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Stream setup & equipment for LAN events

remmah

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Now that we have Spectator/LAN mode confirmed for Splatoon 2, I thought it might be worth making a thread for everyone to compile and share experiences about what equipment is most effective for facilitating and/or streaming in-person events. For now we can see what other scenes are doing/using and go from there.

Here are some items I've collated so far:
  • Networking
    • The cheapest new brand-name 16-port ethernet switch I could find is $30 TP-Link at Newegg. If you're willing to buy used on eBay, lots of people are getting rid of their brand-name 10/100 gear for less. For example, I use a TRENDnet TE100-S16Eg I got from eBay for under $20, and it works fine. You need at least a 16-port switch — even if you're not planning on having a spectator system — because you will need to use one of the ports for a router (see next point).
    • Router: It is necessary to connect a router to the ethernet switch for LAN Mode to work. While the router does not need an Internet connection, you need a router connected to the ethernet switch so all of the Switch consoles can request and obtain local IP addresses. An dedicated ethernet switch cannot assign IP addresses on its own. The good news is than any old router should do, including wifi routers that have LAN ports. As with switches, you can get older 10/100 routers for cheap: I got a TRENDnet TW100-S4W1CA from eBay for under $15 and it works fine (in addition to being quite compact).
    • Cat5e ethernet cables from Monoprice are cheap and have lifetime warranties ($1.36 per 7ft cable, or a bundle of 50 cables for $30). These 'flexboot' cables are easier to disconnect than ones with a full strain-relief boot. Also, I recommend getting cables with pre-terminated ends, as DIY-connected ends are a common source of failure in networking installations.
    • Ethernet Adapters: Existing Wii/U-compatible 3rd-party adapters from Amazon ($12) and Monoprice ($16) work. I can confirm the TRENDnet TU3-ETG also works.
  • Capture card(s)
    • LAN mode supports up to 2 spectating Switches, each of which will need its own capture device.
    • I only have experience with the Elgato Game Capture HD and HD60, but for me both models have reliably recorded 720p60 (HD) and 1080p60 (HD60) video for HDMI outputs, including Splatoon 1. Encoding is handled on the Elgato itself. Note that only the HD model comes with breakout cables for component/composite video, should you need to capture those inputs for older systems.
  • Microphones / Headsets
  • Streaming PC
    • I would like to get some feedback from streamers as to how much CPU is needed to handle 3 incoming video feeds (2 game feeds + at least 1 venue feed) + streaming/recording. My understanding is that Intel's Quick Sync can handle encoding without much CPU usage, but I'm not sure how many separate feeds it can handle.
  • Streaming Software
    • A brief survey of various places on the internet seems to indicate that OBS Studio is favored over XSplit. OBS also has the advantage of being free.
  • Misc.
    • Power Strips: Assuming players don't want to play on the built-in screen, we need 23 plugs for a full streaming setup (10 switches + 10 monitors + laptop + ethernet switch + router) and at least 10 ports for each offstream setup (8 switches + ethernet switch + router). You could conceivably need only 9 ports for an offstream setup if you connected its ethernet switch to the onstream ethernet switch... it should work fine but I haven't tested it myself.
    • While wifi can technically be used for offstream local play, we've experienced lag and disconnections when playing via wifi, even when using The Shoal and even when all the systems are near one another.
That's all I have for now. Let's get the discussion rolling and I can update this post as we get more info!
 
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Fullmental

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Hi, as someone who has made this mistake before, I recommend You DO NOT go for the cheapest LAN switch you can find! A lot of these use outdated tech or exaggerate specs, and have a microscopic bus size for data transfers leading to more potential for dropouts and higher latency due to queueing and dropped packets, which is bad for gaming. I'm not saying you want to go expensive, but I'd at least recommend your more reliable midrange dlink, netgear, or tplink switches over a no-name Chinese knockoff brand like the one linked, particularly if you will be driving a stream over the same network switch.
 

memk

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Unheard of companies making switches? not good man. This is one of those markets where you get what you pay for. In other words, the cheaper it is, the worse it is.
 

