:28SPEAKER- I would love to give it a shot,

12:29SPEAKERbut I don't think it's in our budget at the moment.

12:31SPEAKER- There's a free version.

12:33SPEAKER- Well, I believe it's a trial.

12:35SPEAKERI think they have a 90 day trial with all features enabled,

12:37SPEAKERbut like I can't get up to speed on something

12:39SPEAKERand integrate it into my pipeline and then not--

12:42SPEAKER- And then be like, look at $1200

12:45SPEAKERto keep using the thing that you now love, yeah.

12:47SPEAKER- Right, unless we decide that's something we really need.

12:50SPEAKER- XSplit is still in use.

12:52SPEAKER- And it's good, but like the thing that's happened

12:55SPEAKERis what usually happens when there's multiple

12:57SPEAKERopen source competitors, which is like the functionality

13:01SPEAKERyou get from the open source competitors

13:03SPEAKERis really, really good.

13:05SPEAKER- OBS has gotten quite good

13:07SPEAKERdespite certain like limitations and quirks, yeah.

13:09SPEAKERSo it's like, I don't know what the pricing is

13:11SPEAKERon XSplit at this point.

13:13SPEAKER- Well, and the thing about slobs especially,

13:16SPEAKERso we usually when people ask for like,

13:17SPEAKERhey, what should I use to stream?

13:19SPEAKERSlob smooths off a lot of the rough edges

13:21SPEAKERbut also, yeah.

13:23SPEAKER- I still use stock OBS.

13:24SPEAKERI've never tried the Streamlabs one.

13:26SPEAKER- So the things that Streamlabs add are the things

13:28SPEAKERthat you probably don't care about as much at Giant Bomb.

13:30SPEAKERSo like there's templates for things like stream overlays.

13:35SPEAKERSo the things that let you let, like the thing,

13:37SPEAKERyou know how when you're watching a Twitch stream

13:39SPEAKERand somebody gives them money and it's like,

13:41SPEAKERhey, Bob just gave you 600 bits

13:43SPEAKERand it pops up a thing on the screen, plays some music.

13:45SPEAKERLike that does a lot of that stuff for you

13:48SPEAKERwithout having to do a lot of work.

13:49SPEAKER- I think I'm good on that.

13:50SPEAKER- I know you don't like that stuff, Brad.

13:51SPEAKER- It's okay, you're old.

13:52SPEAKER- Yes.

13:55SPEAKER- The let's see.

13:58SPEAKER- So does that cover the software pretty well?

14:00SPEAKERI mean, people will have a pretty good sense

14:01SPEAKERof how that stuff works.

14:02SPEAKERLike you've got, at least in the OBS model,

14:05SPEAKERyou've got scenes, which is sort of a collection

14:07SPEAKERof everything you're gonna put on the screen

14:09SPEAKERall in one place.

14:10SPEAKERAnd then within that. - Yeah, so you have sources

14:12SPEAKERand scenes.

14:13SPEAKER- Sources are like different video feeds

14:14SPEAKERthat you're bringing in.

14:16SPEAKERYou might be cropping them or resizing them

14:18SPEAKERand moving them around the screen in certain arrangements.

14:20SPEAKER- If you make like a 2D frame for your video,

14:23SPEAKERso like you want to put a little frame

14:24SPEAKERaround your camera box, stuff like that,

14:26SPEAKERthat's gonna happen in, that's gonna be a source in OBS.

14:29SPEAKER- You can do like transition effects, you know,

14:31SPEAKERfades and dissolves and like I said, it's the same thing.

14:34SPEAKERCuts, you know, custom, you can use like custom,

14:37SPEAKERlittle custom videos, like stingers and bumpers

14:39SPEAKERto do transitions, stuff like that.

14:40SPEAKER- So the thing to remember is that a source

14:42SPEAKERis an individual component, whether it's a camera

14:45SPEAKERor a UI element or the overlays or microphone input

14:49SPEAKERor something like that or like a pre-roll video.

14:51SPEAKER- Or like a music play, they've actually,

14:53SPEAKERit's been a couple, three years since I did a lot

14:55SPEAKERof streaming from home until all this started

14:56SPEAKERand they've added a ton of different options

14:58SPEAKERfor new things you can bring in.

15:00SPEAKERLike you can feed a VLC playlist in as a source now

15:04SPEAKERand just like play music in the background

15:06SPEAKERwithout having to like capture an application or something.

15:09SPEAKER- That's how I do the pre-roll on my stream.

15:10SPEAKERSo I have like a folder on my hard drive with clips

15:13SPEAKERthat are interesting and I have a VLC source

15:15SPEAKERthat is just like play random videos from this folder

15:18SPEAKERand it, yeah, it does the thing you want.

15:21SPEAKERThe thing to know is that there's a,

15:25SPEAKERso sources and scenes, scenes are collections of sources

15:28SPEAKERand for example, you would use those if you have like,

15:31SPEAKERlike when I'm doing a building project

15:32SPEAKERand I wanna have cameras on my cutting mat,

15:34SPEAKERI have one source for that, sorry, one scene for that

15:37SPEAKERand then I have a scene for sitting

15:38SPEAKERin front of the computer playing games

15:39SPEAKERand I have a scene for sitting from the computer

15:40SPEAKERnot playing games and I have scenes

15:42SPEAKERfor like before the show starts, right?

15:44SPEAKERSo like all that stuff is pre-setup

15:47SPEAKERand you don't have to manually configure it

15:48SPEAKEReach time you start the stream.

15:49SPEAKERAnd you can set up a ton of hotkeys that are global

15:51SPEAKERso you don't even have to be in the application.

15:53SPEAKERYou can just hit your kind of four key combo

15:55SPEAKERto switch to whatever scene.

15:56SPEAKER- That's it, or you can use something like a stream deck

15:59SPEAKERto automate all that stuff so you just hit a button

16:00SPEAKERand it switches the scenes for you,

16:02SPEAKERwhich I highly recommend it.

16:05SPEAKERThe codecs, like-- - Oh boy.

16:07SPEAKERNow we're getting into it.

16:09SPEAKER- So yeah, codecs mean, you know,

16:13SPEAKERthe both converting up and down.

16:17SPEAKER- Go ahead.

16:17SPEAKERLike the thing that everybody's using is H.264

16:19SPEAKER'cause there's not HEVC or H.265 hardware acceleration

16:23SPEAKERfor a lot of people, right?

16:25SPEAKER- Yeah, you're still gonna melt a lot of devices

16:27SPEAKERtrying to play that back, right?

16:28SPEAKERIt's a lot more efficient.

16:29SPEAKERYou're gonna get better-- - Well, trying to encode it

16:31SPEAKERtoo is the big problem.

16:32SPEAKER- Yeah, so it's more CPU overhead, right, to encode or no?

16:37SPEAKERI'm not clear on that.

16:38SPEAKERI know decoding it takes more CPU.

16:40SPEAKER- H.265 is a lot more CPU to encode in my experience.

16:45SPEAKER- Well, I guess that partially depends

16:46SPEAKERon what kind of hardware acceleration you're working with,

16:48SPEAKERbut that's really getting into the weeds.

16:50SPEAKERAnyway, H.264 is like what, who knows,

16:53SPEAKER10, 12, 15-year-old codec at this point?

16:56SPEAKERIt's been around for a while.

16:57SPEAKER- It started with Blu-ray,

16:58SPEAKERis when it started going mainstream.

16:59SPEAKER- Oh yeah, so God, Blu-ray is--

17:01SPEAKER- 2007 or 2008 or something?

17:04SPEAKER- Six. - 2005?

17:05SPEAKER- Five, six.

17:06SPEAKER- Yeah, when did the Xbox 360 come out?

17:08SPEAKER- Well, the PS3 came out in '06,

17:11SPEAKERand that's, and Blu-ray was on the market then, so.

17:13SPEAKER- Yeah, so anyway, it's kind of an old codec at this point,

17:16SPEAKERbut it's still like the one

17:17SPEAKERthat is the most widely supported,

17:19SPEAKERso that's what everybody uses.

17:21SPEAKER- Yeah, and basically, so there's, when you're streaming,

17:26SPEAKERthere's a, everybody's like, I wanna do 1080p60,

17:28SPEAKERand that's great, 1080p60's terrific.

17:31SPEAKERThis is a conversation we had at Whiskey a lot

17:33SPEAKERin the early days.

17:34SPEAKERWay more important than the resolution you stream at

17:36SPEAKERis the bandwidth, is the bit rate.

17:38SPEAKER- Bit rate, yeah.

17:39SPEAKER- So you wanna stream at the highest bit rate

17:41SPEAKERthat your service allows.

17:42SPEAKERI think the cap for Twitch is like six or 8,000 bits

17:46SPEAKERper second. - It's, I believe it's six

17:48SPEAKERfor just a generic channel that you go make right now,

17:50SPEAKERand I think it goes up to eight when you're partnered,

17:54SPEAKERif I'm not mistaken, that's what I've been told.

17:56SPEAKER- I'm gonna look that up,

17:57SPEAKER'cause I need to turn my bit rate up,

17:59SPEAKERif that's the case, I didn't realize that.

18:00SPEAKER(laughing)

18:01SPEAKER- That is, I'm pretty sure that,

18:03SPEAKERI mean, I've been testing that,

18:04SPEAKERthat it will accept eight

18:05SPEAKERon our partner Jenna Bomb Channel.

18:07SPEAKER- Oh, so Twitch is weird,

18:11SPEAKERbecause they will, they limit your ability to transcode

18:15SPEAKERif you go above the maximum rate.

18:18SPEAKER- So I tried sending 1080p 60 at 10 megabits the other day,

18:21SPEAKERjust to see what it would do, and it accepted it,

18:23SPEAKERbut it would only output at 720.

18:26SPEAKER- Yeah, and the problem is a lot of people will then,

18:28SPEAKERlike if you're on phones or have shitty connections,

18:30SPEAKERthey'll only get the 12,000,

18:32SPEAKERwhatever the bit rate you send is,

18:34SPEAKER'cause it won't run it through their stuff.

18:41SPEAKER- Other big choice, especially if you're streaming on one PC

18:44SPEAKERis whether you use one of the hardware-accelerated codecs.

18:47SPEAKERIntel's Quick Sync, NVNC is the Nvidia version,

18:51SPEAKERI can't remember what AMD's is called.

18:52SPEAKER- Yeah, AMD has a name for theirs,

18:55SPEAKERit's apparently absolutely terrible.

18:57SPEAKER- Yeah.

18:58SPEAKER- I've got a, if people really care about this stuff,

18:59SPEAKERI've got a great YouTube video

19:01SPEAKERthat I picked up off of our Discord.

19:02SPEAKEROoh, thanks to Chapel for providing that,

19:05SPEAKERbut it is the most exhaustive analysis

19:08SPEAKERthat you could possibly imagine

19:09SPEAKERfor the relative qualities of different encoders out there.

19:12SPEAKER- What's the TLDR, what if I don't wanna watch the video?

19:14SPEAKER- The TLDR is that NVENC, the Nvidia encoder

19:18SPEAKERon the Turing cards, which are the RCX cards,

19:20SPEAKERobliterates everything else out there

19:22SPEAKERin terms of quality at a given bit rate.

19:24SPEAKER- And performance.

19:26SPEAKER- I guess performance too,

19:27SPEAKERjust because those cards are so fast.

19:29SPEAKERNVENC on the previous Nvidia cards is actually not terrible.

19:32SPEAKERI was under the impression it was pretty bad,

19:34SPEAKERbut it seems fairly competitive with x264,

19:36SPEAKERwhich is the generic stock CPU encoder.

19:40SPEAKER- So NVENC on the previous cards was fine for streaming

19:45SPEAKERand bad for archival stuff.

19:46SPEAKERSo like if you were trying to munch Blu-rays down

19:49SPEAKERfrom Blu-ray bit rate to like a more web bit rate,

19:52SPEAKERyou didn't wanna use NVENC

19:53SPEAKER'cause you would get a lot of weird noise.

19:55SPEAKER- The one upshot of this video I watched

19:57SPEAKERis that all these encoders are basically fine

19:59SPEAKERat a high enough bit rate.

20:01SPEAKERLike if- - Yeah, oh yeah, yeah.

