Twitch/livestream setups.

[pahuffman]

@dri

I have one. I just updated the firmware on it and haven’t checked but it was skipping one frame every second on the previous firmware

Interesting. I’m wondering if it has something to do with the TX/RX handshake. I feel like I was noticing it even in the promotional videos I watched last night. Maybe it’s some kind of pulldown where the camera is running at 59.94fps and the Accsoon can only do proper 60fps or vice versa? Please let us know your findings!

@dri

(check for stutters here if you like)

This is absolutely buttery smooth. This appears to me a perfect, uninterrupted 60fps and exactly what I’d like to achieve. I’ll have to go back and do some research on your posts about how you were able to achieve this.

@dri

Is the encoder tuned for what you’re trying to do?

Great question. I’ll have to look this evening. I do know it’s using hardware-accelerated H.264 encoding and wrapping into a .mkv container. Are there other settings that are preferable or do I need to try and dial this in?

[dri]

@pahuffman

Are there other settings that are preferable or do I need to try and dial this in?

It depends entirely on the encoder. The artifacts in your video looks like entire GOPs are missed/discarded. If you go back to basics, x264 software encoding (this is a tried and battle tested option and disregards any fancy GPU or otherwise “accelerated” perks) on default settings with 6000Kbit/s CBR, are there issues? Also pull out the OBS stat pane to ensure there’s no missed frames reported there.

Another interesting piece to look at is if you dial back the bitrate on the Accsoon’s, will the stutter remain? (I think the options are “high speed”, normal and HQ or something)

@pahuffman

Maybe it’s some kind of pulldown where the camera is running at 59.94fps and the Accsoon can only do proper 60fps or vice versa?

59.94 support was introduced in this new firmware so that’s entirely possible as the drops I was seeing was on a 59.94 camera.

@pahuffman

I’ll have to go back and do some research on your posts about how you were able to achieve this.

The ambition is to write this up at one point. I’ve been through four different NDI encoders and dealt with countless wireless interference issues to get where I’m at. No ETA at this time though.

[pahuffman]

@dri

Another interesting piece to look at is if you dial back the bitrate on the Accsoon’s, will the stutter remain?

Looks like I’ll have to go back to the drawing board. Hopefully I’ll have some time this week to dig in.

@dri

59.94 support was introduced in this new firmware

Interesting. That’s what it felt like to me since it was so frequent. Hopefully this bears fruit.

@dri

The ambition is to write this up at one point. I’ve been through four different NDI encoders and dealt with countless wireless interference issues to get where I’m at. No ETA at this time though.

No rush man! Just know your efforts don’t go unappreciated. I watched a bit of your Twilight Zone stream today and was blown away with the quality.

[dri]

@pahuffman

Looks like I’ll have to go back to the drawing board. Hopefully I’ll have some time this week to dig in.

While you’re tearing this apart I think you would want to test this with a different source (camera) as well. If you have a PC or other playback device capable of 1080p60 you should just be able to loop this and record to see if there are skipped frames.

I did clip Lynn’s stream just now and they have a CineView HE triplet and it looks terrible so I think you are in the same boat all of you. Edit: Not quite as bad when the rig is closer to the receivers. (these links will exipire at one point, here are the clips: 1 2)

@pahuffman

I watched a bit of your Twilight Zone stream today and was blown away with the quality.

Thanks for tuning in. That setup is all hardwired and you can watch a 4K rendering on YouTube.

[chuckwurt]

I see nothing wrong in these clips? Haha. And both links seem to be the same clip.

[dri]

Double-paste, updated the first clip.

[pahuffman]

@dri

This looks very distracting and I can’t remember the CineView HE being this bad.

Well here’s yesterday’s tournament stream with 3 CineView HEs performing through a regular drywall and 2x4 garage wall. It actually looked better at times than the testing at my own house, so perhaps my WiFi is to blame for the frequent skipping. Not 100% 60fps, but definitely watchable.

Distance surely made a difference. Games like Genesis, Baywatch, and Rush were across the basement. Batman 66, Flash Gordon, Frankenstein, and Elton were just behind the wall close to the receivers.

Magic City Nights Pinball Tournament - January 2025

[dri]

@pahuffman

Not 100% 60fps, but definitely watchable.

Anecdotally, somehow I had the playfield HDMI input locked at 1080p30 (I noticed afterwards) in this video. An untrained eye would not notice the 30fps as it’s consistent 30fps, which makes it look smooth.

I’m not saying all y’all need to drop down to 1080p30 but it’s an interesting observation nonetheless and could be a better solution than try 1080p60 and have skips/drops.

Thanks for the video.

[stepan]

Apologies if this has been discussed, but for a wireless setup, why not run encoding on the rig? With N100-class mini-pcs you could do all your encoding locally, streaming out to a viewing rig for commentary/telestrator, and to twitch/etc. From my understanding, biggest issue is bandwidth limitations for a 1080p/60 raw stream coming from the rig.