remmah

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Hi, as someone who has made this mistake before, I recommend You DO NOT go for the cheapest LAN switch you can find! A lot of these use outdated tech or exaggerate specs, and have a microscopic bus size for data transfers leading to more potential for dropouts and higher latency due to queueing and dropped packets, which is bad for gaming. I'm not saying you want to go expensive, but I'd at least recommend your more reliable midrange dlink, netgear, or tplink switches over a no-name Chinese knockoff brand like the one linked, particularly if you will be driving a stream over the same network switch.
Unheard of companies making switches? not good man. This is one of those markets where you get what you pay for. In other words, the cheaper it is, the worse it is.
Thanks for bringing this up! I had assumed that switches were pretty commoditized by now and were more or less interchangeable but I guess not. I will edit the post to use a brand name.

Also, I'd imagine the network switches would be used solely for LAN play, as the streaming PC can just connect directly to the internet.
 
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Torloth

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Quick heads up with the Elgato HD60 it dose not like OBS at all I could not get 1080p 60 on mine. Only Could get 720p 30. But the Elgato software I can get 1080P 60 recording, my laptop(Lenovo Thinkpad T420) struggles a lot with streaming due to no wired connection.

Would propose try Xsplit over it. Incase you wanted team cams also.
I will test Xsplit and the HD60.
From what I understand extra 2 Switchs in spectator mode can control cameras of the match. Who knows how good (or bad )Nintendo's Phone app will be for voice chat, unless it also has a LAN mode also.

I just thought of something.... So the Switch has a built in Mic port on top. Since the console must be docked to play in the tournament setup you can use the headset there. They could totally have a local voice chat built into the game..
I personally hate "gamer headsets". I use a pair for Sol Republic Master Tracks, when I game and a clip on mic. I have an adapter for separate mic and Headphone lines to a single 3.5mm jack.

I'm going to need to test a lot of stuff with the Switch before I take a firm stance on anything. But I'm excited for local tournaments
 

Fullmental

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Quick heads up with the Elgato HD60 it dose not like OBS at all I could not get 1080p 60 on mine. Only Could get 720p 30. But the Elgato software I can get 1080P 60 recording, my laptop(Lenovo Thinkpad T420) struggles a lot with streaming due to no wired connection.
OBS Studio works just fine for the HD60 here, I tried it before moving to the S for lower latency and could easily get 60FPS, just need to make sure you enable it in the custom resolution or through the properties window, since it defaults to 30.
 

Torloth

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OBS Studio works just fine for the HD60 here, I tried it before moving to the S for lower latency and could easily get 60FPS, just need to make sure you enable it in the custom resolution or through the properties window, since it defaults to 30.
Okay cool. OBS isn't exactly the most user friendly streaming software. I will fiddle with it a little more.
 

aceofscarabs

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Spec suggestions for a streaming capture PC:

(1) You want lots of buffer storage space. Have a DEDICATED good spinning disk of high capacity (At least 500GB, but 1+ Terabyte platters are affordable these days) to take in RAW video and generous amounts of RAM (Windows can easily support up to 32-128 GB of RAM if you go with a Pro license instead of a Home license) to help with buffers. Having a SSD for your core programs to accelerate data access is helpful but an optional extra. Why dedicate a platter to video captures? Don't want Windows to freak out about fluctuating hard drive space and Out Of Storage errors, do you? That and the data bandwidth of capturing could saturate the SATA bus of your primary drive and affect your PC's performance midcapture, resulting in frameskips and stuttering. ESPECIALLY with your idea for double/triple video streams, you're gonna need that maximised video capture buffer disk and RAM. Don't use an SSD for a stream buffer disk, you'll exhaust the flash memory cells rapidly with constant streaming.

(2) CPU power is good for captures (recommend a true quadcore or better CPU or good efficiency). With that many streams you probably need to go big or go home, get a decent i7 and make sure your mobo has a good-sized data bus.

(3) Having a strong graphics card or two to help take up the slack in video crunching and mixing helps, some capture software is optimized to exploit your GPU for maximum acceleration. Multiple streams might demand a secondary in SLI or Crossfire, consult your capture software(s) to see how much GPU you're going to need.

(4) A dedicated Sound Card is optional but handy if you're good at audio editing and need that extra oomph in making sure your voice channel and the stream(s) are balanced properly.