20:02SPEAKER- Like well over 10, they're all pretty much the same,

20:06SPEAKERbut you're not gonna push that out

20:07SPEAKERto a streaming service, obviously.

20:08SPEAKERWhat is quick sync?

20:09SPEAKERIs that something that works on Intel CPUs?

20:11SPEAKER- Quick sync is built into pretty much every Intel CPU

20:15SPEAKERthat I think for a while you had to have HD,

20:18SPEAKERyou know how sometimes Intel CPUs

20:19SPEAKERdon't have graphics integrated?

20:21SPEAKER- Yeah, oh sure, yeah.

20:22SPEAKER- So I think you had to have the GPU for a long time,

20:24SPEAKERbut I don't even know if that's the case.

20:26SPEAKERI don't think they make CPUs without the graphics anymore,

20:29SPEAKEReven if they don't expose it on the motherboard.

20:31SPEAKER- So if you're CPU encoding, meaning x264,

20:35SPEAKERis there any reason you shouldn't use quick sync instead?

20:38SPEAKER'Cause you're already using your CPU anyway?

20:40SPEAKER- No, so those are two different things.

20:41SPEAKEROne is using this math, doing like the x264 math

20:44SPEAKERon the CPU, one is using their,

20:46SPEAKERone is essentially Intel's version of NVENC.

20:48SPEAKER- Right, that's what I mean.

20:49SPEAKERSo is there a reason not to just use that one?

20:51SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause the quality's bad.

20:52SPEAKER- Oh, it's not as good as x264?

20:54SPEAKER- So until the NVENC 2.0 came out,

20:57SPEAKERthe common wisdom was use H.264

21:01SPEAKERif you have enough CPU cycles to do it,

21:03SPEAKERwhich means probably a two PC setup

21:05SPEAKERif you're playing games at the same time,

21:06SPEAKER'cause games tend to eat a lot of CPU,

21:09SPEAKERand the x264 encoder will eat every cycle you have.

21:14SPEAKER- Yeah, so it's tricky.

21:15SPEAKERI mean, I'm trying not to get ahead of myself here

21:18SPEAKERwith this crazy project I'm working on,

21:19SPEAKERbut like figuring out whether to encode on the CPU

21:23SPEAKERor the graphics card in my machine is really tricky

21:25SPEAKERbecause the overhead on the CPU is way worse, right?

21:28SPEAKERLike it takes relative like percentage.

21:31SPEAKERIt takes way more--

21:32SPEAKER- It takes lower cores, no problem.

21:33SPEAKEREven like very fast and a low bit rate, yeah.

21:35SPEAKER- Whereas like the load on the graphics card

21:37SPEAKERis only like 12, 15% tops for the most part.

21:40SPEAKER- And it's a part of the GPU that doesn't get used

21:42SPEAKERwhile you're playing games probably.

21:44SPEAKER- Oh, is that the case?

21:45SPEAKER- Uh-huh, it's a dedicated hardware encoder.

21:47SPEAKER- Okay, so I've been told that,

21:48SPEAKERbut then I looked up some benchmarks out there

21:50SPEAKERwhere a bunch of people were like,

21:51SPEAKERhere's how the frame rate suffers

21:52SPEAKERwhen you've got NVENC turned on,

21:53SPEAKERso it seems like there's a lot of disagreement

21:55SPEAKERabout that stuff.

21:55SPEAKER- So the thing that's suffering

21:57SPEAKERis probably about memory bandwidth and PCI,

22:00SPEAKERlike there's probably, there's a bottle,

22:03SPEAKERso I'm sure somebody will correct me if I'm wrong on this,

22:05SPEAKERbut my understanding is that the performance impact

22:09SPEAKERof NVENC is probably because of bottlenecks

22:13SPEAKERbeing triggered elsewhere.

22:14SPEAKERSo like there's bandwidth between PCI Express

22:17SPEAKERor GPU memory or something like that,

22:19SPEAKERbut it's not actually actively using part of the GPU core.

22:21SPEAKER- That is what I have been told by people who know,

22:23SPEAKERbut then like I said, those benchmarks are out there.

22:25SPEAKERAnd like the generic tools in Windows

22:27SPEAKERfor tracking GPU usage, like task manager,

22:29SPEAKERjust gives a flat percentage, so it's really hard to tell.

22:32SPEAKERSo I guess it sounds like what you're saying

22:33SPEAKERis use the NVENC if you have it, if you can.

22:36SPEAKER- Especially if you have an RTX card,

22:38SPEAKERdefinitely use the NVENC.

22:38SPEAKER- Oh, absolutely, that goes without saying,

22:39SPEAKERbut I'm on a 1080, so it's a little fuzzier.

22:42SPEAKER- I would say if you're on a one PC streaming setup,

22:45SPEAKERuse the NVENC or Quicksync, either one,

22:48SPEAKERif you have both available, but NVENC is preferred.

22:52SPEAKERAnd then if you want high quality

22:56SPEAKERat the lowest possible bit rate, X264 gives you

23:00SPEAKERa ton of settings, like the part of the problem

23:02SPEAKERwith the early NVENC, and I haven't spent enough time

23:04SPEAKERwith the new NVENC yet, 'cause I only have a RTX card

23:06SPEAKERin my gaming PC, not in my streaming PC,

23:09SPEAKERis that you didn't have a lot of settings

23:11SPEAKERover like profile and flags and stuff like that,

23:15SPEAKERlike you do with X264 encodes.

23:17SPEAKER- Presets and tuning and all that stuff.

23:19SPEAKER- Yeah, like NVENC, the pre-RTX version is basically like,

23:24SPEAKERI think it's very fast, the very fast preset

23:27SPEAKERand baseline profile, not even main profile,

23:30SPEAKERI can't remember.

23:32SPEAKERBut if you're just starting out streaming,

23:35SPEAKERyou don't need to know that stuff,

23:36SPEAKERjust set the encoder and OBS or slobs to NVIDIA,

23:40SPEAKERand you'll be fine. - Yeah, like I said,

23:41SPEAKERwe're really getting into the weeds on this stuff,

23:42SPEAKERbut the basic, I mean, I think OBS even labeled it

23:45SPEAKERlike simple settings and advanced settings,

23:47SPEAKERand if you stick to simple, it is literally like two buttons

23:50SPEAKERor something, it's like pick your service,

23:52SPEAKERgive them your stream key or just log into their service,

23:54SPEAKERhit stream, you're done.

23:56SPEAKER- So the one exception to all of this

24:00SPEAKERis if you're doing something,

24:01SPEAKERlike if you're doing a crafting channel

24:03SPEAKERthat you're not playing games

24:04SPEAKERand you're not hitting CPU really hard on your computer,

24:06SPEAKERprobably do the X264 encode,

24:09SPEAKER'cause you'll get better quality and better results

24:10SPEAKERat the lower bit rates that the streaming services use.

24:14SPEAKER- Yeah, it definitely depends on what you're doing.

24:16SPEAKERLike games obviously place the greatest load

24:18SPEAKERon the machine that you're also streaming from,

24:20SPEAKERso that's where it gets tricky,

24:21SPEAKERbut yeah, you should just use the high quality CPU stuff

24:24SPEAKERif you're streaming your desktop or something like that.

24:26SPEAKER- Welcome to my software compiler stream.

24:28SPEAKERHere we compile software.

24:29SPEAKER- Dude, I quite literally, it never quite came to pass,

24:34SPEAKERbut I literally made a chat in our CMS backend

24:36SPEAKERcalled Brad compiles a new FFmpeg.

24:39SPEAKERI was just gonna stream that window

24:41SPEAKERfor the half hour that it took to build that thing.

24:44SPEAKER- I would watch that, that sounds great.

24:46SPEAKER- I was just gonna play some music

24:48SPEAKERand let this terminal window go.

24:49SPEAKERYou know what, capturing a terminal window

24:50SPEAKERand getting it looking nice is harder than you think.

24:53SPEAKER- You have to get the aspect ratio on that window.

24:55SPEAKER- Getting the aspect where I had to like stretch it

24:57SPEAKERacross two monitors and it was taller than the monitor,

24:59SPEAKERso I had to push it down a little bit

25:00SPEAKERto get it to fit 1080 nicely

25:03SPEAKERand have the text be legible, that's tough.

25:05SPEAKER- So we've talked about what goes into the stream.

25:09SPEAKERHow does it get there, Brad?

25:11SPEAKER- Well, Will, I'm glad you asked.

25:14SPEAKERYou're basically, you're taking the video

25:15SPEAKERthat you're encoding and bundling it up

25:17SPEAKERin a protocol, protocol, protocol?

25:20SPEAKER- Protocol is the son of Kyle,

25:24SPEAKERit turns out, the early version of Kyle.

25:26SPEAKER- Protocol is what shuttles it off to the server.

25:30SPEAKERSo you're basically wrapping your video

25:31SPEAKERin some kind of internet wrapper

25:33SPEAKERand turning it into packets and sending it off to server.

25:36SPEAKER- Like my name is Will and I'm here to say,

25:39SPEAKERget this video in an unusual way.

25:43SPEAKER- Well, RTMP is not unusual, that's what everybody uses.

25:47SPEAKER- What does RTMP stand for?

25:49SPEAKERReal time messaging protocol, I believe.

25:52SPEAKER- Wow, look, I was gonna say, yeah, I got nothing better.

25:56SPEAKER- I have been spending some time

25:57SPEAKERon some white papers recently.

25:59SPEAKER- Oh, wow.

26:00SPEAKER- Also, as a nerdy 15 year old,

26:04SPEAKERI used to love memorizing computer acronyms

26:06SPEAKERand it never quite went away.

26:08SPEAKER- You know, that was, yeah, yes, I can agree with you.

26:14SPEAKER- Yes, I'm with you, it's like the fetish

26:17SPEAKERfor weird operating systems, knowing what protocols mean

26:20SPEAKERis just, I told you for a certain type of nerd.

26:24SPEAKER- Like I went to the screwdriver shop and got a copy.

26:27SPEAKERI'd bought a couple of copies of boot magazine,

26:30SPEAKERbut the one that got me was the one that was like,

26:33SPEAKERhere are six alternative operating systems.

26:35SPEAKERAnd it was like, Bios, next, makes you feel BSD.

26:41SPEAKERAnd yeah, when you're a teenage loser in the 90s,

26:45SPEAKERit makes you feel special.

26:46SPEAKERIt makes you feel like you're in the know.

26:47SPEAKER- It's amazing that I run two of those OSs

26:51SPEAKERin the house on the reg now, 20 years later, to me.

26:56SPEAKERYes, anyway, okay.

26:57SPEAKERSo RTMP--

26:58SPEAKER- Let me tell you about

26:59SPEAKERmy complimentary metal oxide semiconductor.

27:01SPEAKERAll right, excuse me.

27:04SPEAKERYeah, so RTMP is the protocol

27:06SPEAKERthat I guess everybody uses, right?

27:07SPEAKERIt's definitely what Twitch wants you to send in

27:09SPEAKERand I assume YouTube and Facebook are the same.

27:12SPEAKERI don't know if you know,

27:14SPEAKER'cause I haven't streamed--

27:16SPEAKER- I haven't used any of the,

27:17SPEAKERI just, I literally,

27:18SPEAKERmy experience with the protocols for this

27:20SPEAKERis that I type my stuff into the Twitch, into the OBS.

27:24SPEAKERAnd then I don't have to think about it ever.

27:26SPEAKER- We should say again, right now,

27:28SPEAKERlike you will not have to worry about any of this

27:29SPEAKERif you're not a giant nerd who wants to dig into how it works

27:32SPEAKERand like customize stuff.

27:34SPEAKER'Cause stuff like OBS just handles it for you.

27:38SPEAKERBut yeah, RTMP is like an older protocol.

27:39SPEAKERIt's been around for a while.

27:40SPEAKERLike I think it was made by Adobe, but that's fine.

27:43SPEAKERThat's what the Twitches of the world

27:45SPEAKERwant you to send your stuff in, package it in.

27:49SPEAKER- Yeah.

27:50SPEAKER- My understanding is it adds quite a bit of latency,

27:52SPEAKERlike on the order of several seconds,

27:54SPEAKERlike five seconds or something.

27:56SPEAKERAnd latency seems like a thing that the streaming world

27:58SPEAKERis starting to really turn its attention to.