[dri]

@stepan

Apologies if this has been discussed, but for a wireless setup, why not run encoding on the rig?

It’s been discussed at various times and it can’t be discussed enough.

I think the consensus is that we still need to loop in the broadcast booth for commentary and telestrating and all of a sudden we’re back to square one.

Then we have the power constraints, an abundance of power is needed, it is tempting to start experimenting with SteamDeck-like devices as they have power redundancy in the sense that it will survive a battery swap.

Another challenge I can see with this is that your location needs to have good WiFi coverage for Internet wherever the rig goes as it needs to transmit to Twitch and gobble the feed with commentators + the stream commentators are watching.

Yep, now I’m back to square one.

[stepan]

@dri

It’s been discussed at various times and it can’t be discussed enough.

I think the consensus is that we still need to loop in the broadcast booth for commentary and telestrating and all of a sudden we’re back to square one.

Then we have the power constraints, an abundance of power is needed, it is tempting to start experimenting with SteamDeck-like devices as they have power redundancy in the sense that it will survive a battery swap.

Another challenge I can see with this is that your location needs to have good WiFi coverage for Internet wherever the rig goes as it needs to transmit to Twitch and gobble the feed with commentators + the stream commentators are watching.

Yep, now I’m back to square one.

I love this, I agree with your points, but I wanted to just play a bit of the devils advocate here.

For telestrating, use an ipad/touch interface running something like this. For video & voice from the booth, its certainly a lot easier (bandwidth wise) to send one 720p/30 channel to the rig, and one 1080p/60 to the booth, than 3-4 1080p/60 the other way. It doesn’t take a powerful computer to do either of those things as most laptops can handle a video stream and encoding a webcam.

Power constraints - N100 is running at 12W power consumption, some, sure, but we’re not talking a 200-300w load. Capture cards aren’t power hogs either. You’re also eliminating power used by the wireless transmission solutions encode/decode hdmi along the way (I imagine using quite a bit of power for higher-quality options).

For internet, its also a lot easier to set up a mesh with wifi than other solutions, so there’d be an AP nearby at all times. Also, just like there are backhaul solutions for hdmi tx, there are for lan. Finally, there are external and amplified antenna solutions, sometimes built right into the n100 box, and often you can run those outside of FCC specs, allowing you to squeeze a bit more out of cheaper hardware.If none of that works, usb-powered wifi adapter mounted away with some fat antennas gives you new options without dropping $1k on next tier of hdmi tx/rx dongles.

One benefit of a central streaming setup is, of course, multiple rigs. But with encoding-on-rig setup, you can always convert it into a single, high bitrate stream consumed by your central rig. There is still a benefit because you’re in full control of how much bandwidth (via bitrate) its consuming, have some limited ability for transport to repair dropped frames, with the downsides being latency (potentially, but probably negligible), and re-encoding artifacts, so quality.

Overall, I think this costs way less as its using commodity, highly configurable and customizable hardware, gives you a stable setup with near infinite expandability and doesn’t lock you into any expensive and often proprietary solutions.

Its also easier to start/convert to a at the game setup by hooking up a screen or 2 and a microphone directly to the box.

[dri]

@stepan

For telestrating, use an ipad/touch interface running something like this.

I use WebRTC-Telestrator for my setup. Unfortunately, it’s a one-off project and is not accepting new contributions and there will most likely never be updates. It’s very un-optimized. It’s also a bit unorthodox and archaic to setup. I use a dedicated NDI encoder for the program to a Microsoft Surface to pull this off and it’s a Frankenstein.

@stepan

Power constraints - N100 is running at 12W power consumption, some, sure, but we’re not talking a 200-300w load.

I encode three 1080p60 camers onto a 4KP60 canvas with an NDI encoder at the rig with around 40Mbit/s. That encoder peaks at about 15W. Having incoming feeds, besides the cameras surely would consume more power. As long as we don’t cross 12V 3A ~= 36W, I think we can survive.

@stepan

For internet, its also a lot easier to set up a mesh with wifi than other solutions, so there’d be an AP nearby at all times.

Yes, I like this. Right now I have a mesh router hanging in the rig. If I had a high quality PC tri/quad band WiFi in STA mode, it would simplify things. Bringing a mesh to the venue wouldn’t be that much of big deal but ensuring device drivers and mesh protocols (roaming without interrupting or flapping) are 100% supported end-to-end is the challenge is see with this. The solution I have now, two mesh devices of the same brand providing wired LAN on both ends has been proven to be very reliable.

@stepan

without dropping $1k on next tier of hdmi tx/rx dongles

Amen.

