What's new
Pinball info

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Live streaming pinball

ronsplooter

ronsplooter

Site Supporter
Joined
Jul 21, 2011
Messages
6,485
Location
Nottingham
Alias
Chris
Does anyone have any experience live streaming video on Twitch? I've been given some Amazon vouchers and was thinking about spending them on a couple of decent webcams, mic, usb hub etc (pretty much copy what Dead Flip uses) but I'm not sure whether my Macbook is good enough.

I've got the top speed Virgin Media broadband and a quick test just now showed 13Mbps upload speed over WiFi during what's considered peak times so I think i'll be ok from that perspective as I can wire the Mac into one of those plug socket network thingys to get better speed if needed.

My Macbook Pro is a 2010 model with a Core i5, 4Gb RAM and a Geforce GT 330M 256Mb so not exactly the newest machine in the world but would it be good enough to stream 720 at 30FPS on Twitch.

Any advice appreciated :thumbs:
 
I was looking into making a camera rig the other day. I came up with the idea of a musicians lighting stand, a 90 degree rack clamp and a selfie stick the get the horizontal length and something to screw the camera in to.
 
Last edited:
I'm also in the list of people-that-have-been-mulling-this-over-since-forever.

I got a Logitech C920 http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/comput...ech-pro-c920-full-hd-webcam-12236018-pdt.html
which is good because it has standard camera mount. One of those, a tripod and any gimbal mount for a camera and you're golden.

Everyone is using Twitch for streaming, but I'd be tempted to give YouTube a bit of a go, even if only experimentally. I think the viewing quality of Twitch streams is terrible, but not sure if YouTube would do any better.
 
I think this was mentioned on Coast2coast, someone recommended not using multiple cameras of exactly the same model as it can cause issues with some streaming software
 
if you guys can come up with something reproducible then i'd be up for this too.
imagine - a few of us have the same machine all set up the same (angle, no of balls, outlanes, software version etc) and play a game while watching each other......

jesus kill me now. am i really even contemplating this? talk about a sad bastard. if i only had some real friends locally i could just invite them in for a game instead .....

/BANG!
/drip
/drip
/drip
/
/drip
/drip
/
/
/
/
/drip

/

/

/.
 
I bit the bullet. Just put £50 in Amazon's pocket for a load more gear. Will report back :)

So my list so far is

Microphone boom stand: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002PAZZ9E
I was looking at lighting stands for ages, because they seem taller/longer boom arm, but I hear some people recommending this, so I'll see how it goes.

Clamp: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00DGGW6ZW
Not cheap, but looks pretty sturdy. I just got the one for now, but if it's decent I may get another for...

Light: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004JMG3YC
Not sure about this. Suspect it will reflect off the glass and be useless, but it's cheap and will be used as a worklight if all goes bad.

Camera: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006A2Q81M
Bought this a year or two ago when I first started dreaming. Have used it for some HD timelapse stuff, but not much else yet. Picture is decent, not sure about sound yet.

Will see how this lot goes, then consider adding more cameras for DMD and so on..
 
Last edited:
Anyone got any thoughts on the Macbook though? Camera's and stands are all sortable from Amazon but it's whether my Mac is up to the job of doing the streaming that is the big question. I don't want to buy a new computer just to stream pinball :D

I've posted this question in one of the threads on Pinside as well.
 
What spec is the Macbook? I'm probably going to try this with my laptop (Core i5, 4GB RAM) first and see how it copes. I suspect it will manage with a single HD stream, but probably choke if I add another one or two cameras.
Edit: as Carl said
 
Chris, if your Mac has a webcam, is there any way you can do a broadcast from that as a single camera to test it?

Ustream is also an option with Twitch and youtube.
 
It will be fine. People using i7 CPUs are encoding 3x feeds in to one.
Click to expand...

So if you want to run the playfield, DMD and player cam's it's going to need some grunt! I'm not too fussed about the player cam but it would be good to do the playfield and DMD ones.

What spec is the Macbook?
Click to expand...

Core i5@2.4Ghz dual core, 4Gb RAM so sounds similar to your laptop :thumbs: I've also got my desktop (that I barely use) that's got an i7 920 overclocked to around 4GHz with 8Gb gaming RAM that I could use instead I guess.

