How to view your stream chat overtop of your games

While streaming, it is very important to be able to monitor your channel’s chat so you can properly engage and interact with your community.  To be able to do this you need to be able to be playing your game while keeping an eye on a chat window.  The most common solution to needing to be viewing two important program windows in short periods of time is to have two computer monitors.  One for your full screen game and the second for your chat and any other additional windows you like to have open during your stream.  While a simple solution, it’s not a very appealing to those who do not have the fiscal means of obtaining a second monitor.  Another solution is using the twitch/YouTube gaming app on your phone or tablet to monitor your chat, but that involves needing a stand for your device to ensure you can view it without straining yourself. So what is the single monitor streamer to do?

Thankfully, there are a couple of options which can solve this problem.

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A free Windows only program called “See Through Windows” does exactly what it says on the tin.  It lets you see through windows… go figure.  It can also pin those windows to the top of all of your other open programs so you can always view it.  So, with this program you can take whatever your current method of viewing your stream chat is, whether it be popping out the chat from your channel dashboard, using a 3rd party program such as Chatty or an IRC client, and then activate “See Through Windows” to keep your chat pinned on top of your game screen and also making it semi-transparent enough that it doesn’t interfere with your gaming while still being able to read your chat.

See Through Windows can be downloaded from the following site:

http://www.mobzystems.com/tools/seethroughwindows/

Main options panel for “See Through Windows”

Chatty window with no transparency (Left). Transparency using “See Through Windows” on Chatty (Right)

Transparent and pinned Chatty window over top of Euro Truck Simulator 2

A second option is to use a 3rd party chat tool which already includes the functions to pin on top of windows and be transparent baked in.  Enter, Restream.io chat.

Restream.io itself is a service for broadcasting your livestream to multiple streaming sites at the same time. So, instead of just streaming to Twitch.tv, using restream.io you could link your twitch.tv account as well as your YouTube gaming channel, hitbox.tv, beampro, etc…

Along with this service, they have a standalone program called Restream.io chat for viewing all of the chat windows from these multiple sites in one handy window.  Now, you don’t need to be using multiple live streaming sites or using Restream.io to broadcast your stream to make this tool work.  You do, however, need to create an account and link your preferred live streaming site account to allow it access to your chat.

The program can be found here: https://restream.io/chat?dashboard=1

Unfortunately, just like See Through Windows, this program is Windows only currently.

Once your account is set up, you can download and install the Restream.io Chat client and log in with your user credentials.  You’ll have the option of seeing the chat or chats of each live streaming service you added to your restream.io account all in one chat window.  If you just want to view one chat, then just add the one service.  The appearance settings in the program (seen below) give you the option to enable transparency, pinning the chat window to always be on top, along with other options for font sizes and the like.

Appearance options panel in Restream Chat

Restream Chat in full transparency overlayed on top of Euro Truck Simulator 2

If you wish to stream your games fullscreen while still being able to view your chat, you should keep in mind that you may need to use “Fullscreen Borderless Window” mode in the graphics/visual settings of each game.  Otherwise, the chat windows may not stay on top of the game.

Viola! Now you can stream your games while still viewing your chat and no need to window tab or fumble with your phone or tablet.  Unless you feel that method works better.

Got any other options for keeping tabs on your live stream chat while streaming with only using a single monitor? Leave them in the comments below.

OBS Studio Automatic Scene Switcher

OBS and OBS Studio both have a nifty feature for switching your displayed scene while a particular window is active, the Automatic Scene Switcher plugin.  I feel it’s an under-utilized feature which is incredibly easy to setup.

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In OBS on the top menu select ‘tools’ and then ‘automatic scene switcher’.

You will get a screen similar to that shown below.

OBS Automatic Scene Switcher

So, how does it work?

The first drop-down menu at the top allows you to choose from any currently open windows on your computer and will determine that when that window/program is the active window the scene switcher will kick in.

Make sure the window/program you want to choose is already open/started in the background before you open the scene switcher tool to ensure that it shows up on the drop-down list.

The second drop-down is to choose which scene OBS will switch to when the appropriate window is active.

After you have both your program/window and scene chosen, just click the plus symbol ‘+’ midway down the window and you will have your first automatic scene switcher ready to go. 

• When no windows matches: You can choose to either have the scene switch do nothing and keep the active scene it’s currently on, or you can have it default to a specific scene.

