Streaming with 2 PCs

[fathom101]

Hi everyone it's my first message on here!

I was looking for some advice, I'm looking to stream on Twitch in the near future but was wondering has anyone tried to use a laptop as a streaming pc? If so how would go around doing it as I think it would be a lot easier than getting another desktop/screen/keyboard/mouse etc. and I was thinking of the space issues.


My pc specs:
Motherboard: Asus Z77 Maximus V Formula
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770
RAM: 16.0BG (2x8) Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR3
Graphics Cards: 2x Asus Direct CU II OC 760 GTXs in SLI
Hard Drive: Samsung SSD 840 EVO 500G
Hard Drive: 4TB Hard Drive
PSU: BeQuiet Dark Power Pro P10 1000W
Monitor 1: LG 27EA83R-D Ocean Black 27" IPS
Monitor 2: Samsung S24D391HL PLS 23.6" LED

My laptop specs:
Asus N56VM Laptop
Processor: Intel Core i7 3610QM
RAM: 8GB DDR3 RAM
Hard Drive: Samsung 120GB SSD
Graphics Card: Geforce 630M GT
It has 15.6 1080P resolution screen.

My capture card is the Aver Media Live Gamer Portable and I have ordered a HDMI Splitter.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Brian]

What kind of specific advice are you looking for? While streaming on a laptop is generally inadvisable, your laptop may have the muscle to actually pull it off.

[fathom101]

No that's pretty much what I was thinking, thanks for the reply. I thought the laptop specs are good enough with the i7, 8GB RAM and SSD. I do have another question though, how do I play a game in 1440p (which is native resolution for my main screen) and keep the resolution in 1440p but stream 1080p on the other laptop, is it possible? I've not found much advice on the internet about it as I'm assuming most people just stick to 1080p monitors. It must be possible. I'm using OBS by the way.

[H3ll0J3ll0]

[QUOTE="fathom101, post: 24752, member: 41283"]No that's pretty much what I was thinking, thanks for the reply. I thought the laptop specs are good enough with the i7, 8GB RAM and SSD. I do have another question though, how do I play a game in 1440p (which is native resolution for my main screen) and keep the resolution in 1440p but stream 1080p on the other laptop, is it possible? I've not found much advice on the internet about it as I'm assuming most people just stick to 1080p monitors. It must be possible. I'm using OBS by the way.[/QUOTE]
i'm not really fammiliar with the whole two computer streaming concept but if im not wrong you play games on one pc then you have a capturecard that relays that data to the second computer which then encodes it and broadcasts it to twitch, correct?
if this is the case you need a capturecard that does 1440 but then theres the question does twitch support 1440p.

A tip though: if you are a new streamer without partnership i would go with a highres stream since many peoples broadband cant handle it, im not sure but 720p 2500 bitrate is often a good start, then when/if you get partnership you can crank up the quality cause then there's quality options

[Brian]

Twitch does not officially support 1440p, no. Also many capture cards will only capture up to 1080p. It may be possible that your card will accept a 1440p signal and simply scale it to to 1080p. To scale the video to 720p from there can be done from OBS with the resolution downscale function (see screenshot). Also I agree with h3ll0j3ll0 that broadcasting at high resoultion/high bitrates is generally inadvisable for non-partnered streamers. While twitch generally suggests going no higher than a 2000 bitrate most people don't experience too many problems with 2500.

Resolution Downscale:


If you want some 1 on 1 help with any of the setup let me know I'm happy to lend assistance.

[fathom101]

Hi, thanks for the help, yes I figured out you can't stream at 1440p, what I wanted was to game on 1440p and get the full use of my monitor, but I have to turn the res down to 1080p for the capture card to actually not show "out of range" (then I could set it to 720p record, I just used record as a test) on the avermedia REC software and show an image (I didn't get as far as OBS). Unfortunately my 27" monitor res'd down to 1080p doesn't look great and the text looks blurred. Guess I'll have to wait for a capture card to to come out so I can do it correctly. Also I think I'm going with the USB mixer/audio interface route and push all my sound through that, as I was having a nightmare trying to get the sound to work. I did get it work but I think it's more of a fix than a proper method so I'll wait till I get a mixer.

[fathom101]

Actually saying that, there is one coming out but it's internal and not external.
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/produc ... nsitypro4k

[Dirkadin]

Hey, Here is a YouTube video I saw a few months ago about streaming with a laptop as a encoding box. Not sure if it will help your specific case, but it should give you an idea on it.