Streaming, mixing, and compositing on the cheap

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Kasey Chang
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Streaming, mixing, and compositing on the cheap

Post by Kasey Chang »

I remember trying out "OBS" before. It's basically a screen-cap / streaming-recording solution for anyone who wanted to stream online, either gameplay or just video camera of you doing something. I even did a few videos where I played one of the older rally games. Then I tossed it aside, as I couldn't quite get the volume right.

Today I found an audio solution: Voicemeeter Banana from VB-AUDIO. Any of you thinking of streaming either already have this, or you should.

https://www.vb-audio.com/Voicemeeter/banana.htm

To put it plainly, it's a virtual audio "switchboard". Map up to 3 "hardware" inputs and two VIRTUAL inputs (call them "VM VAIO" and "VM Aux"), and up to 3 hardware OUTputs and 2 virtual OUTputs. And cross connect them in any way you want, 1:M, 1:1, M:1 any combination.

Say you want your streaming to have two audio channels: your voice stream, and the game sound. That's 2 outputs, but you also need headphones to monitor your own output. That's THREE outputs. Let's call them A1 (headphones), B1 (VM VAIO), and B2 (VM AUX).

As for Input, you have the game's audio itself (captured into VM-IN-AUX), your microphone (H1), some separate background music (not from the game, as those may invoke royalties, but some genuinely free music) played via VLC (H2). Three inputs.

Now you say, but VLC is not a hardware device. Ah, there's where VB's other program, "virtual audio cable" comes in. You get ONE VAC free. If you have this installed, the VAC acts as if it's a soundcard, takes the output from that program, and sends to audio INPUT of another program, as if that program is accessing a microphone hardware stream. Thus "virtual audio cable". By installing that, and set VLC to output to the VAC, and connect the other end of VAC to VM's "hardware input 2", we can now play background music behind your voiceovers AND gamesounds.

So now you go to each input, and click on which output you want it to go to.

For H1, microphone, you want it to go to the primary virtual out, but ALSO to your monitor. So you need to click on A1 and B1.

For the background music (H2), you want it to go mixed with the game audio, but you need to hear it too. So It goes to A1 (your head phones) and B2.

The game sounds (technically all windows sounds, and you do this by choosing the VM AUX IN as the default playback device) is in VM-IN-AUX, and for that turn on A1 (your headphones) and B2 (background stuff).

You can easily add a soundboard for special effects, into this mix by adding another input and adding proper output channel(s).

I tried playing with it a bit and I realized how sucky my PC is, as it's not really capable of screencapping AND recording all these streams at the same time.
My game FAQs | Playing: She Will Punish Them, Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius, The Outer Worlds
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GreenGoo
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Re: Streaming, mixing, and compositing on the cheap

Post by GreenGoo »

So I use the nvidia shadowwhateveritsnowcalled to capture video (comes with any nvidia card), and openshot video editor (open source) to do my basic edits. I have no idea how powerful it is, but it does what I need it to do, which is very little.
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