• Check active window title every: Time in milliseconds on how often OBS will check the current window title.  The default is 300ms and I have found this to be quite snappy.

• Scene Switcher is: Inactive/Active, the current state of the scene switcher.

• Start: Press this to make the automatic scene switcher active during your live stream/recording.  Pretty straight forward.

When would you use this tool?

You can get creative and use this for just about anything to save time from manually switching your scenes during certain events.  For example, some people do full-screen webcam social interactions prior to starting a game on stream, ending a stream or even when waiting in a long queue for a game to start.  If you set up the scene switcher to change to your “social” scene when the game windows are not active, you can save time on doing that manually once you are in a game queue or finished with that game.

Co-op Streams with Skype/Google Hangout Video

Using a web cam to show off your reactions to funny, scary and downright crazy events in games has now become commonplace among Twitch.tv and Youtube gaming streamers.

Just as commonplace is the streaming of co-operative game sessions while including your friends/family audio over Skype or google hangouts.

If only we could meld these two ideas of co-op streams and web cams together… oh wait, we can!

Do note one very important piece of information when proceeding with this method.

**Start OBS Studio FIRST and ensure it has started your web cam**

This will ensure that OBS Studio is the program utilizing your web cam and not Skype/Google Hangouts.  Otherwise, your web cam footage won’t show up in OBS Studio, and thus, on stream.

The downfall to this is that Skype/Hangouts won’t be able to use the same web cam you are using for OBS Studio.  In other words, your friends won’t be able to see you.  You could fix this by having two web cams… I suppose…

• Start up OBS Studio and then Skype or Google Hangouts or whatever video chat program you use. Start a call with your co-op gaming partner(s).

• In OBS Studio while showing the appropriate scene you want to add your friend’s web cam footage to, add a new source -> “Window Capture”

Add a new Window Capture Source

• Window: Choose the Skype.exe/”Friends Name” window from the drop down list.

• Window Match Priority: If you are going to be streaming with the same person most/all of the time, change the “Window Match Priority” to “Window Title”.  This will ensure that the next time you call up your friend their screen will show up right away. Otherwise, you may have to re-select “Skype.exe/”friends name” from the window drop down each time you start up OBS.

• Capture Cursor: You can choose whether you want to “capture cursor” or not.  I prefer to uncheck this box.

• Multi-adapter Compatibility: Leave this unchecked.  Using this can result in some screen flickering from selected window source.

Window Capture Properties

After hitting “Okay” you now have your friends Skype/Hangout window… the whole damn thing…

For Skype, minimize the chat section of the Skype window so it’s just your friend’s video feed.  The icon should look like a speech bubble as of this guides writing.  No need to this for Hangouts as the chat feed doesn’t show up automatically (if I recall correctly).

The result of the Window Capture

Now let’s crop that puppy.

• Click on the Skype/Hangout window on your main OBS display window and you’ll see the red box surround it with the circles indicating where you can click and resize.
• Hold down Alt and grab the circle handle from whichever side you want to start cropping the window from.  The goal is the crop it from any/all sides you need to until you are only left with your friend’s web cam footage and not all of the UI surrounding it.

A cropped Window Capture

Aaaaand you’re done!  Ready to co-op stream some games and being able to show off both of your reactions as you go.

Happy Streaming!

Co-opulous OBS Settings

The weekly Co-opulous stream works on a rather small upload rate.  My current internet plan restricts me a 2.5 Mbps upload rate. To accommodate this small upload rate while still trying to maintain a decent video appearance and sound quality in order to entertain viewers we use the below settings in OBS Studio.

You can consider this to be a TL:DR of the detailed settings explanation post for those that also have an upload speed of 2-3 Mbps.

For high frame rate games (First Person Shooters);
Rescale Output: 960×540
FPS: 48

For lower frame rate games (Real Time Strategy)
Rescale Output: 1280×720
FPS: 30

 

Do you have different settings that work great for you?  Please share them in the comments below.

Removing Background noise with OBS Studio

Part of setting up a successful stream with live commentary is clear audio.  Most any microphone is fine for providing commentary, but it’s important to ensure that the audio you are providing is coming through with as little background noise as possible.  Thankfully, OBS Studio gives us some of these tools built in to help lower that background noise while still making your voice heard.

On the main screen of OBS you can click the gear on your microphone audio device and click “Filters”.

