Windows Livestreaming & Recording Guide (Part 1: DXtory)

Nah, I get on my F3's, 6 seconds of dropped video stream, you'll get into the habit of accessing the disk(s) file system prior to recording. It's something like 15~20 minutes of idle time before they'll go to sleep.

 

I'd agree but I don't believe its a sleep issue, as I've started and stopped the disk multiple times well within 20min and I still get the dropped stream.

Also, does anyone have any recommendations for good, cheap (or free) editing software. I have Roxiowave, but when I load the video into the player it looks like dog poop.

 

Ooops I just bougt VAC only yesterday though having audio issues which might due to my onboard sound.

No issues when just sitting on the desktop, but launch a game and everything goes crackly a few minutes into playing battlefield 3.

I am considering buying a soundcard, which has gotten good reviews by Bit Tech. This one Asus Xonar DG 5.1 PCI Sound Card OEM.

I know it's at the low end of the soundcard spectrum but might be better than the onboard soundcard.


Oh and Jess check your PM's.
And having just bought VAC I don't want to have wasted my money.

 

I'm not sure then, Dxtory can take a bit to initialise, but the recorded streams are unbroken, whereas what you are describing the write buffers get filled (which causes Dxtory to discard data until more can be written) for a bit and then are fine. Don't know what is going on there, maybe your right, like it is aggressive power management firmware on the HDD. Something to look up.

Edit- Dxtory, drops frames when you have stream settings set higher than the bandwith of the recording medium, like 1080-60p is too much for my 7200 F3, it'll actually create a stream at 60fps but with only 52-57 unique frames/second

Yeah I've been testing it quite thoroughly, off the top of my head, the Audio repeater buffers can / should be left at default and you can elevate the process priority to high or realtime. Nice PM, cheers

 

I will give that a go as my audio has been stuttering like crazy.

Yesterday's footage was saved by it only being out of sync by a few seconds or milliseconds. And a quick render and changing timing with vlc i was able to check how much it was out.

Thanks Jess, Im offline till tomorrow as I have work tonight.

 

Yeah I noticed the lag aswell, but I think it is just the mixed audio out. Things to do with the "ms per int" setting, that is the other possibility.

I was also working on a setup guide, that IS better than the ones I've seen on it, to make it fully unobtrusive - nothing, absolutely nothing to be done after setting it up cheesecake.

Edit- I did come up with a bit of a different method for VAC, if you have a sound device that can re-task connectors. Get a couple of these, set set them looped through line in/out, and use the audio repeater from the trial version of VAC. UNTESTED, I don't know how to setup the real cables as separate audio outs, rather than a surround sound config. The "trial" reminder is on the out of the virtual cable, and is nothing to do with repeater instances.

 

I tried out the trial just to see if i could set it up. If this does not work I may offer up what I pm'd for a small donation

All the googling showed two ways of setting it up. Two VAC's one repeating to the other.

The settings i have used still result in stuttering audio. Annoying to be honest.

I had lagged audio yesterday and stuttering today. Might be the settings I have used.

 

So having setup VAC again.

Control panel setup of VAC's left alone.

Repeaters setup as normal but changed priority like Jester suggested. Won't allow me to set it to real time so they have been set to high.

Line 1 >Game Audio Line 2 > Mumble Dxtory Records down mixed audio and Mic seperate.

So I did a little testing a few minutes recording and it seems to have worked just fine. No delay or audio stutter etc.

 

Glad it's working. Does that mean I'm off the hook?

 

Lmao, Jess come on mumble can send you what I mentioned in PM.

Plus discuss settings etc

 

Virtual Audio Cable (VAC) Guide

Stuff that shouldn't need describing; downloading, installing.


VAC Control Panel

Nr Cables

Begin with running the control panel with admin (so you don't need to restart), and set the cables to 2(game +voip) or 3(+aux - see end)

Threads and Priority

I don't know how auto works, but it could be worth setting these manually, especially if you see over/under flows in the control panel. Threads should be obvious, and Priority was good for me around 16-20.

VAC cable format and resampling

Now the next step is to configure the VAC's format properties. They will want to be configured in Windows as well, or needn't have bothered. To reduce overhead as much as possible, you should use the same settings for all devices, so as to prevent resampling. Resampling will use resources otherwise, effecting performance.

Audio devices will work in one format at a time and resample input to match the default, mix the resampled inputs and output one stream. So starting at the physical output identify what format you'll use, typically range being 44.1khz or 48khz 16bps and stereo. The control panel defines what the VAC's are capable of in the same way sound hardware identify to the OS what it is compatible with. *IMPORTANT* In windows sound properties, all the devices default format should be set to the same format. Playback and Recording devices to correctly stop extraneous resampling.

Volume Control

This is useful if you want to adjust the levels of you game vs VOIP/music that you are listening to. Using this will allow you to quiet the game down for your hearing, but will leave the original recording level as it is outputted from the game (so remember to turn it up if you had it low)

ms per int[erupt]

This is a performance setting, and could be adjusted lower to reduce latency, and increased to improve stability.

Watermark

Negatively impacts performance significantly.


After setting the VAC's properties, press the set button to update the VAC's configuration.

That is the control panel done with. Onto the repeaters.



Audio Repeater

Audio Repeater (ks) operates kernel level and takes exclusive operation of devices, and is unsuitable for our needs.

Things that shouldn't need mentioning: wave in, wave out, format (signal range, bps and channels).

Queue

These are the buffers for in and out, they should be half full for optimum performance.

Total buffers

Format gives the repeater a data rate, and total buffers gives a maximum duration for data to be stored. Together they allow repeater to allocate a quantity of memory for buffering. Lowering can be negative for performance.