@stepan

One benefit of a central streaming setup is, of course, multiple rigs. But with encoding-on-rig setup, you can always convert it into a single, high bitrate stream consumed by your central rig.

This is where NDI outshines everything. The broadcaster station will only consume bandwidth off whatever rig is currently streaming to the audience. There will be zero congestion. Switching rig is simply selecting it in a drop-down in OBS or use a multi-action with a Stream Deck (simpler). Sure, I’ve seen venues using two rigs with 3 x TX/RX HDMI dongles per rig but try scale beyond that and you’re hosed. Anecdotally, one venue I helped out with a rig took out their entire payment system for the games (card based readers connected to 2.4Ghz WiFi).

@stepan

Overall, I think this costs way less as its using commodity, highly configurable and customizable hardware, gives you a stable setup with near infinite expandability and doesn’t lock you into any expensive and often proprietary solutions.

Agreed. But the skills needed here stretches quite far beyond what an average pinball enthusiast are willing to take on. No one can argue the simple and fool proof the TX/RX HDMI dongles are and you just have to plug everything in and it “just works” to some extent.

@stepan

Its also easier to start/convert to a at the game setup by hooking up a screen or 2 and a microphone directly to the box.

This was the mantra that started my multi-viewer mania. I wanted the exact same solution streaming at home in a hard-wired setup as I do when either streaming tournaments or doing solo location streams with the laptop strapped to the rig. It got out of hand a little bit but the principle has endured.

[mwelsh]

IMHO, for most of us, I don’t think the benefit of streaming-on-rig is really that compelling vs.streaming-from-desk when all is said and done. You’ve got to transmit a bunch of audio+video one way or the other, and whether it’s 1 v. 2 v. 3 transmitters is not super compelling when you factor in the all of the other knickknacks (Stream Decks, commentary, etc.) being far away from the PC. Totally solvable problems, of course, but with additional complexity and cost of their own.

Again, YMMV – it depends on the streaming environment! Streaming-from-rig definitely works for a home or regular location where you can be sure it’s all working and reuse a setup across sessions. But, for example, I stream from random different locations, rebuilding the rig and setting up all equipment within an hour or two, so there’s a limit to how much I can reasonably set up. And with tons of variables at play, something inevitably needs tweaking and having an easily accessible central streaming PC becomes very important

@stepan

One benefit of a central streaming setup is, of course, multiple rigs. But with encoding-on-rig setup, you can always convert it into a single, high bitrate stream consumed by your central rig.

This would be the best path to pursue, I think. The rig PC basically becomes a fancy multiviewer at this point, and you can transmit it to the central PC using whichever method is most convenient (RTSP, NDI, HDMI transmitter…), while still benefiting from an accessible streaming PC.

In addition to @dri’s usage of NDI, you can also look at @singleballplay’s posts in this thread, they have an interesting setup using a Pi on the rig transmitting an RTSP stream to a main PC over Wifi.

Also see this thread for more discussion!

Twitch/livestream setups.

Welcome! An interesting thought experiment. Just off the top of my head, I can think of a few reasons why this might be impractical. You’d have to power the PC, which would mean running a cable from the rig to the wall somewhere. I suppose this could be achieved with a large battery pack, but PCs with graphics cards consume quite a bit of power. The computer would also have to be mounted somewhere that would be able to slide between games that are closely placed together. It could be mounted h…

[pillyliu]

I’m hoping to get a more comprehensive write up on the rig I just built for you all over the weekend, but I want to chime in on this issue of on rig encoding vs wireless since I had asked about that very thing just last month.

I just set up a rig for streaming, without commentary. I went ahead and bought the base model Mac mini M4. It handles a 1080p canvas without a hitch and can record and stream in different resolutions without any issue. To power it for about 4-5 hours, I run it in low power mode. It will drop power usage from a max of 65 watts to just 25 watts. I have it hooked up to a 42,000 mAh (155 Wh) battery bank with an ac outlet that sits on the leg of the rig.

Here’s a reddit post that details the M4 mini low power mode:
https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/1gpcqqw/m4_mini_has_low_power_mode/

I then have two 24,000 mAh battery banks that power the playfield cam, player cam, and game screen cams, as well as 2 LED lights. Our league is at a bar with pretty dim lighting. After 3 plus hours of streaming, the battery running 2 of the cams and a light dropped to just 77% from full.

I put a 24 inch 4k monitor on the frame to allow for bystanders to get a clear view of the playfield. That requires a 30w input. I haven’t measured the actual power draw, but I think it’s the most power hungry device of the rig, even more so than the Mac mini. I’m planning on adding a 60,000 mAh battery on the other leg of the rig to allow for powering it for at least 5-6 hours.

I’m very impressed with the performance of the Mac mini and I do realize it has an Apple premium on price over an Intel NUC (which I considered as well!). However, I have a MacBook Pro M3 and can do screen sharing over wifi to view and control the rig from afar.