Filters Screen

In this screen, you are given access to adding different audio filters to your mic track.

I’ve had the best results with adding “Noise suppression“, “Noise Gate“, and “Gain” in that particular order.

Noise Suppression

The Noise suppression filter can help block out background noise.  Add the suppression filter and leave it at the default settings to start.  Then either start a broadcast or record yourself.  Try to be silent in your recording/broadcast and move the slider up and down to change the suppression level in dB. When you find you can’t hear any background noise or very little, try talking to make sure your voice still comes out okay.  If it’s a bit quiet, then you don’t need to worry too much as that can be corrected with the “Gain” filter.

Noise Gate

The Noise Gate filter sets an opening and closing dB threshold for when your mic is active and when it basically mutes itself.  So, you can have it so it doesn’t pick up bits of background noise by setting your opening threshold above your normal ambient sound levels when you aren’t speaking.  Great for times when you have a constant “hum” in the background or street noise which could be picked up when you aren’t speaking.  You’ll have to experiment with what open and close threshold works best for you. Try starting with defaults and keep on testing.  “Attack time” is how quickly the filter reacts to basically unmuting your mic once the sound level goes above the opening threshold.  Release time is how long the mic continues to pick up sound after your sound goes below the close threshold.  Adjust these to your liking.  I prefer a quick attack time with a decent release time to ensure I don’t get my voice cut off if I end up speaking too softly near the end of a sentence.

Gain

Finally, the Gain filter. Gain allows you to up the sound level of your mic track in dB.  I use this after applying the first two filters to make sure my voice track comes through loud and clear on stream.  You may or may not need to utilize this filter if you feel your voice levels are fine.

That’s it!  This should help remove some of that pesky background noise in your broadcasts and recordings while keeping your voice track front and centre for your audience.

Do you have any other tips for removing background noise during broadcasts/recordings? Let me know in the comments below.

Fix for Black Screen in OBS

A common problem which I’ve seen on many forums and subreddits is that a game is not showing up in OBS after adding the game window as a source.  Instead of being able to see the game screen in OBS, they are greeted with a giant black box.

The fix for this? 

Open OBS as an administrator.

How does one do this?

Hold Shift -> Right Click the OBS icon -> Choose the option “Run as administrator”.

This has fixed the black box error which I’ve encountered in both Star Trek Online and Darkest Dungeon.  I’m sure there are other games which fall victim to this problem.

OBS Studio Settings

 

OBS settings for optimal streaming performance and viewer pleasure can be difficult to balance when one is just starting out in the world of streaming.  The biggest question that comes up is “what is the best OBS settings for <X>? where ‘X’ can be a certain game, an Internet bandwidth or a set of computer specs.  The unfortunate answer is there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution when it comes to setting up OBS.  The below information may help demystify some of these settings and help you on your way to hitting that ‘broadcast’ button sooner than you thought.

General

Starting out easy.  Settings are pretty self-explanatory.

• Language: Set the language localisation
• Theme: Light or Dark themes
• Show confirmation dialog: If you feel like you may accidentally start streaming/recording. This should help you out.
• Source Alignment Snapping: This is for the elements you add to your scenes, such as a webcam or overlays. The elements can be snapped to the sides of the screen, in the centre both vertically and horizontally and lastly you can have elements snap together.  The default is set to “Enable”.

Stream

• Stream Type: If you are going to be streaming to Twitch/Hitbox/Beam/Youtube gaming you just leave this on “Streaming Services”
• Service: Lots of choices such as Twitch, YouTube gaming, Hitbox, etc…
• Show all services: This gives you a bigger list of streaming services to choose from in the drop down menu.
• Server: Now things can get interesting. Depending on the streaming service you choose depends on what servers are available and where. Your best bet is to choose a server that is geographically closest to you. In the case of Twitch, you may see that there are several options in your general area (such as East or West coast).  If you truly want to choose the most optimal Twitch server you may be interested in using the Twitch bandwidth tester provided by Team Liquid.
•  http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/tech-support/478845-twitchtest-twitch-bandwidth-tester
• Stream key: You will find this on the streaming website you choose to use, most likely under the settings panel.

Output

The meat and potatoes of every stream.

• Output Mode: The default is set to “Simple” and it really lives up to it’s name. It’s too simple.I highly suggest changing this to ‘Advanced’ so you can start modifying the settings you really need.

