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  1. #1
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    How To Stream Games w/ FME and Justin.tv

    As requested, here's a small tutorial on getting yourself set up to stream your console and/or PC games onto justin.tv. As a preface, keep in mind that if you have low-tier internet with a really shitty upload speed, streaming is probably not for you.

    Also I am only covering jtv and Flash Media Encoder because that is what I have experience using. Posts in this thread of 'USE XXXX INSTEAD ITS BETTER' will be met with infractions, if you prefer other software to stream go write your own damn how-to.

    To start off, things you will need to download:

    Flash Media Encoder 3.2(You will need to make an Adobe account if you don't have one already, it's both the registration and the software itself are free.)

    VHScreenCap

    You will likely also want to get an application called Virtual Audio Cable. VAC is not free($30) and the trial version basically has an audio watermark, though the full version is out there in the torrent world, I'm not going to link it but if you know how to use a search engine you should be able to find it without much trouble.

    Setting Up Your Justin.tv Account

    To start, you will need to make an account at Justin.tv. It's pretty straightforward, sign up, do the email verification, the click the little guy that says 'allow' on the home broadcast page.



    From there you will want to name your channel and check the settings for it, click up top on your user name and go to Settings > Channel. You can give it a password if you'd like to make it private, if you're going to be streaming copyrighted material it'd probably be in your best interests to do so. I highly recommend not setting the genre to 'Gaming', doing so will force your channel to be hosted on Twitch.tv instead of jtv, and Twitch is full of awful redirects that take forever. I just keep the default 'Social' genre.

    Next, click on the 'Justin.tv' link in the top left corner, and click 'Desktop' on the next screen where it displays the different types of media you can stream. On this screen, you'll want to click the 'Config' button down in the FME area, this will prompt you to download an XML file. Make sure to not give out this file, this contains the info needed to stream to your channel, anyone with access to it can put whatever they want under your username.



    Streaming Your Desktop

    Next, you'll need to configure FME and VHScrCap to stream your desktop. After installing FME and VHScrCap, launch FME, but don't do anything with it just yet, just leave it running. There should be a 'Configure VHScrCap' application in your start menu under SplitMediaLabs, launch this as well.



    Highlight the line for FME and hit 'Select'.





    Under the actual config screens, you'll first want to set the capture area. If you are playing fullscreen games, you can set it to whatever your desktop resolution is, otherwise set it to the resolution that you're playing the game at(higher than 1920x1080 is probably not advisable, but I only have a 1080 monitor so I haven't tried it myself). If you click on 'Select Window' it'll open up a little thinger that you can drag to the size/position you want.

    On the next tab, you may have to tinker a bit to find what works. I set the output to 640x360 to keep the 16:9 aspect so you don't end up with black letterboxes or stretching. Some people recommend not touching anything else, I had to play around a bit to find what made the stream both crisp-looking and smooth and what you see there is just what I came up with at the time. I didn't notice the option I checked to resize pre-capture so I may go back and change that. Console games tend to run at 60fps, if that's what you're streaming you probably want to set it to that. Close out of the config GUI once you're set.

    Edit: After toying with settings more I did in fact not need to change anything on the 2nd settings tab outside of the fps. The other boxes can remain unchecked as the transition from 1920x1080 happens in FME.


    Next, go back to your session of FME. Go to File > Open Profile and open the XML you downloaded from the jtv page. This should autopopulate your stream ID on the right side and the justin.tv Flash Media Server address as well.



    For the most part I just used the same settings as what I did on VSScrCap. Select VHScrCap as the device, and change the 'Preset' field to 'Custom' if it isn't already. For the format, this kind of depends on your hardware/internet capabilities. VPS is a bit less resource-intensive, H.264 is a bit higher-quality. If using H.264 I think you're going to need at least level 3.2, I have no idea the differences between H.264 levels so I just picked what FME prompted me to. Set the output to something streaming-friendly, you probably don't want to go higher than 1280x720. As far as the bitrate, it depends on the quality that you're trying to stream, but for HD video you want to keep in the 1200-2000kbps range. Keep your audience in mind, if you set the bitrate too high those with shitty internet will have trouble watching your feed smootly.

    Now comes the sticky part: Audio. VHScrCap is video-only, so you will need a work-around for the audio. Your options include putting your mic to your speakers and setting that as your audio device in FME, running your audio line out straight into your audio line in using a 3.5mm-to-3.5mm cord, or using Virtual Audio Cable.

    I use VAC myself, this video is pretty good at explaining how to set it up(it also goes over most of what I just did re: VHScrCap):



    If using VAC, after launching the VAC control panel, go to your playback devices menu in window(usually right-clicking the speaker icon in the taskbar will get you there). Set 'Line 1' as your default playback device, then go to 'Recording Devices'. Highlight 'Line 1' and hit 'Properties'. From there you can edit the playback device of Line 1, select your speakers/headphones/whatever you normally play your audio out of. This makes Line 1(VAC) the default playback device, but plays the sound itself through your normal audio device. Within FME, change the audio device to Line 1.

    That's about it in terms of streaming the desktop itself, start the stream, launch the game, stream away.

    Streaming Your Console Games

    In order to stream from your consoles, you're going to also need a bit of hardware, in the form of a capture device. There's PCI cards and USB devices, I myself use the AverMedia AverTV HD-DVR. Most mid-grade non-professional capture devices are not HDCP compliant, so if you're intending to stream from your PS3 or other HDCP device you're going to need to use YPbPR cables instead of HDMI. For the 360, you may need to use component as well depending on your setup.

    If you are playing on your PC monitor or using your TV as your monitor, you can just use some form of recording/preview software as a viewer, and then use the above method of desktop streaming(this is what I do myself). For the Aver card, the software it comes with is junk but there are better updated versions on Aver's site. For other capture devices, I can't speak to the quality of included software but you can generally use VirtualDub with most of them.

    If you want to play on your TV normally and just stream the output of your console, you'll need some form of cable splitter, so you can route one output to the TV and one to the card. In my experiences with the Aver card, FME will not recognize the HDMI input, so if I were to go this route I'd need to use component cable, and component splitters get a little pricey. Within FME you'd just set the capture card as the video and audio devices and adjust the settings as needed, it's pretty straightforward.

    -----------------------------------------------

    That's about it, I'm not an A/V expert by any means but I'll try to help anyone with questions, and I'm still in the process of messing with settings devices to improve my own streaming.

  2. #2
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    Hello! Thank you for this great and very helpful tutorial. And I always get asked for such tutorial online and I usually have to just shrug it off because there are many steps involved. But now I can just refer them to this site, I was thinking of doing something like this myself as well but glad you took the initiative instead!
    Thanks again,
    Edward

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