[Rant] Live streaming to Twitch

Now that NVidia has released a version of GeForce Experience that allows us to stream gameplay videos straight to Twitch, I had been playing around with it.

Click here to visit my Twitch channel. I hope you'd subscribe. ^^

 

The day before yesterday I live streamed NFS Rivals, which I deleted because it was a crappy gameplay videos. Last night I recorded Crysis 3 which turned out to be quite nice. I still don't record the audio from the mic.

 

I am still experimenting because this is completely a new thing to me. It seems that you can upload the gameplay videos to YouTube fraught from Twitch but I still don't know how to. I have connected with YouTube from Twitch settings but I think I need to explicitly tell it to upload the videos to YouTube.

 

One more thing. GeForce Experience doesn't seem to save the Twitch account credentials. I have to enter them every time I reboot. Every time I try to do a live stream, I get a crossed indicator that shows as if it is not working. When I checked the ShadowPlay settings, it was not logged into my Twitch account.

 

# Fount it. You will receive an email when you can save the Twitch broadcasts.  From there, you have to first save the video in Twitch and then explicitly ask it to upload to YouTube.

 

Here’s one of the videos that I uploaded through Twitch to YouTube. (Hey, while at it, why don’t you subscribe to my YouTube channel as well?)

Crysis 3 MP TDM on Williamsburg

 

What about the performance? There is definitely a lag between the upstream and the downstream. If you checked out the archived videos you’ll see me turning to the left of me. That is to check if the stream is working on my laptop. It was a bit laggy on the MacBook Air, so I lowered the quality to “low” setting in GeForce Experience. Hey, a lot of Sri Lankans cannot watch the videos because of the darn caps imposed by SLT. What a retarded ISP!!!

 

Anyways, I will continue to live stream videos to Twitch, and later archive them to YouTube. It seems easier than saving, editing and manually uploading to YouTube.

[Rant] How much data do you use on the phone?

When I upgraded to the iPhone 5S, I got LTE connectivity. Until then I had been using the iPhone 4S with unlimited 3G data. Even though it was unlimited, practically it I couldn't even use up 2GB per month. My average monthly usage was around 1.3GB. It was hard work. 3G speeds were so bad with SoftBank's congested 3G data network.

According to the in built monitoring, I have used 12GB in the last 2 months. The usage in the first few days was high, because I had 7.5GB to use for 2 weeks. The billing date is 10th of each month. I bought the phone on the 25th of September. They gave me the full 7.5GB allowance until the 10th.

While LTE on the iPhone 5S is amazing, SoftBank put some restrictions how much data you can download using LTE. There are two main restrictions.

• You can only download 7.5GB (7GB without tethering) per month you hit the data caps
• On three consecutive days, the total amount downloadable before you hit the data caps 

If you hit the data caps, it would be just as if you don’t have internet on the phone. You can upload stuff at full speed though. (YouTube Capture anyone?)

Sucks!

If there weren't such limitations, I could have easily used up more than 20GB per month. Right now, I don't use it for anything else other than YouTube and Browsing. I download apps and podcasts when I’m connected to Wi-Fi.

YouTube is the killer though. You cannot change the streaming quality in the YouTube app when I’m connected to a mobile data connection. Quite a dumb move Google! I mean, it is fine if that the app wants to automatically select the best quality according to the speed of the data connection. But what if you want to watch the videos at 360p all the time because you don’t have an unlimited data connection? Maybe I should download the YouTube videos and sync them to the phone. Still I have to use the dreaded iTunes. That’s the crappiest software to land the Windows application eco system. But still, I don’t want to go through the restricted speeds. So I would have to give in to iTunes.

[Guide] What are the best settings to encode videos when uploading game play videos to YouTube?

I have uploaded a lot of game play videos in the past. I have almost always used Windows Live Movie Maker to add a starting and an ending to the videos because it is a very easy thing to do.

 

But the issue is, regardless of the quality of the video file that I upload to YouTube, the final output after YouTube does its thing is very low quality. Now that I can easily record videos at 1080p all thanks to NVidia ShadowPlay, the file sizes can get pretty large.

 

Here are two videos I recorded using ShadowPlay and edited using Movie Maker. The first one was saved using YouTube profile. The second one was saved using the High Definition profile. The file size of the original save file with the High Definition profile is about 4 times larger. That video is perfect when watched locally. But after uploading to YouTube, the final quality is about the same as the one using the YouTube profile.

 

Windows Live Movie Maker - YouTube profile

 

 

Windows Live Movie Maker - High Definition profile

 

 

As you see, the quality of those videos totally SUCKS!

So what the best settings for YouTube?

I went on the internet to see if there are recommended settings to use with HandBrake when uploading to YouTube. Windows Live Movie Maker isn't flexible enough to fine-tune the settings. After reading few articles that got me nowhere, I came across a guide posted by Google themselves.

 

Need for Speed Most Wanted 2012 game play videos recorded using MSI AfterBurner

It was about time I played a new car racing game. I actually heartily followed only one such series – Need for Speed. Even though they lost their path midway, they have brought back the style of play we used to love. The Need for Speed Most Wanted was the best in the series and I really loved the couple of Underground games.

Need for Speed Most Wanted (2012) is their latest title. They maybe going with the same name to show that they are back on track. Unlike the old times, I didn’t try to get hold of the game right on the first day and finish it off in one or two days. I’m old now, I take things slow. :P

But anyways, after playing for about a week, I managed to finish the single player mode. My driving skills are bad. I hit the posts and cars too often. There is something about handling the car though. Handling is still not as natural (or maybe it’s the other way) as the pre-Pro Street titles were. I guess that the physics engine underneath is still based on the one that came with Pro Street. It’s not that hard, but it is not that smooth either. (Arcade vs. Simulation? Is Most Wanted 2012 a simulation?)

One thing I should say is that this game needs pretty heft specs if you want to use the ultra settings. It actually utilizes both the CPU and the GPU resources as much as it can. If you have a deficiency in either end, you will notice it. I didn’t have much trouble with my PC though. ;)

Need for Speed: Most Wanted 2012 tested with 12 CPUs
Need for Speed: Most Wanted 2012 tested with 14 video cards

Here’s my 22 video YouTube playlist. =)

Why can’t Movie Maker upload to YouTube in the background?

I wanted to upload few videos to YouTube which I edited in Movie Maker and happened to come across two incapabilities. Don’t developers at Microsoft ever come across there?

The incapabilities

YouTube would not remember your username and password once you re-launch the app. Why the heck is that? How hard is it for them to save the username and password? Why can’t it be bundled with your Windows Live ID like everywhere else?