Streaming Tab

• Audio Track: The more elements you add which provide audio, the more tracks you end up with.
• Encoder: x264 gives you the best results in terms of picture quality.  QuickSync and NVIDIA’s NVENC are also options, but the quality is just not there yet for live streaming.
• Enforce Streaming Service encoder settings: Keep this unchecked.  There is no transparency one what this option actually does.
• Re-scale Output: Yes, if you want to re-scale your stream resolution.  720p is a popular rescale option.
• Rate Control: CBR (Constant Bit Rate) is required for Twitch.tv. VBR just doesn’t look that great even though it saves a bit in the bandwidth department if you are playing games with low motion.
• Bitrate: This is based on your internet upload speed.  The max setting for a non-partnered Twitch broadcaster is 3500.  Hitbox.tv allows higher.  The higher the value, the better looking the picture quality.  The rub is that the higher you go the more you will alienate audiences which don’t have a good internet connection and mobile users.  They will be stuck trying to watch a stream which will constantly buffer.  Find a happy medium somewhere between 1500-2500.
• Use Custom Buffer Size: Check this off.
• Buffer Size: Make your buffer the same size as your Bitrate.
• Keyframe Interval: 2. For Twitch and Hitbox, this must be set to ‘2’. Other services may vary.
• CPU Usage Preset: Default is Very Fast and for most newcomers, this is where you’ll want to keep it.  If you have a really power CPU in your computer you can try upping this to ‘Faster’.  Better yet, if you have a dedicated computer for streaming while you game on a different computer then this value can go higher into the ‘Fast’ or ‘Medium’ categories. If you find you are getting warnings about ‘high encoding times’ reduce this to ‘Super Fast’ or ‘Ultra Fast’ to relieve some pressure on your CPU.
• Profile: Main and High. Main is the default and what is recommended for Twitch.  High is recommended for Hitbox.tv.  So far the internet consensus is that High works, but some mobile users may have issues and are why main is the default.
• Tune: None. Leave this as none. There are a bunch of tuning options such as ‘Film’ and ‘Zero Latency’.  If you Google ‘x264 tune settings’ you can get a breakdown of what each one does and you will see why they don’t apply to live streaming very well.  Local recordings could be a different story.
• Variable Frame rate (VFR): Keep this unchecked. We want a Constant Frame Rate.
• x264 options: You can use x264 flags if you know them.  Most people won’t need to touch this.

Recording Tab

• Type: Standard
• Recording Path: Where your recordings will be saved.
• Generate name without space: If you want filenames which don’t use spaces.
• Recording format: MP4 is recommended especially if you are going to be using editing software to cut together something else from your recordings.
• Audio Track: This lets you choose which audio tracks you want to include in your recording.  For example, if you want to leave out your Skype audio track from your recording you can uncheck the appropriate track #.
• Encoder: If you are recording on the same computer that you are streaming from then you will want to try using QuickSync or NVENC to record gameplay while x264 does the streaming. NVENC works perfectly fine for recordings.
• Re-scale Output: If you want the resolution of your recorded files to be different than your base resolution.
• Custom Mixer Settings: If you know custom flags to use in this field you can, but most people can probably keep this blank.
• Rate control: For recordings, you can use VBR as this will keep the resulting file sizes a bit smaller.  You can also experiment with using ABR (Average bit rate).
• Bitrate: Experiment between 20000 and 40000.  The higher end will improve the quality of resulting video, but will also make the file size larger than if you were to use a smaller bit rate. I find 25000 or 30000 to be a good middle ground.
• Keyframe interval: Leave it as ‘0’. No need to mess with this for recording.
• Preset:  These are ranges of latency’s VS quality of the video files.  I’ve been using the ‘Blueray’ option with good results. Try to experiment with what matches your desired video quality with what your hardware can handle.
• Profile: Leaving as ‘main’ will be fine.
• Level: I leave this as ‘auto’.
• Use Two-Pass Encoding: You can check this if you like, but if you are recording and streaming at the same time you may find some performance issues.  Two-pass encoding enables your video to look slightly better and has the added bonus of making your video file marginally smaller. I don’t use this in order to save on resources.
• GPU:  Amount of GPU power to use in recording.

Audio Tab

• Audio Bitrate: 128 is a good place to set this, or 160 if you have the bandwidth to spare and are an audiophile who can actually hear the difference between the two bitrates.
• Name: You can set a custom name for each audio track if you prefer.