My biggest issue so far with where my local league meets is that it has not only very slow wifi, but poor cell reception. I measured 8 mbps down and 1 mbps up on wifi. Completely inadequate for streaming of any quality. I bought a travel router to hotspot with my cell phone, but can only get 2-2.5 mbps up. I initially started streaming in 6000 kbps for 1080p60. Had worked perfectly during a test run at home, but utterly failed on site. I learned the hard way that I had to drop quality down to 720p60 at 2250 kbps. I can at least record the feed at 1080p60 for upload later.

I currently have a 5g travel modem/router on order from Gl.inet. It has large built in antennae for 5G and for wifi. I’m hoping the larger antennae will get a stronger cell signal enough to boost upload speeds to at least 6 mbps.

GL-XE3000 / Puli AX

I’m super happy with the rig and it was designed primarily for personal use at home for recording gameplay/streaming. I’ve added to it for use on site for league streaming. As of right now, everyone in league is playing, so we don’t have a need to accommodate commentary since no one would be available for that role. I have thought about how we would be able to add commentary during tournaments. It would be a harder problem to solve to have the commentators at a booth far from the rig. I think the solution that fits most easily in to what I built would be the commentators using wireless mics, watching the 24 inch monitor, standing/sitting off to the side of the player and the machine. I could then add an additional wired camera with zoom that comes off the side of the rig.

Telestration may be possible using the screen sharing function to the MacBook Pro. However, I had some connection issues between the mac mini and macbook, even with the dedicated wireless network from the travel router. I’m hoping the beefier router I have on order fixes that problem. It may have suffered from interference with the site’s wifi given it’s small size.

What I currently have:

GL-MT3000 / Beryl AX

This weekend, I’m hoping to post a breakdown of all of my equipment, test footage, and power usage, other stats for review! Keep in mind, this is one person’s baby set up. Easiest to get going without figuring out wireless HDMI/NDI transmission.

[pillyliu]

Rig set up for home use, with everything plugged in to a surge protector.

Screen rotated for playfield view

---

I can tear down the rig in about 20 minutes, and put it back together in 25? Cable organization and practice has been key! I built the mobile version of Karl’s design. It wobbles slightly when being rolled without braces at the 90 degree joints, but it is stable enough otherwise!

[raydaypinball]

Has anyone ever tried a Sony a6000 with a portable battery pack? Seems like all the adapters are 9v/2a rather than usual 5v/3a that battery packs can put out. My search for battery packs supporting 9v/2a usb c has turned up empty.

[pahuffman]

@pillyliu

My biggest issue so far with where my local league meets is that it has not only very slow wifi, but poor cell reception.

Sounds like you’re already all in! I’d consider a StarLink so you can live stream. I used to the same thing you do. I’d record and then upload to YouTube afterwards because I didn’t think anybody would want to do commentary while we were playing. Wow was I wrong. I tried it for one stream, and it really took off. Half the players love jumping on the mic between balls, so you may be surprised with the results.

Can’t wait to see some test footage from your rig!

@pillyliu

It wobbles slightly when being rolled without braces at the 90 degree joints, but it is stable enough otherwise!

Don’t worry too much about this! My rig is made out of 2x4s haha.

[pahuffman]

@dri

59.94 support was introduced in this new firmware so that’s entirely possible as the drops I was seeing was on a 59.94 camera.

Anything exciting ever happen with this or does it still skip 1 frame per second? If it doesn’t, this may be the easiest way to get a perfect 60 by upgrading just on transmitter for the playfield.

[dri]

@pahuffman

Anything exciting ever happen with this or does it still skip 1 frame per second?

I haven’t had time to do anything with this properly yet. The next opportunity is when D&D Pros start shipping to locations. I might shoot something in between but it won’t be a reliable test source for your use case as it needs to be co-mingled with two CineView HEs.

[reclaimarcade]

I don’t think I’ve seen this mentioned here and it’s elegant enough to warrant a mention. I noticed on the Vic_VP YT channel for his videos he had a magnetic small microphone he was putting on the speaker grill of the game. After a bit of searching it turns out it’s the Hollyland Lark M2 and it’s a cheap way to get really clean game audio on location with a rig. The kit has a case that is a larger version of the Airpods charging case with 2 transmitters and a receiver. The receiver slides into the hot shoe mount of the camera and is quite small and the transmitter is not only small but magnetic so you just pop it on to the speaker grill of the game you’re on. Since it’s right at the speaker you don’t have to turn the gain up significantly to pick up the game audio which is great for reducing all the background noise you normally hear in noisy arcade environments like ours. Figured I’d highlight it here as a great option. Haven’t tested fully the battery life but they’re saying 10 hours which is more than enough for my needs.