Chris, if your Mac has a webcam, is there any way you can do a broadcast from that as a single camera to test it?
Click to expand...

Good idea mate :thumbs: I'll have a play over the weekend and see what I can get working.
 
ok so some of you who have nothing better to do on a Tuesday evening (like me) watched a bodge job stream i did to twitch, it was just a proof of concept more than anything proper. £20 logitech cam borrowed from work & laptop webcam, the logitech camera was taped to a T piece of wood that you prop up the back of machines to get the legs on :)

Used the free version of xsplit, very easy to setup and use. With proper equipment it would be simple enough to setup and also use on the go with a laptop. mine is an i5 3210M, 6GB RAM, nothing special and still streamed out at 720p 30fps ok.

Best of luck to those who are going to make an effort at this.
 
So I thought I'd post a follow up to my (lack of) progress. This will be long and boring and mostly just me whinging.

This camera stand (microphone stand) : http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002PAZZ9E
It's ok, nothing special. Will not span over the back of the pin, so has to go at the side. Plenty high enough reach for the overhead, and if it's at the side of the pin the vertical part of the stand can then be used to mount a camera pointing at the DMD (and another pointing at the player)

Clamp: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00DGGW6ZW
Really fancy. A bit too fancy to be honest. For the second (and third) clamps I went with a cheaper one like this: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Motorcycl...nt-Tripod-For-Camera-1-4-Screw-Clamp-Bracket-
Super cheap, but not great for gripping the slim pole. Needs a bit of cloth or something to help grip better.

Software: I'm quite liking OBS. It's free, and open source. So unlike XSplit it doesn't limit the number of 'scenes' you can set up. You need to use the multiplatform version to be able to rotate the camera image (the standard windows only version doesn't do that)

Got all that lot working on my mini pc, but to make it useful I needed a longer usb cable (and a usb hub). So this is where everything goes wrong and gets frustrating. The long usb cable (10m, powered) doesn't work on my mini pc. It just flat out says its unsupported. I presume my mini pc isn't powering the usb with enough juice. The cable works on my laptop just great, but then I can't power three cameras on my laptop, I suspect its saturating the USB bandwidth

USB cameras are also a bit of a pain. You can't rename the devices, so when you have two (or more) logitech c920 cameras and you want to set the focus on one, you have to diddle around until you find the right one. There is a bug in OBS too where you cant adjust the properties of a second (or third) camera with the same name, so you have to back out of OBS, find the camera, set it up, then go back to OBS. Getting the focus and picture adjustment right is a PITA too, because you need to be looking at the laptop screen to get an idea of if you're in focus. If there was a screen on the usb camera it would be a lot easier.

So its all a bit annoying and making me think that I've gone the wrong route. This usb camera solution doesn't scale well. It works (just) if I have a laptop or computer right next to the pin, and all cameras using short cables and no usb hub. But that's not very transportable or practical for setting up recording multiple pins at an event (like I wanted to)

So I think I need to spend much more money. Proper desktop pc with a hdmi capture card and proper hdmi camcorder cameras. I'm not defeated yet... but I am a bit daunted at the amount of money I'm thinking of pouring into this little project.
 
Have you looked at the cheap and cheerful gopro copies ?

You can get three of them for less than a go pro. they have no screens unless you go for a sj6000 but you can connect to them with a smart phone (via bluetooth) and check focus etc
I have one and its very good, i used to have a go pro until someone borrowed it and then they disappeared.

Actually aliexpress have the sj6000 at £42 at the moment which is less than what i paid for the sj5000,
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-...l-camera-1080P-30FPS-2-0-LCD/32239305082.html

I got mine from deal extreme www.dx.com search for action cam.
If you dont need full 1080p you can get a 720p for £23.
 
Periscope will do it on one of Carl's selfie sticks..
 
Wishful thinking ;) Do appreciate the heads up though. Had a quick look and they could be the ticket. Looks like they have hdmi output, and run at 720p/60fps. And cheap enough too. Thanks kindly for the suggestion!

(And thanks also for your generosity again on eBay Ian. Item on the way!)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom