Twitch/livestream setups.

yeah there have been plenty of RTMP/Other types of apps for the iPhone, if you have spare iPhones its not bad idea, I found keeping them all synced quite hard.

Can’t you just plug your in phone in with a cable and it can automatically be used as a webcam source? Maybe only on Mac

I have some xstream lights coming tomorrow for my Top Rope Pinball Stream. Interested to see how much of a difference that makes with the CX405! https://www.twitch.tv/topropepinball
Come check out the different wrestler intros. So far we have done, Triple H, Undertaker, Stone Cold, John Cena, The Hurricane, Hacksaw, Rik Flair, Mr. Kennedy, The Rock, and several others. Gearing up for some more soon!

I think if you crack open more sake you’ll be partner in no time :smiley:

I am using 4 usb cameras and a usb mic on a ideapad 330 with nvidia and 3 usb ports :slight_smile:
Taxes are a 100% in Brazil and exchange rate is right, so a USD 500 difference it is a lot :slight_smile:

It is a fairly cheap setup, I lower all cameras to 720 and and 30 pfs except the Brio on the PF that is on 1080 and 60 fps.

I am pretty happy with the setup, the PI4 wifi that has being discussed here would be awesome .

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I was minutes away from ordering a streaming computer, when the idea struck me that I should try streaming from the HTPC in my gameroom. It’s got an 8 year old CPU and a mid-range GPU so I wasn’t very optimistic, but I was pleasantly surprised! The playfield cam is so much more smooth now, with the GPU doing NVENC with Quality settings. Compared to the laptop on ultrafast settings it’s just no contest. Woo hoo! :slight_smile:

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I just ordered one of the new HQ Raspberry Pi cameras and the 6mm lens so we’ll see how well it works. Will be interesting to try out some of the lens options maybe. Can do 720p60 I guess and should be better with lower light.

I don’t stream, but I’ve messed with the RPI (and a ton of other little arm boards) for security camera purposes pretty extensively.

One nice thing about the pi is getting a decent quality 720p60 or 1080p30 h264 feed by adding a $20 pi cam. Because video from the pi cam is encoded on the videocore (vs the arm cores), and arrives over mipi csi (vs usb) you take no hit to your usb bandwidth and a minimal hit to cpu to serve up another stream.

Another nicety of using a pi is you can add power over ethernet for about $20 a node. This lets you side step the flakiness of wifi, and avoid having to deal with power cables. Just a single ethernet cable back to the poe switch by your video station.

I found an rpi3 with a pi cam and a c922 could easily handle the pushing the pair of streams (720p60 h264 and 1080p30 mjpeg) back to my recording station (which I imagine would be swapped out for a broadcast station in a streaming scenario). I figure an rpi4 should be able to push a second 1080p30 mjpeg stream without too much trouble.

If you have a cameras or usb hdmi capture devices that can output h264 (c920 for example), then you can probably push several streams off a single pi.

Power draw turns out to be a limiting factor for multiple USB cameras, but otherwise it’s capable. I can just barely get by with three C920’s but jumping up to a Brio or something that takes quite a bit more power limits me to two/pi without a powered USB hub. Modern Pis can do 1200mA total given a quality power supply.

If I remember right the C920 drew about 250-300ma each and the Brio around 500-600ma. The C922 was somewhere in between.

Anyone try any of the other random capture devices? I found a couple of the sony handycams, but capture devices are hard to come by. I placed an order from aliexpress for one of these:
https://www.aliexpress.com/snapshot/0.html?spm=a2g0s.9042647.0.0.2a4c4c4d2X5Njt&orderId=8013768273166791&productId=4000308699315

Not sure how long it will take to get here. I hope it works haha.

Sadly the vast majority of what you’ll find on aliexpress is going to lack an onboard h264 encoder, and will expect the usb host system to encode. If you’re lucky, it’ll at least be able to output MJPEG, and only eat up a sizable chunk of usb bandwidth. If you’re unlucky, it’ll only output uncompressed yuv422 and eat up a ludicrous chunk of bandwidth.

Shipping from China to the US is crazy weird right now. I had a shipment from a warehouse in Shenzhen sit in a “shipped but tracking number not yet available” state for about 2 weeks, then today received a DHL tracking number with the shipment originating in Bahrain…

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Thanks for the info. I wasn’t super optimistic, but figured it was a $60 chance rather than shelling out the big money the elgato products are going for on the second hand market right now.

Might be a longshot, but does anyone have a Cam Link (or two) they would like to sell? I was going for a Sony cam and ended up with two thanks to winning ebay bids. I would love to put them in action.

thanks

I’ve been a bit of a lurker here. I was also very disappointed with the CX405 and impulse bought the Panasonic V770 yesterday. It had lint in the lens and I wanted an exchange but it was the last they had. So I got the GX85 instead given it had rave reviews. These comparisons were made in similar conditions. The images stacked here are fullscreen screenshots of what they look like on Twitch (OBS, x264 sw encoder on Mac with a elgato camlink).

Needless to say I’m happy that I finally got the haze/blur out of the PF, you can barely read any of the text in the screenshot. Not sure why the colors look so bleak on the V770 but I’m sure it can be tweaked. Focus is very similar. The artifact to compare is the hitchhiker which looks very lush on the GX85. TF converted my .png to .jpeg, original is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sjq6k20m77buehh/cameracomp.png?dl=0

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This is a nice comparison. I would certainly hope the GX85 would outperform the cx405, considering the cost difference. I wish I could justify to myself upgrading to a camera like that. I am torn, on the one hand, I like nice things and it is fun to play with new tech and I am ok with the price. On the other hand I struggle with having a nicer camera on my streaming rig that I take photos with day to day. On the gripping hand, I don’t think people watching my stream would even care.

Are you putting additional lighting on the playfield at all? I’ve found whether it be a web cam or a CX405, the clarity of the playfield is greatly improved if you flood the game with light from an external source.

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If I was happy with the rest of the cameras in my rig I would’ve probably just kept the CX405 as is. The CX405 is now replacing my Logitech 930e (which is useless) as “DMD” camera. I should probably weigh my GoPro Hero 7 into this comparison too. Hmm…

I have a pretty beefy LED light hanging from the side of the game. (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DR6BF87/)

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Just a heads up:

If anyone is looking to get started with producing pinball related content in a YouTube style, Source Hut is offering to help out with equipment costs in exchange for publishing the content to their PeerTube, instance, https://spacepub.space

https://sourcehut.org/blog/2020-05-15-peertube-bootstrap-fund/

More light makes such a difference. A great place to spend money and can be relatively low cost depending on which path you go with.

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