28:01SPEAKER- I mean, when you're just broadcasting gameplay

28:05SPEAKERfrom like a tournament, it doesn't matter.

28:07SPEAKERLatency doesn't matter.

28:08SPEAKERAnd maybe it's actually good to have more latency, right?

28:10SPEAKERLike when you play competitively online, even at home,

28:14SPEAKERyou add latency to your stream

28:15SPEAKERso that people can't screen peek you over the internet

28:18SPEAKERand see where you are and use that information.

28:20SPEAKERBut like when you're talking to chat

28:22SPEAKERor you're playing like a Jackbox,

28:23SPEAKERlike I was playing Jackbox games last night

28:26SPEAKERon a stream with some other people.

28:27SPEAKERAnd the latency even that we got from Skype

28:30SPEAKERwas such that it made like getting those prompts

28:33SPEAKERin a little bit hard sometimes.

28:35SPEAKER- Latency makes Jackbox games almost unworkable.

28:40SPEAKERThere are ways to play Jackbox games with your friends,

28:42SPEAKERlike Discord's built-in streaming thing

28:44SPEAKERis low latency enough that they work really well.

28:45SPEAKER- Yeah, specifically the problem we would run into

28:47SPEAKERis turning on like the audience mode

28:48SPEAKER'cause there are ways that audience members

28:50SPEAKERcan play a lot of those Jackbox games.

28:52SPEAKERAnd we were, you know, we would be onto the next round

28:55SPEAKERwhile people were still seeing the prompt

28:57SPEAKERfor the previous round and stuff like that.

28:58SPEAKERIt became a problem there.

29:00SPEAKERBut yeah, talking to chat is the big one for me for latency

29:03SPEAKERis you just wanna be able to like verbally

29:05SPEAKERanswer people's questions as close to

29:07SPEAKERwhen they ask them as possible.

29:09SPEAKER- Well, and it's funny like two or three seconds

29:11SPEAKERreally doesn't matter,

29:12SPEAKERbut 20 or 15 or 20 totally jacks up

29:14SPEAKERthe way the flow of the stream.

29:16SPEAKER- Absolutely.

29:17SPEAKER- So what are the options for lower latency?

29:22SPEAKER- Unfortunately, you don't really have a lot of options

29:24SPEAKERunless you're on Mixer and you're using their FTL stuff,

29:26SPEAKERwhich as far as I know, even that is just built into OBS.

29:29SPEAKERSo if you're using Mixer, you just say,

29:31SPEAKER"Hey, I wanna use Mixer," and it just handles it.

29:34SPEAKER- I know that for people who are partners or affiliates,

29:37SPEAKERwhich are their like business level, like the people

29:39SPEAKERthat are making money on Twitch,

29:41SPEAKERthey can do lower latency, but it's still in the like

29:44SPEAKERthree to two to five milliseconds probably range,

29:47SPEAKERnot, yeah, it's not bad.

29:49SPEAKER- But yeah, that is, is that just for partners?

29:52SPEAKERThat's not for everybody yet?

29:53SPEAKER- I think that's for affiliates and partners,

29:55SPEAKERbut I could be wrong.

29:56SPEAKERIt may be for everybody now.

29:57SPEAKERI don't, you know, I don't read streamingnews.de.

30:02SPEAKER- I should check the dummy Twitch account

30:04SPEAKERthat I just made for testing to see if it can do,

30:07SPEAKERthat's a three day old account,

30:08SPEAKERif that three day old account has low latency

30:10SPEAKERthen everybody does.

30:11SPEAKER- If you can find Brad's dummy Twitch account,

30:13SPEAKERI will give you a free subscription to the Patreon.

30:15SPEAKER- All right, challenge accepted.

30:19SPEAKERThere are more modern protocols out there

30:21SPEAKERthat most people don't need to worry about

30:23SPEAKER'cause you can't really use them for much right now

30:24SPEAKERbecause the major services don't accept them,

30:26SPEAKERbut there's SRT, which is a Secure Reliable Transport,

30:31SPEAKERI believe, which is open source.

30:33SPEAKERIt was made by some video company

30:34SPEAKERthat I'm not familiar with,

30:36SPEAKERwhich aims to get latency down quite a bit.

30:39SPEAKER- Okay.

30:40SPEAKER- There's WebRTC.

30:43SPEAKER- That's the video conferencing thing, right?

30:44SPEAKER- Which is, I think, yeah, primarily

30:45SPEAKERit's for video conferencing right now,

30:47SPEAKERalthough I assume it can be used for anything.

30:48SPEAKERIt actually, again, I've been spending some time

30:51SPEAKERon some white papers.

30:52SPEAKERIt's actually, it uses like some pretty old protocols

30:55SPEAKERunderneath that are quite low latency from like the '90s.

30:58SPEAKER- Do these protocols specify codecs and like transport layer

31:01SPEAKERor are they like all UDP or are they TCP or both?

31:04SPEAKER- We will get to that, man,

31:05SPEAKER'cause I have discovered that you can kind of package

31:10SPEAKERany protocol inside any transport stream,

31:13SPEAKERinside any, yeah.

31:16SPEAKERIt's pipes inside of pipes inside of pipes.

31:18SPEAKER- Yo, dog, I heard you like pipes.

31:19SPEAKER- Yes, we'll talk about it.

31:21SPEAKERBut anyway, yeah, there are some newer options out there

31:23SPEAKERfor lower latency streaming,

31:25SPEAKERbut it seems like it's taking some time

31:26SPEAKERfor the major services to adopt them.

31:29SPEAKER- Yeah, it's shocking.

31:30SPEAKERI mean, there's a lot of infrastructure

31:31SPEAKERto build this stuff up on the back end, so it makes sense.

31:33SPEAKER- Totally, at the scale that a Twitch is operating at,

31:35SPEAKERit's not like, it takes a long time

31:37SPEAKERto steer an aircraft carrier, right?

31:39SPEAKER- Yes.

31:41SPEAKERSo let's talk about hardware and what you need to do,

31:44SPEAKERlike your bog standard Twitch stream.

31:48SPEAKERThe most important thing to get a good one of

31:51SPEAKERis a microphone.

31:52SPEAKERAnd in this case, good microphone means probably

31:55SPEAKERlike the entry level is probably a blue snowball,

31:57SPEAKERwhich is like a $50 USB mic.

31:59SPEAKER- Is the snowball the one that is quite literally a ball,

32:02SPEAKERlike a spherical on a stand?

32:04SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a big spherical ball.

32:05SPEAKERYou wanna get a shock mount for it,

32:07SPEAKER'cause if you do it on a stand and you're doing a keyboard,

32:09SPEAKERpeople will hear like that constantly tapping.

32:13SPEAKER- Yeah, they will hear banging on your keyboard

32:15SPEAKERand all that stuff.

32:16SPEAKERYou really can't put your mic on your desk

32:18SPEAKERright near your input devices.

32:20SPEAKER- So you can get a nice shock mount for like 100.

32:24SPEAKERSo the snowball is 50 bucks.

32:25SPEAKERI would recommend going up to the next level up snowball,

32:29SPEAKERwhich is a Yeti.

32:30SPEAKERThey seem to last a lot longer.

32:32SPEAKERThe snowballs have like a two-year lifespan

32:34SPEAKERin my experience.

32:35SPEAKER- Whoa, and then what?

32:36SPEAKER- Then they just kind of-

32:37SPEAKER- They just stop working?

32:38SPEAKER- They just fade away.

32:39SPEAKERYeah, they're not- - That's terrible.

32:40SPEAKER- Like, look at the-

32:43SPEAKER- Oh, go ahead.

32:45SPEAKER- I think it's the one that I had that died the USB plug

32:49SPEAKERbecause of where it sticks out in the back.

32:50SPEAKERIt's stressed in a weird spot.

32:52SPEAKER- I see.

32:52SPEAKER- So the USB connector just got janky.

32:54SPEAKER- Sure, I am talking into a five-year-old

32:57SPEAKERblue Yeti right now, so.

32:58SPEAKER- Yeah.

32:59SPEAKER- And this thing has been plugged and unplugged

33:01SPEAKERcountless times, and it seems to be holding up pretty well.

33:04SPEAKER- Well, and you can get a Yeti's about like 100 bucks,

33:05SPEAKERI think, is where they start.

33:06SPEAKER- Yeah, I think they still go for-

33:07SPEAKER- And you can get the XLR version for two.

33:09SPEAKER- Oh, I didn't know they made an XLR Yeti.

33:10SPEAKER- Yeah, they make an XL, one that's XLR and USB,

33:13SPEAKERso you can do both.

33:13SPEAKER- Oh, wow, I wish I had one of those.

33:14SPEAKER- Which is really convenient.

33:15SPEAKER- That would be great, oh well.

33:17SPEAKERDo you wanna tell people what XLR is real fast?

33:20SPEAKER- So XLR is a audio cable standard that basically,

33:24SPEAKERit's wired in such a way that it eats interference

33:27SPEAKERso that you don't pick up as much noise from EM interference

33:30SPEAKERfrom the environment around you.

33:31SPEAKER- Yeah, which can be a problem with the cheaper mics

33:33SPEAKERand flimsy cheapo cables and stuff like that.

33:36SPEAKERI've even had interference problems with this Yeti,

33:38SPEAKERwhich is using USB, so it's a digital signal,

33:40SPEAKERbut I've still had issues.

33:42SPEAKER- Well, so one of the things that I've found is that

33:44SPEAKEReven if you, for example, an LED backlit keyboard

33:48SPEAKERis really a noisy device electrically,

33:51SPEAKERso if I bring my mics too close to my backlit keyboard

33:54SPEAKERwhen the light's on, you can hear the hum

33:56SPEAKERfrom the keyboard.

33:57SPEAKER- It isn't, dealing with interference is infuriating.

34:00SPEAKER- But the upshot of all this is that

34:02SPEAKERhaving a good microphone is going to make,

34:04SPEAKERlike people will tolerate shitty video,

34:07SPEAKERthey don't tolerate bad audio.

34:09SPEAKER- Yes, that is absolutely true.

34:11SPEAKER- So audio matters more than anything else.

34:13SPEAKERIf you wanna capture, if you wanna play console games,

34:15SPEAKERyou need capture cards.

34:17SPEAKERThe consumer, like the consumer leader,

34:20SPEAKERwhich is kind of hard to find right now

34:22SPEAKER'cause they're out of stock, is Elgato.

34:25SPEAKER- Like the USB models?

34:27SPEAKER- So the USB models are pretty good.

34:30SPEAKERThey have more, so if you wanna be able to play

34:33SPEAKERin a window on your computer, in my experience,

34:36SPEAKERthe USB models are too high latency usually.

34:39SPEAKERSome of the newer ones are okay,

34:40SPEAKERthe USB three ones are probably okay,

34:42SPEAKERI haven't used those personally.

34:44SPEAKERBut like you can get an HD 60 S,

34:46SPEAKERwhich is a PCI express card for like a hundred bucks.

34:49SPEAKER- Oh wow, are they that cheap now?

34:51SPEAKER- Yeah, they're not expensive.

34:52SPEAKER'Cause once the 4K ones came out,

34:53SPEAKERthe price on the 1080P ones went way down.

34:55SPEAKERAnd realistically, even if you're playing,

34:58SPEAKERthe only reason you would want a 4K capture card

35:00SPEAKERis if you were playing on like a PS4 Pro

35:03SPEAKERor Xbox Series X or Xbox One X

35:07SPEAKERand wanna play games in 4K and shrink them down.

35:09SPEAKER- So I've got a, I'm using a Magewell USB three device.

35:13SPEAKERSo I don't know if you're familiar with that company.

35:15SPEAKERThey're not as widespread, it works okay.

35:17SPEAKERIt does have a lot of latency, like you said,

35:19SPEAKERand it only does 1080.

35:20SPEAKERI've got an Elgato 4K card on the way.

35:23SPEAKER- Okay, I'm interested to hear how it is.

35:25SPEAKER- Yeah, it's, well, I haven't ordered it.

35:27SPEAKERIt's kind of just purchasing limbo right now,

35:30SPEAKERbut it has a few advantages, I understand,

35:34SPEAKERbesides being able to just capture 4K.

35:35SPEAKERLike I believe the newest model can,

35:39SPEAKERif I understand correctly,

35:40SPEAKERit can basically split the,

35:41SPEAKERwhat it's pulling in out as multiple quote unquote

35:43SPEAKERkind of capture devices in windows.

35:46SPEAKER- Because you can do a quad?

35:47SPEAKER- Yeah, because with like your cheapo capture solutions,

35:51SPEAKERyou're taking that feed in

35:52SPEAKERand windows can only do one thing with it at a time, right?

35:55SPEAKER- Yeah.

35:56SPEAKER- So like you can't have your webcam active

35:57SPEAKERin a Google Hangout and in OBS at the same time,

36:00SPEAKERfor example.

36:02SPEAKER- That makes sense.

36:03SPEAKER- So this thing is sort of like multiplexing

36:04SPEAKERthe feed that you're pulling in

36:05SPEAKERso you can feed it into multiple applications at once.

36:07SPEAKERSo it's got some other quality of life features like that

36:09SPEAKERbesides the 4K.

36:11SPEAKER- That's really, I mean,

36:12SPEAKERso that kind of stuff's really interesting.

36:14SPEAKERThe big, so on the, if you want to play games,

36:20SPEAKERespecially games that are latency driven,

36:22SPEAKERlike if you want to play something even like Spelunky, right?

36:25SPEAKERThat requires precision on your controls.

36:27SPEAKERProbably you want to put a splitter.

36:29SPEAKER- Yeah.

36:30SPEAKER- Just an HDMI splitter,

36:31SPEAKERwhich is like a $20 dongle thing

36:33SPEAKERthat plugs in between your capture card

36:36SPEAKERand your captured devices.

36:38SPEAKERAnd you want to run them into the,

36:39SPEAKERlike one run input directly into your monitor

36:41SPEAKERand one into the capture card.

36:43SPEAKER- I just had to buy a new splitter actually,

36:44SPEAKER'cause my old one died.

36:46SPEAKER- They don't, they live short, glorious lives.

36:49SPEAKER- Yeah, I worked for, well, I didn't use it much,

36:51SPEAKERbut I had it for about five years.

36:52SPEAKERI used it off and on a few times a year

36:54SPEAKERand then it bought the farm.

36:58SPEAKER- Cameras, you're going to want a camera.

37:00SPEAKERSo probably a webcam is where most people start,

37:02SPEAKERlike Logitech's 922s, Brios, whatever.

37:05SPEAKER- Yeah, I've still got a plain old C920,

37:07SPEAKERwhich is a 1080p30, which works well,

37:09SPEAKERalthough it is impossible to get a webcam right now.

37:13SPEAKER- They're starting to come back.

37:14SPEAKER- Are they? - That's what I'm hearing.

37:15SPEAKER- Yeah. - Okay, okay.

37:16SPEAKER- But it was like the most sought after item, I think,

37:18SPEAKERfor the first couple of months of this thing

37:20SPEAKERwas people needing webcams.

37:21SPEAKER- Yeah, I saw a guy throw a cinder block

37:23SPEAKERfor a Best Buy trying to get in when the webcams came in

37:25SPEAKERa few weeks ago, it was chaos, cats and dogs.

37:28SPEAKER- Yeah.

37:30SPEAKER- A tripod is useful.

37:32SPEAKERYou can dangle it off the top of your monitor,

37:33SPEAKERbut that often gives you an angle that you don't want.

37:36SPEAKERI use a Dinkum, it's a terrible name,

37:40SPEAKERDinkum Systems ActionPod Pro,

37:43SPEAKERwhich is, you know, like those Joby GorillaPods,

37:46SPEAKERwith the, like they have like a ball and socket,

37:49SPEAKERor like a whole bunch of them.

37:51SPEAKER- Yeah. - Kind of.

37:52SPEAKER- Yeah. - So this is just one

37:53SPEAKERof those legs with a clamp on one end,

37:56SPEAKERlike a locking clamp on one end and a camera mount

37:58SPEAKERon the other. - In the position?

37:59SPEAKER- Yeah. - Okay.

38:00SPEAKER- So it sits up above my monitor.

38:02SPEAKER- What do you have a clamp to?

38:05SPEAKER- Ironically, a tripod that I couldn't get in the position

38:08SPEAKERthat I wanted it to, 'cause it has three legs

38:09SPEAKERand it doesn't fit behind the monitor.

38:10SPEAKER- I wonder if you could like clamp that

38:11SPEAKERonto like your monitor arm or something like that.

38:13SPEAKER- I could, my main monitor isn't on an arm

38:16SPEAKERbecause I'm a dumb ass.

38:17SPEAKERI have an arm for it and just haven't installed it yet.

38:20SPEAKER- That should work too. - For two years.

38:21SPEAKER- Yeah, that would work better.

38:23SPEAKER- You know what bugs me about webcams lately,

38:24SPEAKERand this is pretty nitpicky, I suppose, but.

38:26SPEAKER- Tell me what grinds your gears, Brad.

38:28SPEAKER- Bezels have gotten so thin on monitors.

38:30SPEAKER- Yeah, there's no place to put 'em.

38:31SPEAKER- And most webcams have that big fat lip that sticks down

38:35SPEAKERto rest it on the top of the screen.

38:37SPEAKERSo you basically have a big part of that lip

38:39SPEAKERjust sitting there over top of your monitor now.

38:41SPEAKER- Yep, I have two webcams on top of my computer.

38:43SPEAKER- That's very annoying. - Yeah.

38:47SPEAKERAnd then like the other piece of hardware

38:50SPEAKERyou might want is a stream deck.

38:52SPEAKERElgato makes this thing called a stream deck.

38:53SPEAKERIt's basically a whole shitload of buttons on a little box

38:56SPEAKERand it works.

38:58SPEAKERIt has a touchscreen underneath it.

38:59SPEAKERAnd then the buttons are capacitive buttons

39:02SPEAKERthat are transparent.

39:03SPEAKERSo you can put whatever like art you want on the buttons

39:07SPEAKERand you combine them directly using APIs

39:10SPEAKERto things like Streamlabs and OBS.

39:13SPEAKERYou can send MIDI commands with them

39:15SPEAKERto work a hardware mixer.

39:16SPEAKER- Yeah, it's basically a glorified set of macros

39:19SPEAKERon a control surface, right?

39:21SPEAKER- Well, it is.

39:22SPEAKERBut also if you set it up right,

39:23SPEAKERit also gives you feedback about what's currently live.

39:25SPEAKERLike when I have mics live and dead,

39:28SPEAKERit indicates whether the mics are active or not.

39:30SPEAKERSo I don't make mistakes.

39:31SPEAKER- You're talking about on the stream deck specifically?

39:33SPEAKER- On the stream deck specifically.

39:34SPEAKER- Each button is a tiny little screen.

39:36SPEAKER- Yeah, so like--

39:37SPEAKER- That is the first actually functional utilitarian use

39:39SPEAKERof those screen buttons that I've heard.

39:41SPEAKEREverybody else just puts like Tim Allen's face

39:43SPEAKERon them or something.

39:44SPEAKER- Well, so it's nice for mics.

39:47SPEAKERIt's nice for sources

39:48SPEAKER'cause you can show which scene is currently active rather

39:52SPEAKERin OBS or slobs.

39:53SPEAKER- Yeah, that's actually super useful.

39:55SPEAKER- And you can do things like turn off.

39:59SPEAKERSo you can switch between scenes,

40:01SPEAKERbut you can also turn off individual sources.

40:03SPEAKERSo like if you do a bomb cast

40:05SPEAKERand you have presets for Jan and Jason and Jeff and Vinny,

40:10SPEAKERthen you can turn on and off the sources

40:12SPEAKERbased on who's there, which is really convenient.

40:16SPEAKER- It's mostly, excuse me, it's mostly stuff you could hotkey

40:19SPEAKERon your PC if you've worked enough,

40:20SPEAKERbut it's nice to have it discreet

40:22SPEAKERand split out from all that stuff.

40:24SPEAKER- Well, so the thing that it does is it gives you a little

40:27SPEAKERbit about the thing that's good about buying

40:28SPEAKERlike a big control surface for a video mixer.

40:31SPEAKERLike it has bars and a million buttons

40:32SPEAKERand all sorts of lights and stuff on it.

40:34SPEAKER- Like a T-bar.

40:35SPEAKER- Yeah, like a T-bar,

40:36SPEAKERbut without having to spend $2,000 on that there.

40:39SPEAKERThe stream deck started, I think a hundred bucks

40:40SPEAKERand go up to like 250 or 300 bucks.

40:42SPEAKER- Man, I love to ride the T-bar.

40:44SPEAKER- Oh man, it's so much fun.

40:46SPEAKER- When they used to let us do that in the basement,

40:48SPEAKERthat was the most like, no, don't worry, I got this Vinny,

40:51SPEAKERI got this under control and switch these video feeds

40:53SPEAKERlike you've never seen.

40:56SPEAKER- Real quick, the last thing about the stream deck,

40:58SPEAKERI think, I mean, I haven't looked into it too much,

40:59SPEAKERbut there are some sort of DIY control surface things

41:03SPEAKERyou can do.

41:04SPEAKER- Yeah.

41:04SPEAKER- Like I know Vinny wired up a midi controller.

41:08SPEAKERJeff is using some kind of like arcade button surface

41:11SPEAKERfor the same purpose.

41:12SPEAKERI don't know how, I don't know what interfaces

41:14SPEAKERyou would use for that stuff, but.

41:15SPEAKER- I feel like the arcade buttons would be too clicky, right?

41:17SPEAKERYou don't wanna click.

41:18SPEAKER- I think it'd be, oh man, it'd be great.

41:19SPEAKERI think that would feel amazing.

41:20SPEAKER- Well, it would feel good, but you'd hear it.

41:22SPEAKERThe sound will come through, man.

41:22SPEAKER- Yeah, but it's such a great sound.

41:24SPEAKERLook, there are good clicks and bad clicks

41:26SPEAKERand a good arcade button is definitely

41:28SPEAKERin the good click category.

41:31SPEAKER- Yeah, no.

41:32SPEAKER- I can barely hear that.

41:33SPEAKER- Okay, okay, clicky switches.

41:36SPEAKERCamera, you can also do, if you have like a DSLR

41:42SPEAKERor a mirrorless or something that sends a clean HDMI output,

41:46SPEAKERyou can get a dedicated camera capture thing

41:49SPEAKERthat will plug into the camera

41:51SPEAKERand let you use a good camera as a source

41:52SPEAKERif you want like bokeh in the background and all that stuff.

41:55SPEAKER- Real nice, real nice feed.

41:57SPEAKER- I realized we didn't talk about resolutions

41:59SPEAKERon the capture cards and this is actually important.

42:02SPEAKERThe more traditional capture cards by companies

42:04SPEAKERlike Blackmagic only support broadcast resolutions.

42:07SPEAKERSo they'll support 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p, and 4K.

42:15SPEAKERThey probably don't support 1440p,

42:17SPEAKERwhich is an increasingly popular gaming resolution.

42:20SPEAKERSo if you wanna capture 1440p on a PC

42:23SPEAKERfor like a two stream set up, two PC set up,

42:26SPEAKERyou're gonna want an Elgato card probably

42:29SPEAKERrather than a Blackmagic or Magewell

42:31SPEAKERor something like that.

42:32SPEAKER- Right.

42:33SPEAKER- And that's it, that's the hardware.

42:36SPEAKERAnd then the question is, do you do one PC

42:38SPEAKERwhere everything runs, including OBS runs on the PC

42:40SPEAKERwhere you're playing games?

42:41SPEAKER- Yeah.

42:42SPEAKER- Or do you do a two PC

42:44SPEAKERwhich adds an incredible amount of complexity

42:46SPEAKERand we're not gonna get into how it all works

42:47SPEAKER'cause it's too much.

42:48SPEAKER- Oh man, that's what's happening.

42:50SPEAKER- I mean, we can.

42:52SPEAKER- Also, the upside of streaming everything from the same PC

42:55SPEAKERis it's all in one place, it's relatively straightforward.

42:57SPEAKERYou don't have to worry about getting the video

42:58SPEAKERto the second machine to stream it out.

