Twitch/livestream setups.

Do you think it’s possible that three cams and a mic plugged into this system might be too much for it to handle?

Depends on what resolution the cameras will be at. I’d definitely do a bunch of testing before buying one of those and I’d keep my fingers crossed :wink:

Yeah not sure I can do testing without buying it. Haha. Seems in the reviews I’ve read people are joking two cameras to it. Haven’t seen three. Maybe if I stick to a lower res cheaper cam for the third one I’ll get away with it. Don’t worry I’ll jump on this grenade and report back so others can stay away if need be! I refuse to concede that I can’t have the computer far away from my rig!! Haha

Yea, 3 cams and a mic will probably be too much for one hub. You can try the following steps in OBS to try to get all 3 working:

  • Add each camera to your scene as a Video Capture Source.
  • For each source, right click and go to Properties.
  • Press Deactivate. Also make sure “Deactivate when not showing” is checked.
  • Change the Resolution/FPS type to Custom.
  • Set Resolution to something like 640x360. Set FPS to 30 or 40.
  • Try to Activate each camera one by one. If a camera refuses to activate, deactivate it, lower the resolution, and try again.
  • For the best quality on C92x cameras, set FPS <=40, go to Configure Video and disable Auto-Focus and Low Light Compensation.

I also tried to do all USB at first, but it’s so finicky, has worse quality, and isn’t that much cheaper when you include all of the USB hubs and extensions you need. You’ll be happier with a proper camera with HDMI capture for the playfield. The two popular brands of capture devices are Avermedia and Elgato. They’ll take in HDMI and connect to your computer via USB.

Thanks so much for the help. Now if I go with 2 web cams and one hdmi with a capture device, what do you recommend for extending that hdmi signal up to 75ft?

Tim, did you ever bit the bullet and give this a try?

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Any HDMI cable will do, you can get them in long runs for much cheaper than USB. Just be aware that most cameras have Micro HDMI inputs, so you’ll need an HDMI->Micro HDMI adapter if you get a standard cable.

With the Sony HDR-CX405, I have occasionally had issues with signal degradation when using some >50’ HDMI cables from the camera to the capture card. This showed up as sparkly red pixels on the output. Switching to a nicer HDMI cable solved the problem, or you can lower the res to 720p. You could also probably use a powered HDMI repeater if need be.

Thanks! I’m gonna try all USB one last time. The company that makes that expensive hub says I should be fine. 90 day return policy if not. I’ll report back.

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I did. It seemed to work okay for high FPS videos recorded from a small magnetic-footed tripod stuck to the lockdown bar. It didn’t seem too good for a general playfield cam; picked up a lot of glare and the fisheye effect was still somewhat present even when disabled in the menu. I hoped to use RTMP for streaming and then the full res full FPS version in the recording, but the only way I could get an (unsupported) RTMP stream was in direct mode rather than wifi client mode.

Given that it is not that suitable for live streaming, especially the whole playfield, which is at least half of my use case, I decided to return it. If I do find a need for one in the future, I would get the significantly cheaper Yi 4K rather than the 4K+. I think the main difference is that the + supports 60fps at 4K rather than just 30fps. But I believe both support 240fps at 720p, and I think there might be a hack to get the non-plus to function as a wifi client, so it might have more potential at a lower price.

I’m currently toying around with a Panasonic camcorder instead. I’ve only pointed it at a playfield and looked at the on-camera display, but it looks great on there and I’ll try streaming with it soon.

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Has anyone tried avoiding all this “Long USB” cable talk, keeping the streaming rig underneath the pins somewhere and controlling it with another desktop sharing app?

Another idea is to have a single HDMI out of the main compuer to another streaming computer (a lot of the PC game streamers do it this way) that is running OBS and doing the actual broadcasting. Again, this gets you down to one long cable cable vs many long cables / USB issues.

I’m a little out of my depth on this topic, but it seems like there should be some other approaches.

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Good suggestions and I have no idea what the setup is other than there’s a long cable involved haha.

Agreed. But for my purposes, since I will have a rig sliding across the ceiling upwards of 30 feet, I will kind of be back where I started. If I can get this Ethernet extension to work, I will only need one long Ethernet cable. Pretty cheap outside of the hub/extender.

Very interested in this solution.

I recently captured direct audio from a table while streaming, and it’s pretty easy with OBS, so I thought I’d share:

Connect a 3.5mm audio cable from the game to the Mic or Line In input on your PC. Then you can add an “Audio Input Capture” source to your scene in OBS and set it to the appropriate input. You can adjust the volume by tweaking the mixer for the source in the Mixer list.

The audio will capture only in scenes with that Audio Input source. This is nice if you are streaming multiple games so the game audio only plays on the appropriate scene. We did this for our SW launch party.

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Has anyone tried using this cam? Sony HDRPJ275/B
https://www.amazon.com/Sony-HDRPJ275-2-7-Inch-Discontinued-Manufacturer/dp/B00HNJWVO4/

Seems to have an HDMI out, but no idea about on screen menus and if it will shut down after so long. Also isn’t there a google doc with a few camera models listed and notes about if they are suited for streaming? Can’t seem to find it.

Here is my first attempt with the sewell direct Ethernet extender hub. I have 100’ of Ethernet between the stream rig and my computer.

You can see all the camera settings on the stream screen via the link below.

What’s not shown is that I also have a snowball mic hooked into the hub. So all four USB ports in the hub are being used. They are all 2.0 ports.

My goal is to have this setup for a tournament where I can move my overhead rig from game to game in seconds. If these settings can hold for an extended period of time, I may be in business.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/179288768

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Suggestions for microphone settings at an extremely loud bar? See the video below for what I was working with today. I use a snowball mic. Super hard to hear the players and just so much background noise. Would like to go back and stream again but the noise makes it tough right now.

The snowball might still work in a loud environment if you put it in front of your face so you are talking directly into it. I can’t even see it in the feed. Something else to try is a dedicated headset.

You will definitely need to experiment a bit.

The story of a pinball streamer’s life. Haha. Thanks for the help.

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Just figured out how to setup two scenes in OBS that will allow the commentators to switch from the standings and groupings of a matchplay event for up to 40 players.

Once setup, just simply save these scenes and you don’t need to redo them for each new tournament. Just change the URL in the settings and the scenes will update correctly to the new tournament.

Need to use the URL for standings and matches from the matchplay live screen that the players see.