(5) Cat 5e cables? Better invest in PROPER Cat6 cables and not worry about cable quality affecting the maximum transfer rate. HD streams are VERY upstream hungry.

(6) Optional: Webcams. Get a decent one, don't cheap out and get some garbage brandless Guangzhou clone camera, but you don't need to implode your budget over a Super HD dual lense array monster with integrated noise-cancelling mic.Get something with a stable set of legs/clamp, decent video resolution/quality, and position it well.

(7) Cooling: Better get secondary cooling fans to manage the heat output your stream capture PC is going to have.

Estimated system idea:
Large Mobo with good-sized data bus size and lots of room for hardware (Make sure it has a good Gigabit Ethernet controller)
Core i7 CPU (at least quadcore)
32+GB RAM
at least 256GB boot drive SSD in SATA0 slot
dedicated 2TB capture platter HDD in SATA1 slot
At least 1 workstation-grade GPU
A dedicated soundcard (or audio processing software)
Windows Professional license (because you want the robust version of Windows that can support massive amounts of RAM and the Home licence may not support the upper limits of RAM possible with serious-grade motherboards)
 

Fullmental

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I have to ask, is all that really necessary for a private stream? Seems more like a professional broadcast to me.

For the record, my desktop can handle concurrent streams just fine and its a 6 year old processor with a single 7200rpm drive, 12gb ram, and cat5e over a 50/50 connection (for 5mbit per upload stream, Internet speed from the isp is much more important than wire quality as long as the wires are not broken, as is making sure you're not uploading/downloading while streaming). All you really need is a quad core and fast hard drive or two, and you DEFINITELY don't need to waste resources on trying to record uncompressed video while you're encoding, a composed local copy at roughly 10mbits will be plenty, and it's low enough bandwidth that you can even get by with an external USB 3.0 drive for that. Don't go overboard on fancy graphics and expensive extra rendering, and you can pull off a tournament stream on a much cheaper pc.
 

aceofscarabs

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A triple stream needs extra processing and storage if you're running a webcam POV stream plus one or two screen captures at the same time, especially if HD.
 

Fullmental

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A triple stream needs extra processing and storage if you're running a webcam POV stream plus one or two screen captures at the same time, especially if HD.
Eh maybe but I still think it's overkill. If you have a quad core hyper threaded cpu, i5 or I7 from kaby Lake or I7 from Broadway or newer, the cpu should be fine. My sandy bridge i7-2600 (not k, not overclocked) does 1080p60 single just fine on high quality with just 50% usage on a single core for the stream. Theoretically a faster core can handle 2 streams on its own, meaning you could really support as much as your hard drive(s) and USB bandwidth allows, once you hit a certain cpu threshold. We'll have to see though, maybe x split is a cpu hog of something (I use obs). Then of course there are people that are running a hundred programs at once in the background and don't realize that's why their pc is so slow...
 

aceofscarabs

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I guess I overprovisioned to ensure there's processing overhead for midstream mixing and audio processing and still maintain a solid framerate on recording. Honestly though I recommend a dedicated hard drive for holding your recording buffer since SSDs will wear out faster if forced to act as buffer drives.

I still insist on the high RAM count though. Heavy video/audio processing is one of the few areas I would seriously recommend loads of RAM for. (Gaming you can get away with 8-16GB if you don't multitask and lightweight Internet surfing and Youtube watching only needs 4GB or less)

And yes, having a decent web connection is an absolute must to make sure your stream is smooth unless you're recording. If you're recording you want loads of storage.
 

Fullmental

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True, the RAM overhead is cheap and it'll ensure there aren't any slowdowns. Processing overhead isn't bad especially for future proofing (and I do personally go for the most I can get for the money on cpus), I guess it really depends on how much you want/need to really crank things up and run many concurrent input captures.
 

remmah

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Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences and suggestions!

Cat5e vs Cat6: While I made sure to wire my house with Cat6, I think it's overkill for this scenario. Cat5e is rated well above the speed we need, so as long as the cable's coming from a reputable vendor I'm not too worried about it. Twitch recommends a maximum of 3-4 Mbps for uploading, and the bandwidth requirements for the LAN play itself is well within the capacity of Cat5e and a 10/100 network switch, so I think it makes sense to save money on this part of the equipment budget. I agree that Intel NICs have a reputation for reliability.