43:01SPEAKER- It's hard, it's actually hard to main monitor chat

43:04SPEAKERand stuff like that 'cause you can't usually run games

43:06SPEAKERin full screen.

43:07SPEAKER- Yeah, unless you have two or three monitors,

43:09SPEAKERthen you have more options obviously.

43:10SPEAKER- Well, you have to run them in windowed full screen

43:12SPEAKEReven if you have two monitors

43:13SPEAKER'cause you need to be able to get the cursor

43:14SPEAKERaway from that main monitor

43:15SPEAKERand you can't do that in exclusive full screen usually.

43:17SPEAKER- That is a pain for sure.

43:20SPEAKERThe other big downside, like we've said,

43:21SPEAKERis you're putting a lot of load on one computer

43:24SPEAKERthat you want to be very performant to run games.

43:27SPEAKER- Also, if you're playing games

43:29SPEAKERwhere frame perfection matters,

43:35SPEAKERlike adding OBS into your capture setup

43:37SPEAKERadds a little into your PC,

43:39SPEAKERadds a tiny bit of input latency.

43:40SPEAKER- Oh, I didn't know that.

43:42SPEAKERThat sounds like something

43:43SPEAKERthat only a professional PUBG player would know.

43:45SPEAKER- I immediately started landing flick headshots

43:48SPEAKERwhen I switched to not having OBS running

43:50SPEAKERin the background on my gaming PC.

43:52SPEAKER- Yeah, so we don't have to get super deep into it,

43:55SPEAKERbut I would like to hear just the basics of your setups.

43:57SPEAKERYou have a second PC.

43:59SPEAKER- Yes, the two PC setup I use is I have,

44:03SPEAKERI pipe, basically one output for my video card

44:07SPEAKERon my gaming PC goes directly to the monitor, right?

44:10SPEAKEROne is a duplicate and goes to a Blackmagic capture card

44:15SPEAKERthat's capturing at 1080p60 on the stream PC.

44:20SPEAKERAnd the stream PC is like at 6700K or something like that.

44:22SPEAKERIt's nothing fancy.

44:24SPEAKERIt's like a good old Intel CPU with an NVIDIA graphics card.

44:28SPEAKER- Which if it's doing nothing

44:29SPEAKERbut sending a stream out is fine, right?

44:31SPEAKERLike it can easily handle like a 1080p60 stream

44:33SPEAKERif it's not also running a game or something.

44:35SPEAKER- I can do ludicrous stuff.

44:38SPEAKERLike the benefit of the two PC setup is that I can do stuff

44:41SPEAKERlike have an instant replay window on my stream.

44:43SPEAKERSo when something happens, people can type a command

44:45SPEAKERin chat and it will trigger a replay.

44:47SPEAKERAnd then the replay shows in OBS, like on the stream.

44:52SPEAKERAnd also I can switch to it as a scene

44:55SPEAKERand it'll replay the last one.

44:56SPEAKERSo I can literally, like when something awesome happens,

44:59SPEAKERI can capitalize.

45:00SPEAKER- So do you have just two sets

45:02SPEAKERof keyboard and mouse sitting there

45:04SPEAKERso you can manage both machines or how are you?

45:07SPEAKER- It's funny you ask that Brad.

45:08SPEAKERI use a IO gear USB switch.

45:12SPEAKERSo it's not a KVM.

45:13SPEAKERIt's an actual switch.

45:15SPEAKER- Like a physical switch.

45:15SPEAKERIt's like physically changing connections.

45:18SPEAKER- It physically changes the connections.

45:19SPEAKERIt has like, it's a little box.

45:22SPEAKERIt looks like a USB hub.

45:23SPEAKERIt has two USB outs that go into one.

45:26SPEAKERIt goes into each PC and then like four USB-A ports

45:29SPEAKERthat I can plug whatever I want into.

45:31SPEAKERBut it's for me, it's just keyboard and mouse.

45:34SPEAKERAnd there's a little tiny bit of latency

45:35SPEAKERis like 300 milliseconds as the USB picks it up

45:37SPEAKERon either side when you switch.

45:40SPEAKERBut usually if I'm switching off of like the gaming PC

45:43SPEAKERonto the stream PC, it's between games

45:44SPEAKERor something like that.

45:45SPEAKERSo it's no big deal.

45:46SPEAKER- Sure.

45:47SPEAKER- So, okay, getting video in is easy.

45:50SPEAKERYou can pipe your audio streams

45:53SPEAKERacross that HDMI output, right?

45:56SPEAKER- Okay.

45:57SPEAKER- So like you can say, carry my mixed audio

46:00SPEAKERfrom my gaming PC into the streaming PC

46:03SPEAKERand just use that as the source in OBS.

46:05SPEAKER- So you would just set that HDMI output

46:07SPEAKERas your audio device in OBS basically?

46:08SPEAKER- Yeah, pretty much, pretty much.

46:11SPEAKERYou can also use a piece of software called VoiceMeeter.

46:15SPEAKERThat's V-O-I-C-E-M-E-E-T-E-R,

46:18SPEAKERwhich is like, it's an audio,

46:20SPEAKERit's a DAW, a digital audio workflow device.

46:24SPEAKER- Okay, I've been wondering what DAW stood for.

46:26SPEAKER- I think it's workflow.

46:27SPEAKERI don't know, somebody will correct me.

46:30SPEAKERBut basically it's like a pipe.

46:32SPEAKERIt's a series of pipes.

46:33SPEAKERIt's a software mixer.

46:35SPEAKERSo where a hardware mixer lets you take physical inputs,

46:39SPEAKERaudio inputs, and pipe them through to different places

46:44SPEAKERand mix them at different levels and stuff like that.

46:46SPEAKERThis does that in software.

46:47SPEAKERSo you can, and it also provides virtual inputs

46:51SPEAKERthat WDM and MME API audio apps can use.

46:57SPEAKER- And talk to.

46:58SPEAKERSo when you install VoiceMeeter banana,

47:01SPEAKERthere's three versions.

47:02SPEAKERThere's VoiceMeeter, VoiceMeeter banana,

47:03SPEAKERand VoiceMeeter potato.

47:04SPEAKERThey all work more or less the same,

47:06SPEAKERbut they have different levels of inputs

47:08SPEAKERand outputs available to the user.

47:10SPEAKERAnd obviously the one with more inputs and outputs

47:12SPEAKERuses way more CPU than the ones

47:15SPEAKERthat has two inputs and outputs.

47:17SPEAKER- Yeah.

47:19SPEAKER- Basically with this,

47:20SPEAKERyou'll get a couple of virtual inputs

47:22SPEAKERand a couple of virtual outputs.

47:24SPEAKERSo you can do things like have your physical microphone

47:28SPEAKERconnect to one input, one input in VoiceMeeter,

47:32SPEAKERand then send that out to virtual outputs

47:35SPEAKERwithout having like game sound.

47:38SPEAKERSo that Discord just gets your microphone,

47:40SPEAKERbut everything thinks it has exclusive access

47:43SPEAKERto the hardware.

47:44SPEAKER- Yeah.

47:45SPEAKERIt sounds incredibly useful.

47:46SPEAKERI find it a little imposing.

47:47SPEAKERI've never installed it

47:48SPEAKER'cause it seems like just the general setup

47:50SPEAKERwould take a while.

47:51SPEAKERAnd also most people I know that use it kind of both.

47:56SPEAKER- Everybody has a love hate with VoiceMeeter.

47:59SPEAKER- They both swear by it

48:00SPEAKERand also sort of curse its name at the same time.

48:04SPEAKER- It lets you do incredible things.

48:07SPEAKERFor example, if you're playing multiplayer games

48:09SPEAKERwith people on Discord,

48:11SPEAKERyou have three, four audio inputs, right?

48:14SPEAKERYou have the Discord, the people talking on Discord,

48:17SPEAKERyou have your microphone, you have the game,

48:19SPEAKERand then you probably have like overlays

48:21SPEAKERand stuff like alerts and stuff like that

48:22SPEAKERthat play on your stream

48:23SPEAKERto let people know that people have followed

48:25SPEAKERor donated or whatever.

48:28SPEAKERWhen VoiceMeeter lets you control the level of those

48:31SPEAKERindependently from one place.

48:34SPEAKERSo like you can adjust and you can duck

48:36SPEAKERand all that stuff based on like what input is what,

48:40SPEAKERand it ends up being incredibly convenient.

48:44SPEAKERThat said, it's not better.

48:47SPEAKERLike an actual physical mixer is better and easier

48:50SPEAKERin a lot of ways and I just switched to one

48:52SPEAKERbecause I was tired of VoiceMeeter.

48:54SPEAKERVoiceMeeter when you spike CPU does weird things

48:57SPEAKERand sometimes can crash your audio interface

48:59SPEAKERand stuff like that.

49:00SPEAKERSo it's not a great thing to run on a gaming PC

49:03SPEAKERunless you have like six or more cores.

49:05SPEAKER- Yeah, you just decided to get that Behringer instead.

49:09SPEAKER- I got a Behringer.

49:10SPEAKEROh, also worth mentioning,

49:11SPEAKERVoiceMeeter will let you pipe the audio over the network

49:14SPEAKERwith like 100 milliseconds of latency.

49:16SPEAKERSo you can take any of the buses in VoiceMeeter and say,

49:19SPEAKER"Hey, send this over the network to another computer."

49:21SPEAKER- Oh, that's handy.

49:22SPEAKER- And it will ingest it,

49:23SPEAKERwhich is how like that lets you do things

49:25SPEAKERlike have independent audio for all of these things,

49:28SPEAKERindependent channels for all of your inputs

49:30SPEAKERso that you can adjust everything individually.

49:32SPEAKER- Yeah, I just wanted to point out very quickly

49:34SPEAKERthat I finally realized the reason

49:35SPEAKERthat I think Behringer sounds like military hardware.

49:38SPEAKER- Is it because it is military hardware?

49:40SPEAKER- No.

49:41SPEAKER- It's because there's a shotgun.

49:42SPEAKER- It's because of Tom Behringer.

49:44SPEAKER(laughing)

49:47SPEAKERAnyway.

49:47SPEAKER- Yeah, that reads.

49:48SPEAKER- Yeah, right?

49:49SPEAKER- So what's the story on the Franklin Encoder, Rob?

49:51SPEAKER- Oh my God, here we go.

49:52SPEAKER- Do we have time to get into it

49:53SPEAKERor do we need to come back later?

49:53SPEAKER- No, no, no, we could get into it.

49:55SPEAKER- Okay.

49:56SPEAKER- Except now I'm a little intimidated

49:58SPEAKERabout talking through all this nonsense.

50:01SPEAKERIt's been slowly agitating me

50:04SPEAKERover the course of this podcast.

50:05SPEAKER- Just to be clear,

50:06SPEAKERthis is a project that most people...

50:09SPEAKER- Nobody should do this.

50:11SPEAKER- I don't think nobody should.

50:12SPEAKERI think the thing you're doing is...

50:13SPEAKER- So what you're trying to do is build a box,

50:15SPEAKERlike a black box so you can pipe an RTMP feed into.

50:18SPEAKER- Yes, well, so there are a couple of weird

50:21SPEAKERspecific concerns that I have

50:23SPEAKERthat most people wouldn't have.

50:25SPEAKER- Okay.

50:25SPEAKER- So I've got the NAS over there in the corner.

50:28SPEAKERSo one of those-

50:29SPEAKER- That's me in the corner.

50:30SPEAKER- Right.

50:30SPEAKER(laughing)

50:33SPEAKERThe biggest concern I have

50:34SPEAKERis that it's a headless machine, right?

50:36SPEAKERIt has no graphics card, it has no monitor.

50:38SPEAKERSo I need to get video into it in a way

50:40SPEAKERthat doesn't need either of those things, right?

50:43SPEAKERIf it was another Windows machine with another monitor,

50:46SPEAKERthis would be brainless.

50:47SPEAKERIt would take 20 minutes to set up.

50:50SPEAKER- You can just do it in OBS, I think, right?

50:51SPEAKER- Well, you would do it in OBS

50:52SPEAKERand you would use a protocol called NDI,

50:54SPEAKERwhich is made by NewTek, the TriCaster people,

50:57SPEAKERwhich sometimes feels like magic to me.

51:00SPEAKER- So you can use...