Audio

• Same Rate: 48khz or 44.4khz (requires AAC). You probably won’t notice much difference between these two. Stick with 44.4khz.  If you have Itunes or Quicktime installed then you will have the AAC codec required for 44.4khz.
• Channels: Stereo or Mono
• Desktop Audio Device: Your main desktop audio device.
• Desktop Audio Device 2: Used when you have Virtual audio cables set to separate audio from different programs. An example of this would be having Skype audio in one channel and the game audio in another.
• Mic/Auxillary Audio Device: This will be your default Microphone.
• Mic/Auxillary Audio Device 2: If you have more than one microphone.
• Mic/Auxillary Audio Device 3: If you have more than one microphone.
• Enable push-to-mute: Exactly as it sounds. Set a hotkey to press and hold when you want to mute your mic.
• Push-to-mute delay in milliseconds: The delay in milliseconds for when the push-to-mute executes.
• Enable push to talk: Exactly as it sounds. Set a hotkey to press and hold when you want to talk and have your mic pick it up.
• Push-to-talk delay in milliseconds: The delay in milliseconds for when the push-to-talk executes.

Video

• Base (Canvas) Resolution: Your base screen resolution.
• Output (Scaled) Resolution: This is the resolution you want to downscale your base resolution to.  Something to keep in mind is, if you want to stream at 720p but want to record local records at 1080p then you must leave this output resolution left at 1920×1080.  If you choose a downscale then that will be the highest resolution you can choose from when setting up your streaming and recording resolutions. 
• Downscale filter: Bilinear, Bicubic (16 samples), Lanczos (32 samples). Makes the picture sharper depending on which filter you choose.  Most modern computers may only see a small performance hit by using Lanczos filtering.  If you are on older hardware, try Bicubic or just stay with Bilinear.
• FPS Values: 29.97,30,48,59.97,60. The frames per second you are broadcasting at.  The default value is 30 and it’s pretty safe to say that this is where you should stay especially if you are trying to broadcast at 1080p and have a good upload speed. You can look at using 48 and 60 if you are streaming at 720p or lower, but you’ll still need a good upload speed.  29.97/59.97 are used if you use a TV as a monitor which only has a refresh rate of 59Hz.

Hotkeys

This is all pretty self-explanatory.  You can set up any arrangement of hotkeys as you like for Starting/Stopping Broadcast/Recordings, switch scenes and even hide and show any/all elements that you have added to your scenes.

Advanced

Video

• Renderer: Direct3D 11 is what you want here. The other option is OpenGL which may not perform as well.
• Video Adapter: Never used it.
• Color Format: ‘NV12’ is perfectly fine here. You can experiment, especially if you are using a capture card as some issues can arise with the default setting.
• YUV Color Space: It’s fine to leave this as ‘601’.  If you are having issues with colour, especially when using a capture card, try changing this ‘701’ and see what the results are.
• YUV Color Range: Leaving this as ‘Partial” will be good for most people.  Yet again, if you use a capture card and are experiencing some issues with colour, try changing this to ‘Full’.

Recording

• Filename Formatting: How your filenames for your recorded videos will be named. You also have the option to overwrite a file if it already has the same name.  This doesn’t really work with the default naming settings as it uses the variable of “seconds” as part of the naming convention.

Stream Delay

Stream delay is used in competitive games in order to help prevent someone from viewing your stream in order to get an unfair advantage on you.  This normally shouldn’t be an issue as there is already a delay when streaming with Twitch.tv of anywhere from 20-60 seconds.  Increasing this delay is useful if you really want to make sure no one is spying on you in order to unfairly get an easy kill on you.

• Duration: How long, in seconds, you want your delay to be. The larger the delay the more memory which is required to keep that delay going.
• Preserve Cutoff point when reconnecting:  If you get disconnected from streaming and have the option to auto reconnect enabled you can ensure no one misses out on anything which would have occurred during that time period.  You must have stream delay enabled for this to work.

Automatically Reconnect

Leave this enabled.  This way you can reconnect to your streaming service automatically if something goes haywire with your network or their connection, assuming the issue is resolved by the time the maximum retries has been hit.

• Retry Delay (seconds): How long to wait, in seconds, between each reconnection attempt. The default value is fine.
• Maximum Retries: How many times to retry connecting before giving up.  The default value is fine here too.