Desktop vs laptop: I appreciate the additional power desktops can provide — I have an old 6-core Xeon system with 48GB RAM myself ^^; — but I'm genuinely curious if a 3-feed stream can be handled with a laptop, if only for the convenience of carrying around less equipment. I know Quick Sync can help a lot with video encoding, but I'm not sure what its limits are (e.g. can it handle decoding 3 h264 streams along with encoding both the stream and archive video simultaneously?).

SSDs vs HDDs: I'm of two minds on this one. I understand that NAND flash has a limited number of read/write cycles, but I wonder recording/streaming a few tournaments a month would ever push that limit, especially if streaming is the primary use for the computer. Does the stream buffer ever hit storage, or is it just the higher-quality recording that gets stored? It's worth noting that I don't plan on saving or working with raw video — I'm a happy camper with encoded video so long as x264 is properly tweaked. So at least with an encoded video being saved, we'd be well within the limits of a single SATA connection. I also worry about head contention on spinning drives leading to dropped frames.

GPU power: My impression was that GPU-based encoding was falling out of favor due to lower quality and the prevalence of Quick Sync-enabled Intel chips. Is a lot of GPU power required for OBS itself?
 

aceofscarabs

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Desktops will always trump laptops in both raw computing power and in heat management - The real killer of laptops is heat buildup resulting in shortened lifespans. On top of that, laptops will physically be unable to carry as much RAM as a full-sized desktop mobo - I believe the upper limits of RAM in laptops I've seen is about 16-32GB in top-end super workstation notebooks or gaming notebooks.

If you're using an SSD for a buffer drive, separate it from your boot drive to prevent wear fatigue in the same drive your OS will boot from.
 

Fullmental

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Desktops will always trump laptops in both raw computing power and in heat management - The real killer of laptops is heat buildup resulting in shortened lifespans. On top of that, laptops will physically be unable to carry as much RAM as a full-sized desktop mobo - I believe the upper limits of RAM in laptops I've seen is about 16-32GB in top-end super workstation notebooks or gaming notebooks.

If you're using an SSD for a buffer drive, separate it from your boot drive to prevent wear fatigue in the same drive your OS will boot from.
Yeah, then there's also thermal throttling under heavy load that can bring a laptop to its knees.
 

remmah

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I'll see if I can get or borrow a Quick Sync-enabled laptop to experiment with over the spring. I'd like to get some first-hand experience about how they perform and what their limits are regarding video feeds and encoding.
 

Torloth

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I'll see if I can get or borrow a Quick Sync-enabled laptop to experiment with over the spring. I'd like to get some first-hand experience about how they perform and what their limits are regarding video feeds and encoding.
My laptop had no problem with streaming 1 feed.
if we are talking multiple feeds you will probably want desktop, thermals might be an issue with a regular consumer laptop, i have an older professional laptop (dualcore i5 16gb of ram) it barely gets warm when it is running anything.

To be honest thought you won't know till you try it out, getting your hands dirty and giving it a shot. you never want a big event to be the first time you try something. For a big lan event laptops are a plus because they are easy to transport, use less power and can use an external display.
but as previously stated form factor comes at a cost, less raw computing power, less RAM ...etc.

also think about the amount of equipment you will be bringing.
Label your cables and gear so it doesn't get taken home by mistake.
I did have a thought though. If you were having a live audience a projector (or large TV) and Screen mirroring would probably be the best way for them to watch. the more i think about it the more gear you would be bringing... >< i wish everyone who holds they events good luck.
 

aceofscarabs

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Honestly any decent higher-tier i5 or i7 CPU that is Ivy Bridge or better tends to be pretty OK in heat and power efficiency compared to older slabs.

Moore's law means a Haswell i5 would be powerful enough to at least nearly keep pace with a Sandy Bridge i7.

And yes, label your gear. Plan for portability, get some transport boxes/cases that can hold all your gear and bring a decent-sized box for all the cabling.

Optional but definitely recommended: Surge protectors. You never know whether a venue has stable power or not, and all it takes is a wild power spike to kill your rig.
 

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