51:01SPEAKERI did it in a two PC stream with NDI

51:03SPEAKERbefore I got the capture cards to support it.

51:05SPEAKER- Actually, yeah, let's walk back to you.

51:06SPEAKERThere was one more thing I was gonna ask about your setup.

51:10SPEAKER- Yeah.

51:11SPEAKER- So the big upside of your setup

51:13SPEAKERis because you're sending it out over HDMI,

51:15SPEAKERthere's no load on your PC, right?

51:17SPEAKERLike you said, there's no latency from OBS.

51:19SPEAKERThere's no CPU overhead from encoding a stream.

51:22SPEAKER- If I had a high refresh rate G-Sync monitor,

51:25SPEAKERthat wouldn't be impacting anything either, presumably.

51:27SPEAKER- Right, like you're basically using your PC

51:29SPEAKERas just a PC to play games and not having any...

51:32SPEAKERNo drawbacks due to encoding or any of that stuff.

51:35SPEAKER- It's also worth mentioning that I have a capture card

51:41SPEAKERin my PC that I plug consoles into.

51:44SPEAKERSo when I wanna play console games,

51:46SPEAKERthey just show up as like a full screen on my main monitor

51:49SPEAKERrather than having to switch computers and stuff like that.

51:52SPEAKER- I have to assume the downside of that setup,

51:54SPEAKERand I'm sure you've worked around this,

51:55SPEAKERbut like anything on the monitor that is piping out

51:58SPEAKERto your stream PC, it gets streamed out, right?

52:00SPEAKERLike there's no selective capture.

52:01SPEAKERLike OBS lets you say like,

52:02SPEAKER"Hey, only capture this window on this desktop.

52:04SPEAKERDon't capture the whole desktop."

52:05SPEAKER- So the selective capture on OBS is great,

52:08SPEAKERexcept for when it doesn't work,

52:10SPEAKERwhich is increasingly frequent now.

52:12SPEAKER- There are a lot of games that it doesn't work well with.

52:14SPEAKER- Yeah, nothing from the Windows Store

52:15SPEAKERor Game Pass is gonna work right with that.

52:18SPEAKER- Yeah, I recorded a video of Minecraft Dungeons yesterday,

52:20SPEAKERand that did not capture especially well,

52:21SPEAKER'cause it's a UWP app.

52:23SPEAKER- You gotta capture full screen.

52:24SPEAKER- I should have done.

52:25SPEAKERBut so that's the thing,

52:26SPEAKERlike I get why your setup is super useful,

52:30SPEAKERbut I would not trust myself to not accidentally

52:32SPEAKERall tab to my inbox or something like that.

52:34SPEAKERAnd again, anything that shows up on that monitor

52:36SPEAKERis just gonna get streamed right out.

52:38SPEAKER- I have a post-it taped to the bezel of my monitor

52:41SPEAKERthat says, "Close browser, open eye tracker."

52:46SPEAKERLike it's all the things that I have to do manually.

52:48SPEAKER- Just to make sure.

52:49SPEAKER- On the stream PC, I have one button on the stream deck

52:51SPEAKERthat launches everything I need.

52:52SPEAKERIt launches the chat bot, it launches the Twitch interface,

52:55SPEAKERit launches Discord, it launches voice meter,

52:58SPEAKERit launches Streamlabs OBS,

52:59SPEAKERand it opens all the, everything.

53:03SPEAKEROn the gaming PC, I have to do that stuff manually.

53:05SPEAKERSo there's like three things.

53:06SPEAKERThere's like a macro button thing I have to launch,

53:08SPEAKERthe Mixer interface, and the eye tracking software,

53:13SPEAKERwhich is dopey, but anyway, it doesn't matter.

53:17SPEAKERAnd like on that list is close your email, dumb ass,

53:21SPEAKER'cause I have streamed my inbox a couple of times.

53:24SPEAKERI have a button on the main screen of the stream deck

53:26SPEAKERthat is like live desktop feed

53:29SPEAKERthat I can turn on and off very quickly.

53:31SPEAKER- Yeah, so I admire your setup and I want something like that

53:34SPEAKERbut that would be a huge point of anxiety for me.

53:38SPEAKER- You get in the habit really quickly.

53:40SPEAKERLike the first time you have to go through

53:41SPEAKERand edit a feed and then re-upload it,

53:43SPEAKERyou realize that I've not, I shouldn't have done this.

53:46SPEAKER- Yes, I definitely understand that.

53:49SPEAKERSo, but that is the place that I started from

53:50SPEAKERwith this ridiculous setup is wanting to just get

53:52SPEAKERas much of the load off of my gaming PC as I could

53:54SPEAKERto use it for games.

53:56SPEAKER- That's a good task, good plan.

53:58SPEAKER- So NDI is a protocol that NewTek came up with

54:01SPEAKERthat shuttles, it's specifically for LANs,

54:03SPEAKERit's not for streaming over the internet,

54:04SPEAKERit's just for machines physically connected to you.

54:08SPEAKER- It's like a 50 megabit stream usually per source.

54:11SPEAKER- They list a hundred megabits as the safe amount

54:14SPEAKERof overhead to account for.

54:15SPEAKERSo it's a high bit rate stream.

54:17SPEAKERI think it uses H.265, I could be wrong.

54:21SPEAKER- I think it's H.264.

54:22SPEAKER- But I don't know what it is.

54:23SPEAKER- I mean, it may be protocol independent,

54:24SPEAKERbut the point is--

54:26SPEAKER- It's very low CPU overhead.

54:27SPEAKERLike it's almost transparent.

54:29SPEAKERLike when I've tested it,

54:30SPEAKERlike sending an NDI feed out to my MacBook,

54:32SPEAKERit was my PC was sitting at like 8% CPU usage

54:35SPEAKERor something like that.

54:36SPEAKERIt's like, it's incredibly low or light, I should say.

54:39SPEAKER- If you're using it in production,

54:40SPEAKERyou wanna do a point to point network for each run

54:44SPEAKERor at least a shared switch.

54:45SPEAKERLike you don't want it on hubs with normal traffic.

54:48SPEAKER- Right.

54:49SPEAKER- 'Cause if you do something like if you're on gigabit,

54:51SPEAKERif you're not on gigabit, it probably doesn't matter.

54:53SPEAKERBut if you're on gigabit and you fire up origin

54:54SPEAKERand it starts downloading whatever game at 8 megabits,

55:00SPEAKERyou're gonna have a problem.

55:02SPEAKER- So yeah, what you're saying is basically

55:04SPEAKERyou'd want like a dedicated second internet card

55:06SPEAKERin each machine with--

55:07SPEAKER- Yeah.

55:08SPEAKER- Yeah, and make sure you're routing over that.

55:10SPEAKERAnyway.

55:11SPEAKER- But NDI works over wifi if you have good AC.

55:14SPEAKERI've done NDI from a MacBook Pro

55:17SPEAKERto my streaming PC before to do like remotes.

55:21SPEAKER- I am so fucking frustrated

55:22SPEAKERbecause if this was 18 months ago,

55:24SPEAKERI could just be using NDI

55:26SPEAKERto get the video out of my PC and into my NAS

55:28SPEAKERand this would have taken like an afternoon at most.

55:30SPEAKER- Can you not just get an old version of FFmpeg?

55:33SPEAKER- There might be an old binary out there somewhere.

55:35SPEAKERIt's especially for the OS that I'm on.

55:37SPEAKERIt's tough to find that stuff.

55:38SPEAKERAnd also there's like, you know,

55:39SPEAKERthere are updates to codex and other things in that binary

55:42SPEAKERthat you wouldn't have, it's just not worth it.

55:45SPEAKER- Okay.

55:45SPEAKER- And they ripped it out.

55:46SPEAKERThey ripped NDI support out of FFmpeg

55:48SPEAKERbecause of open source politics, basically.

55:51SPEAKER- Well, I mean, in fairness,

55:52SPEAKERNDI violated the terms of the licenses

55:54SPEAKERthat they agreed to.

55:55SPEAKER- New tech screwed up.

55:56SPEAKERThey were naughty.

55:56SPEAKERThey did things they should not have done.

55:58SPEAKERAnd it's like understandable why.

55:59SPEAKER- That really sucks.

56:00SPEAKER- What happened, happened,

56:01SPEAKERbut I'm still super mad about it

56:02SPEAKERbecause that would have solved all my problems.

56:04SPEAKER- Well, in like 12 years,

56:05SPEAKERthere'll be another open source codec

56:06SPEAKERthat works exactly like NDI, but better.

56:08SPEAKER- Do you think it's gonna be that long?

56:09SPEAKERI was talking, I was having that exact conversation

56:11SPEAKERwith Vinny yesterday and like,

56:12SPEAKERI feel like it's like five years away or something.

56:14SPEAKERThe way that hardware acceleration and codex are going,

56:17SPEAKERI feel like some kind of open NDI-like standard

56:20SPEAKERis inevitable for just kind of sending video

56:23SPEAKERacross a network for quote, unquote, free.

56:25SPEAKER- I, it's a harder,

56:27SPEAKERso NDI has proved a business case for that.

56:30SPEAKERLike NDI has shown that like it is massively useful

56:34SPEAKERto not have to run SDI cables throughout a shop.

56:37SPEAKER- Totally.

56:38SPEAKER- And it's way easier to run ethernet cables.

56:39SPEAKER- But especially when you're dealing

56:41SPEAKERwith an esoteric machine like I have,

56:42SPEAKERwhere I can't exactly put capture hardware

56:45SPEAKERinto that computer.

56:45SPEAKER- You could, it would just be a nightmare

56:47SPEAKERto get it working.

56:48SPEAKER- It would do that.

56:49SPEAKERDon't even, I'm not even going near that rabbit hole,

56:50SPEAKERbut yeah, it has an ethernet cable.

56:52SPEAKERLike, you know, it has a network connection.

56:54SPEAKERSo sending things over networks is easy

56:56SPEAKERif you have the right standards.

56:57SPEAKER- Isn't it all just bits?

56:59SPEAKER- Yeah, sure.

57:01SPEAKERAt the end of the day.

57:02SPEAKEROkay, all right.

57:03SPEAKER- Okay.

57:04SPEAKER- So the goal.

57:07SPEAKER- Okay, yeah, what's the pipeline here?

57:08SPEAKERYou must sit on the OBS on your gaming PC.

57:11SPEAKER- So basically I wanted some combination

57:12SPEAKERof not having as much compute load on my windows machine.

57:15SPEAKER- Yeah.

57:16SPEAKER- Hopefully ending up with a higher quality file

57:18SPEAKERbecause right now we're uploading Twitch archives

57:21SPEAKERto the site to re-encode and put on the site,

57:23SPEAKERwhich is terrible, right?

57:24SPEAKERCause you're starting with a relatively low bit rate file

57:27SPEAKERto begin with, and then it's getting crunched down again

57:28SPEAKERand you just lose a lot of quality.

57:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean your target bit rate at Giant Bomb

57:32SPEAKERwas always higher than what Twitch is.

57:34SPEAKER- Like Twitch, we can only send like eight to Twitch

57:36SPEAKERand in the office we would be recording it

57:38SPEAKERway higher than that.

57:39SPEAKER- So you can record locally on Twitch

57:41SPEAKERat a different bit rate.

57:42SPEAKER- You can, then you're doing two encodes.

57:45SPEAKERSo to do that, you have to do,

57:46SPEAKERyou're running two separate encode jobs on the same machine

57:49SPEAKERand that is a lot of overhead.

57:50SPEAKER- That's true.

57:51SPEAKER- So you can't do that on a gaming PC realistically.

57:54SPEAKER- Fair, okay.

57:55SPEAKER- So yeah, what I'm doing is I've got my scene arranged

57:59SPEAKERon OBS, like that stuff all works the same.

58:01SPEAKERLike it's muxing the video there,

58:03SPEAKERit is encoding on the Windows machine

58:04SPEAKERat a high bit rate currently.

58:05SPEAKER- Muxing is when you make the audio and the video interleaved.

58:08SPEAKER- Like turning it into a single stream it can send out,

58:11SPEAKERright? - Yeah.

58:12SPEAKER- And then what I'm doing is instead of writing that

58:14SPEAKERto a file, I am pointing it at the NAS

58:17SPEAKERjust with a network address,

58:20SPEAKERsending it to a jail on my NAS,

58:21SPEAKERwhich has FFmpeg running on it in like listen mode,

58:24SPEAKERbasically as sort of a listen server.