Number of Buffers

these are segments of audio to be transfered at a time, increasing these will make each piece of transfered audio shorter. This option is about balancing overhead to latency.

Latency Over/Under flows

I think keeping the individual buffers between 30ms and 50ms yields the best result, so drop the total buffers to 200ms and set nr of buffers to 5, with a high priority.



Automation 1 (batch scripts)

Audio Repeater takes command line arguments, so a .bat can be written to open and close repeater instances with properties already set. The options are configured with exactly the information that is used in the application eg:

StartVAC.bat:

Code:

Start "" /MIN "%Program Files%\Virtual Audio Cable\Audio Repeater.exe" /Input:"Line 1 (Virtual Audio Cable)" /Output:"Speakers (Realtek High Definiti" /SamplingRate:48000 /BufferMs:200 /Buffers:5 /Priority:"High" /WindowName:"Sys and Game Audio" /AutoStart
Exit

StopVAC.bat:

Code:

Start "" /MIN "%Program Files%\Virtual Audio Cable\Audio Repeater.exe" /CloseInstance:"Sys and Game Audio"
Exit

The other properties are;
/BitsPerSample:
/Channels:
/ChanCfg:

"Channels" is only for use with "Custom" ChanCfg, i.e. if you have a special setup.

More than one start can be used per .bat also.



Automation 2 (task scheduler)

Now you have an easy way to start and stop your repeaters, but you would still need to, switch default audio playback device in Windows sound properties. To avoid this you can use Task Scheduler to run the StartVAC.bat at start up. The repeaters barely use any resources, so it's not a big deal if the slight latency is a non-issue.

Task Scheduler is in Administrative Tools, (or run "taskschd.msc") and needs a name, (I suggest "User VAC Start", user just to identify at a later time that I made it.) a trigger and an action.

Trigger can either be "at logon" or "at startup", and the action is to run the "startVAC.bat". If you use "at logon" for the trigger you won't have audio until you have signed in. If you want to use "at startup" you will need to change a security option on the general tab. You will need to set it to "run whether user is logged in or not".




Why Aux?

Well if you stream, you could use it to mix your microphone without you having to hear it. Or you could listen to music while playing without recording it, [edit] but you could just set the output device to physical rather than line 50. Or both of those options with 4 VAC's.

 

Followed the instructions as per auto running the VAC.

Thanks Jess, good to game and speak to you today.

I will post some screens or make a video as to what my settings are and setting it up with Dxtory. I feel the slight extra information is required. As well as answering questions which are missing from other videos.

 

After Thursday's 3 rounds, I found I had loads of overflows at the device level, and now worked out some more stuff. I just had it working under full load without issues, and unnoticeable impedance.

Dom, sure go for it, just remember to sell my uootube

 

Will do. What are these full load settings? The video I uploaded from Thursday night with Gaelic had no issues xD


I have four days next week free. So a video guide for setting up Dxtory/Rendering and VAC setup will be made.

Answering all the questions I have seen raised in other videos. The most recent I have seen by a youtuber. Silly things which I have mentioned on mumble.

 

FTFY lol

Driver Param's:
2 cables, priority between 16-20, might want to set threads manually to your cpu capabilities.

Cable Param's:
Format Range: Match you hardware, and set windows defaults (vac playback and recording) to match as well to prevent unnecessary resampling.
Ms per Int: 'interrupts' decrease for lower latency or increase for stability. Lower numbers use more cpu time. Best left alone really, how much difference of latency is 2ms going to make.
Volume Control: use for adjusting levels for your hearing, whilst keeping game and voip full.
Watermark only attempts to alleviate problems with how buffers have been configed.

Repeater Param's:
Match format again (duh), and priority to High. Buffers are kind of tricky, even around 80ms total (this is how much latency there will be) gave me trouble when watching something because of lip sync, otherwise it isn't a bad issue for me. It change my mind, and put me on the track for a lower total buffer than I was thinking before. I like 120ms over 6 (120ms total buffers, 6 buffers = 20ms individual buffers). 4 buffers is really the minimum, and odd numbers are a bit of a weird thing to have, as the buffers are cycled between the two sides of the repeater. Having buffer units any smaller increases the overhead a bit too much (clock skews/underflows- there is stuff in the help files). Lager buffers allow the repeater to tolerate a bad setup better.

Tuning
Clocks: After using them for a time, there will likely be a shift in balance of the buffers, and to improve this adjust the cables clock ratio in the control panel using the repeaters indicator for reference. If the in is fast (over 100%) reduce the cable clock ratio. This tuning also helps the more aggressive setting here of 120ms/6.

I've tried to learn how it works to the best of my ability, and given that you will always have a bit of audio lag using I doubt that you'll actually want to use it all the time, making the task scheduler bit redundant. stuff, tired

 

Thanks Jess, I will be using it when recording clips for montages etc but will turn it off during team play recordings.

Depends how well it holds up as it is right now.

 

would this enable me to prevent my friends talking to me in ventrilo coming through into my streams (i use dxtory and xsplit)?

Very interested in this but seems quite confusing, is this difficult to set up? are any of you guys buying this soon as id be interested in chipping in for a bulk buy to get the discount.

C

 

We both own the software already
And I don't think so, it allows splitting of audio. But Dxtory records everything.

 

argh. cheers dude my friends love to watch my streams and talk to me while im gaming, but id rather that not go into the stream :/ trying to figure out a way of making that possible

 

Let me think on it and have a play with VAC and Dxtory I have an isdea, and have just finished a guide on how to setup Dxtory and VAC. Just realised I missed something xD