58:25SPEAKER- Okay.

58:26SPEAKER- And it ingests that feed there,

58:29SPEAKERwhich again is a quite a high bit rate, right?

58:31SPEAKERSo it takes that feed in

58:32SPEAKERand it both writes it out directly to file.

58:34SPEAKERSo you're getting just a nice like MKV

58:36SPEAKERof the original stream at a high bit rate.

58:37SPEAKERAnd it also runs a separate job that encodes it down

58:40SPEAKERto the Twitch standards, which is like eight megabits.

58:43SPEAKERAnd then sends it to Twitch as an RTMP stream.

58:48SPEAKER- Boy, if you get this working,

58:49SPEAKERI might actually use this. - It works.

58:50SPEAKERDude, it already, it works.

58:52SPEAKERThe only, so, fuck man, God.

58:55SPEAKERI have spent dozens of hours troubleshooting shit with this

58:58SPEAKERover the last couple of weeks.

58:59SPEAKER- So I don't need the local archive,

59:03SPEAKERbut not having the compute happening on this machine

59:05SPEAKERin my office would probably reduce the heat

59:07SPEAKERin this office all done.

59:08SPEAKER- The problem is, at least in my case,

59:11SPEAKERI'm still having to encode it on the Windows machine.

59:13SPEAKERLike that's the problem.

59:13SPEAKERTo get it to the second machine,

59:16SPEAKERI have to crunch it down to something

59:18SPEAKERthat will feed over a network pretty efficiently, right?

59:21SPEAKERSo I have to do the initial encode

59:23SPEAKERstill on the Windows machine.

59:24SPEAKERSo I did not solve that problem.

59:25SPEAKERNDI would have solved that problem.

59:27SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah. - But I can't use NDI.

59:28SPEAKERSo that's what brought me to the thing about like,

59:31SPEAKERshould I encode on the GPU?

59:32SPEAKERShould I use the CPU?

59:33SPEAKER'Cause the GPU is way more efficient,

59:34SPEAKERbut I need it to play games, et cetera, et cetera.

59:36SPEAKER- You should do the GPU.

59:37SPEAKER- Yeah, so it sounds like GPU is the way to go.

59:39SPEAKERSo I'm definitely gonna do that.

59:40SPEAKERBut anyway.

59:41SPEAKER- I can help you with bit rate and stuff on X264.

59:43SPEAKERIt's possible you can get the bit rate high enough on X264

59:46SPEAKERthat it's hardly doing any CPU work at all.

59:48SPEAKER- So that's, yeah, like the way that CPU usage scales

59:51SPEAKERwith bit rate is a little bit of a black box to me.

59:55SPEAKER- It's not the way you would think it is.

59:58SPEAKERIn order to get a lower bit rate

59:59SPEAKERat the same quality level, your CPU usage goes way up.

1:00:02SPEAKER- Yeah, it's almost an inverse relationship, right?

1:00:05SPEAKER- It is, yeah.

1:00:05SPEAKER- The lower the bit rate, the higher the CPU.

1:00:07SPEAKER- That's exactly it.

1:00:09SPEAKER- But practically in experience,

1:00:11SPEAKERwhat I've seen is pretty high CPU usage

1:00:13SPEAKEReven at high bit rates.

1:00:15SPEAKERSo I don't know what is behind that.

1:00:18SPEAKER- Huh, it may be that you're using it

1:00:21SPEAKERfor something they didn't anticipate

1:00:22SPEAKERand you can't get the settings to where you want them to be.

1:00:24SPEAKER- It is possible.

1:00:25SPEAKERThat stuff is just an arcane, holy shit, man.

1:00:28SPEAKERWhat a rattle.

1:00:29SPEAKER- I would think you'd want the CPU usage

1:00:31SPEAKERto be on ultra or something like that.

1:00:32SPEAKERLike instead of very fast,

1:00:34SPEAKERwhich is the default for most people,

1:00:36SPEAKERyou want it to be on ultra fast or something like that.

1:00:38SPEAKER- Because if you're at a super high bit rate,

1:00:40SPEAKERyou don't need to crunch your code as hard, right?

1:00:42SPEAKEROh, I didn't even think about that.

1:00:43SPEAKEROh yeah.

1:00:45SPEAKER- I should flip that flag.

1:00:46SPEAKERThat's gonna bring your CPU utilization way down

1:00:48SPEAKERat like a 50 megabit or a hundred megabit.

1:00:50SPEAKER- So I've been trying between like 40 and 60 megabits

1:00:53SPEAKERover my network 'cause why not?

1:00:55SPEAKER'Cause it's just a local network

1:00:56SPEAKERand it's going to a machine that has terabytes of free space.

1:00:58SPEAKERSo I can just write that giant file right out.

1:01:00SPEAKER- So the downside of this approach is

1:01:04SPEAKERyou're gonna add a ton of latency

1:01:06SPEAKER'cause you're gonna add latency on the OBS and code.

1:01:08SPEAKERAnd then again, yeah.

1:01:10SPEAKER- So this works.

1:01:11SPEAKERLike I've streamed successfully to Twitch

1:01:12SPEAKERand had an archive file come out.

1:01:14SPEAKERLike it is working to purpose.

1:01:17SPEAKER- Okay.

1:01:18SPEAKER- That is basically the last major speed bump

1:01:20SPEAKERis that I'm currently the best latency

1:01:22SPEAKERI've gotten to Twitch is around seven to eight seconds.

1:01:24SPEAKER- I don't think you're gonna get better than that,

1:01:26SPEAKERbut I could be wrong.

1:01:27SPEAKER- That is my fear.

1:01:29SPEAKER- So like even NDI adds a good 300, 400 milliseconds

1:01:33SPEAKERof latency in my experience.

1:01:35SPEAKER- Right, so I need to come up with a way to test

1:01:37SPEAKERwhat the latency specifically is between the windows,

1:01:40SPEAKERthe initial windows and code and the receiving on the box

1:01:43SPEAKERbefore it streams up to Twitch.

1:01:45SPEAKERLike, you know, I can ping that machine,

1:01:47SPEAKERbut that's not, you know, that's a different protocol.

1:01:48SPEAKERI'm not gonna get it.

1:01:49SPEAKER- So you can connect, can you,

1:01:51SPEAKERso pipe the output of the FMVEG into a VLC window

1:01:56SPEAKERand then capture the VLC window.

1:01:58SPEAKER- I would have to, so I would have to reverse the process

1:02:01SPEAKERand do that from the headless NAS to the windows machine

1:02:04SPEAKERto actually see that output.

1:02:06SPEAKER- Yeah, and so if you put up a clock

1:02:10SPEAKERwith a seconds hand on your screen overlay,

1:02:14SPEAKERand then you capture that and you send that to that

1:02:17SPEAKERand send it back and you capture a VLC window

1:02:19SPEAKERat the same time, you'll see exactly what the latency is.

1:02:21SPEAKER- That's too much.

1:02:22SPEAKERBut does that separate out the latency?

1:02:24SPEAKER'Cause I need to know what the latency is

1:02:25SPEAKERbetween windows and NAS and not,

1:02:28SPEAKERand cut out the latency from NAS to Twitch.

1:02:31SPEAKER- That'll, I don't know about that.

1:02:33SPEAKER- I need to know how much of that eight seconds

1:02:34SPEAKERis happening on my LAN and how much is happening

1:02:36SPEAKERas it goes out. - Probably mostly on Twitch.

1:02:38SPEAKER- Yeah, that's what I assume.

1:02:39SPEAKER- My guess is you're getting half a second on the LAN

1:02:43SPEAKERand then another half a second to two seconds on the encode.

1:02:46SPEAKER- I feel like we've probably lost like 75%

1:02:50SPEAKERof the audience at this point.

1:02:51SPEAKERBut a lot of the time I've spent over the last week,

1:02:54SPEAKERweek and a half fighting with this

1:02:56SPEAKERis trying different protocols,

1:02:57SPEAKERsending the video across the network.

1:02:58SPEAKERAnd that's what made me realize like,

1:03:01SPEAKERyou know, any video can kind of be packaged

1:03:03SPEAKERin any kind of container

1:03:05SPEAKERand then any kind of protocol, right?

1:03:07SPEAKER- Well, it's up to the end points what they speak, right?

1:03:09SPEAKER- Yeah, absolutely.

1:03:10SPEAKERBut in a case where I'm using a really robust tool

1:03:14SPEAKERlike FFmpeg that can kind of accept anything,

1:03:16SPEAKERlike I'm basically like I'm packaging a video that is H.264

1:03:21SPEAKERand I've tried FLAC and AAC for audio,

1:03:24SPEAKERpackaging that in different types of transport containers

1:03:27SPEAKERlike FLV or MPEG-TS.

1:03:30SPEAKER- Right. - And then you package that

1:03:31SPEAKERin a range of protocols from UDP to TCP to SRT.

1:03:36SPEAKERLike I've tried all these different protocols.

1:03:40SPEAKERI know this is an offensive level of detail.

1:03:44SPEAKERI'm sorry.

1:03:45SPEAKER- I'm impressed you've gotten this to work.

1:03:47SPEAKER- It works.

1:03:48SPEAKERLike I said, I've gotten it to smoothly stream to Twitch.

1:03:52SPEAKERIt's just that latency that I'm trying to optimize

1:03:54SPEAKERas much as I can.

1:03:57SPEAKER- I wonder if I ran this in my garage,

1:03:59SPEAKERhow much my CPU overhead would go down.

1:04:00SPEAKER- I can show you, I could show you how I've done it

1:04:04SPEAKER'cause I would love to have another data point

1:04:05SPEAKERon somebody else's LAN and machine set up

1:04:08SPEAKERto see what your latency is like.

1:04:09SPEAKER- I hope that this is gonna be a free NAS forum post

1:04:12SPEAKERat some point in the future.

1:04:13SPEAKER- I mean, I fully intend to do a little video on Giant Bomb

1:04:17SPEAKERshowing how this works at some point.

1:04:18SPEAKERIt's just not where I need it to be yet.

1:04:22SPEAKERAlthough it kind of is.

1:04:22SPEAKERLike if I can't get that latency to run much more--

1:04:23SPEAKER- It sounds like it's working here and there.

1:04:25SPEAKER- And it does exactly what I want

1:04:27SPEAKERwhere it's sending Twitch appropriate quality to Twitch

1:04:29SPEAKERand then I'm also getting this nice high quality file

1:04:31SPEAKERthat I can upload straight to the site.

1:04:34SPEAKER- That's really cool.

1:04:34SPEAKER- It's nice.

1:04:35SPEAKERAnd like I said, FFmpeg supports multiple outputs

1:04:40SPEAKERor a kind of a pseudo mixer sort of thing.

1:04:43SPEAKERSo I can actually send that same encode to Twitch,

1:04:47SPEAKERYouTube, Facebook, like whatever.

1:04:48SPEAKERYou can, that as far as I understand,

1:04:51SPEAKERI haven't tried it yet is only constrained by your upload,

1:04:53SPEAKERby your upstream bandwidth.

1:04:55SPEAKERSo you can just send that same,

1:04:56SPEAKERyou can kind of multiplex that same feed out

1:04:59SPEAKERto all those different streaming services at once.

1:05:01SPEAKER- Be your own restream.io.

1:05:03SPEAKER- I don't know if I'll bother with that stuff

1:05:04SPEAKERbut the main thing was I just wanted to,

1:05:07SPEAKERI just wanted to get CPU usage down on my main computer

1:05:10SPEAKERso I could play games on it instead.

1:05:11SPEAKER- Yeah dude, that makes a ton of sense.

1:05:13SPEAKER- And it seems like it's working.

1:05:15SPEAKERSo it sounds like I should be using

1:05:16SPEAKERthe video card encode there.

1:05:18SPEAKER- I would, well, I think CPU ultra fast

1:05:22SPEAKERmight be faster than the video card encode

1:05:24SPEAKERbut you should test them both.

1:05:25SPEAKER- You're right, I should, I'm totally gonna give that a shot.

1:05:27SPEAKERThat's a good call.

1:05:28SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:05:29SPEAKER- This has been a lot, this has been a lot.

1:05:30SPEAKER- This has been a, yeah, you've had a journey here.

1:05:33SPEAKERSo yeah, anyway, that's it.

1:05:35SPEAKERI guess on streaming, if you all have specific questions

1:05:39SPEAKERas always you can email them to techpod@content.town.

1:05:42SPEAKERI think we're due for a question episode next week.

1:05:45SPEAKERSo we'll, I bet we'll have a lot of questions about this.

1:05:50SPEAKER- If one of your questions is

1:05:51SPEAKERwhy would you do this to yourself?

1:05:52SPEAKERI don't have a good answer.

1:05:54SPEAKER- Sometimes, sometimes it's, you know,

1:05:56SPEAKERwithout suffering, what's the point of life, Brad?

1:05:58SPEAKER- That's true.

1:05:59SPEAKER- That's the, you know.

1:06:00SPEAKER- I've learned a tremendous amount

1:06:02SPEAKERthrough this whole process

1:06:03SPEAKERabout a bunch of different topics

1:06:04SPEAKERthat I didn't know a lot about before.

1:06:06SPEAKERAnd I'd have to say a big thank you

1:06:07SPEAKERto some people on our Discord

1:06:08SPEAKERfor their generous time and expertise

1:06:11SPEAKERhelping me build the BSD port of FFmpeg

1:06:15SPEAKERwith SRT support enabled.

1:06:17SPEAKER- Wait, you had to compile,

1:06:19SPEAKERyou literally compiled software for this?

1:06:21SPEAKER- I compiled a new version of FFmpeg,

1:06:23SPEAKERbut it is the, it was the BSD port specifically

1:06:25SPEAKERbecause it has a bunch of, you know,

1:06:27SPEAKEROS specific patches applied to it.

1:06:28SPEAKER- Oh yeah.

1:06:29SPEAKER- And I spent with a couple of developers

1:06:32SPEAKERon our Discord spent way too much time Sunday night

1:06:34SPEAKERgoing through the make file for that thing

1:06:36SPEAKERand adding a bunch of flags and so forth

1:06:38SPEAKERto get that thing to build.

1:06:40SPEAKERAnd it worked, it came out with a usable binary

1:06:42SPEAKERthat let me try streaming SRT across the network.

1:06:45SPEAKER- So here's a scary question,

1:06:46SPEAKERis how long is this gonna keep working

1:06:48SPEAKERbefore some dependency breaks

1:06:50SPEAKERand you have to recompile it again?

1:06:52SPEAKER- Well, I'm probably not gonna use SRT

1:06:54SPEAKERbecause it has not helped with the latency problem.

1:06:55SPEAKERLike the difference in latency between SRT

1:06:59SPEAKERand like I've literally just using

1:07:00SPEAKERa straight up TCP connection to send the video

1:07:02SPEAKERand the latency is about the same.

1:07:03SPEAKER- Well, TCP on a LAN should be fine.

1:07:05SPEAKER- Because it's a LAN, right?

1:07:06SPEAKERLike those machines are plugged into the same switch.

1:07:08SPEAKERLike they're separated by a dozen feet of ethernet cable.

1:07:12SPEAKER- The short version of why TCP and UDP are different

1:07:15SPEAKERis that TCP expects you, the receiver to say,

1:07:18SPEAKER"Hey, I got this."

1:07:19SPEAKER- Yes, there's a handshake.

1:07:20SPEAKER- And UDP just is like a fire hose.

1:07:22SPEAKER- UDP just sprays packets and doesn't care where they go

1:07:24SPEAKERor if they even get there in the first place.

1:07:26SPEAKER- Yeah, there's a bucket on one end

1:07:28SPEAKERand a hose on the other and let God sort out the mess.

1:07:32SPEAKER- UDP is like that drunk asshole at the bar

1:07:34SPEAKERwho just pees all over the toilet seat and doesn't care.

1:07:36SPEAKERIt just sprays it everywhere.

1:07:38SPEAKER- I hate that guy.

1:07:39SPEAKER- Drunken packets, man.

1:07:41SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:07:44SPEAKERSo yeah, I think that's it.

1:07:45SPEAKERThe downside of your thing is that you can't do overlays,

1:07:47SPEAKERbut if you're running them on OBS on your local machine,

1:07:49SPEAKERit should be fine.

1:07:50SPEAKER- Anything that comes on OBS is fine.

1:07:51SPEAKERLike literally, there's nothing I can't do

1:07:54SPEAKERwith the old setup and the new setup.

1:07:55SPEAKER- Oh man.

1:07:56SPEAKER- It's pretty exciting.

1:07:57SPEAKER- I'm gonna, that's a hot tip about the lower CPU

1:08:01SPEAKERand code at a higher bit rate.

1:08:02SPEAKER- Yeah, now you've given me a project.

1:08:04SPEAKERThanks, Brad.

1:08:05SPEAKER- We will talk later if you wanna,

1:08:07SPEAKERif you wanna tumble down this rabbit hole, we can talk.

1:08:11SPEAKERI can just watch that video that I will eventually make.

1:08:14SPEAKER- On the very short project update note,

1:08:16SPEAKERI figured out that my home assistant problem

1:08:18SPEAKERwe talked about a little bit last week

1:08:20SPEAKERisn't related to my network,

1:08:23SPEAKERbut it's related to the NAS, so we're making progress.

1:08:26SPEAKER- Yeah. - Take an ax to the NAS.

1:08:29SPEAKER- It's a BSD problem, it seems like.

1:08:31SPEAKERAnyway. - We gotta switch to Linux.

1:08:34SPEAKER- I need like a thousand dollars worth of hard drives

1:08:37SPEAKERbefore I can, well, I mean, I guess I could mount the,

1:08:40SPEAKERI'm worried about mounting.

1:08:41SPEAKER- The ZFS pool should, asterisk,

1:08:45SPEAKERshould import right into another system.

1:08:47SPEAKER- That's what I'm afraid of.

1:08:48SPEAKER- Unless that pool was created with flags

1:08:51SPEAKERthat the ZFS on the other system does not support.

1:08:52SPEAKER- Right, yeah, and you know how I'm gonna find that out?

1:08:55SPEAKER- By going through a whole process.

1:08:57SPEAKER- But the pool is OS agnostic.

1:08:59SPEAKERYou could literally boot into Ubuntu Live USB stick

1:09:02SPEAKERand try it, I believe, I think the USB version,

1:09:05SPEAKERthe USB version may not have any of that support,

1:09:07SPEAKERbut there are non-destructive ways for you to test that

1:09:10SPEAKERand see if it works.

1:09:11SPEAKER- Oh, God, okay.

1:09:13SPEAKER- We have a laundry list of things to talk about.

1:09:15SPEAKER- Yeah. - Off the air.

1:09:17SPEAKER- And a great place to talk about things off the air

1:09:20SPEAKERis the TechPod Patreon, which you can gain access to

1:09:23SPEAKERby going to patreon.com/techpod

1:09:26SPEAKERand signing up to support the show.

1:09:30SPEAKERFor as little as $2 a month, you get access to the Patreon

1:09:32SPEAKERwhere you can have conversations like Brad's

1:09:34SPEAKERabout learning to compile stuff.

1:09:36SPEAKER- Oh, boy.

1:09:37SPEAKER- Dude, it is such a, I say this every week

1:09:40SPEAKERand it's becoming a bit, but it is incredible,

1:09:43SPEAKERthe stuff that I learned just being in the Discord.

1:09:45SPEAKER- Yeah, the range of expertise.

1:09:48SPEAKERYou know what I did yesterday

1:09:49SPEAKERas I went into the food channel?

1:09:51SPEAKER- Oh, I saw. - And this really happened.

1:09:53SPEAKERThis was not a contrivance,

1:09:54SPEAKERbut I fell asleep on the couch a couple of nights ago

1:09:57SPEAKERand left dinner sitting out on the stove.

1:09:59SPEAKERAnd I was just like,

1:10:00SPEAKER"I wonder if there are any microbiologists in our community

1:10:02SPEAKERthat have not revealed themselves yet."

1:10:03SPEAKER- Okay, so- - I'm gonna go in there

1:10:05SPEAKERand ask and just see what kind of answers I get.

1:10:08SPEAKER- Here's a, this is a constant source of frustration

1:10:11SPEAKERfrom me and my marital relationship

1:10:13SPEAKERbecause my wife has a very lax understanding

1:10:17SPEAKERor care about bacterial growth at different temperatures

1:10:21SPEAKERand thus throws things out that don't need to be thrown out

1:10:25SPEAKERand also keeps things on the counter

1:10:27SPEAKERfor terrifying lengths of time and then eats them.

1:10:30SPEAKER- Oh, wait, so you're saying she's not consistent?

1:10:32SPEAKER- She's all over the place. - Okay, I see.

1:10:33SPEAKER- And it's because we don't teach microbiology to everyone.

1:10:36SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:10:37SPEAKER- So I think, I think that we should,

1:10:40SPEAKERso I was at a conference a few years ago.

1:10:42SPEAKERI met a food safety,

1:10:44SPEAKERlike a scientist who does food safety stuff

1:10:47SPEAKERto determine what the laws are about food safety.

1:10:50SPEAKERAnd we had a lovely conversation in the TLDR

1:10:54SPEAKERwas that we need to have microbiology and food safety taught

1:10:58SPEAKERin every high school in the country.

1:11:00SPEAKERBut you know what?

1:11:01SPEAKERIf we can't do that,

1:11:02SPEAKERI'm gonna see if we can get that person on the podcast

1:11:04SPEAKERas a guest so we can talk about this 'cause this is good.

1:11:06SPEAKER- Oh yeah, we can perform a public service.

1:11:07SPEAKERSorry, somebody's ringing my front doorbell.

1:11:09SPEAKER- Oh no, it's okay.

1:11:10SPEAKER- What's the hard cutoff?

1:11:12SPEAKERWhat's the hour number for you?

1:11:13SPEAKER'Cause this was about eight to nine hours and it was pasta.

1:11:15SPEAKERSo it would be very easy to reheat thoroughly.

1:11:18SPEAKER- Well, so the problem with reheating thoroughly

1:11:20SPEAKERis it kills whatever has been growing.

1:11:22SPEAKERBut if the thing that makes you sick

1:11:24SPEAKERlike salmonella or botulism is actually a toxin

1:11:26SPEAKERproduced by the bacteria.

1:11:27SPEAKER- It's just the waste products.

1:11:28SPEAKER- Heating it doesn't actually make you not sick.

1:11:30SPEAKER- Ooh.

1:11:31SPEAKER- The good news is if you've eaten it,

1:11:34SPEAKERyou'd already be sick by now.

1:11:35SPEAKERSo you're probably fine.

1:11:36SPEAKER- So now you've put the fear of God in me.

1:11:38SPEAKER- So eight, okay, so here's the thing.

1:11:40SPEAKEREight hours is not great.

1:11:43SPEAKERIt's probably okay for pasta

1:11:45SPEAKERdepending on what else is in there.

1:11:47SPEAKER- Let's see.

1:11:47SPEAKER- Seafood, chicken, uncooked chicken.

1:11:51SPEAKER- It was.

1:11:52SPEAKER- I would not do.

1:11:53SPEAKER- It's a pretty basic pasta with some pesto and onions

1:11:55SPEAKERand like ground turkey.

1:11:57SPEAKER- Ah.

1:11:58SPEAKER- But it was very thoroughly cooked to begin with.

1:12:00SPEAKER- Yeah, so like the thing to remember

1:12:03SPEAKERis the thing that you're worried about

1:12:04SPEAKERis bacterial growth rate

1:12:05SPEAKERand that's exponential based on temperature.

1:12:07SPEAKERSo if you're starting it around

1:12:08SPEAKERlike a little bit below body temperature

1:12:10SPEAKERand going up to like 120 Fahrenheit,

1:12:13SPEAKERyou're in like bacterial growth sweet spot.

1:12:15SPEAKER- Okay.

1:12:16SPEAKER- And once you get above that,

1:12:17SPEAKERit starts killing off the bacteria

1:12:19SPEAKERso their growth slows down, so that's fine.

1:12:21SPEAKEROnce you get below that, it slows their growth

1:12:24SPEAKERso they don't replicate as much.