GPU is your graphics card. If you go into Device Manager, and double click on “Display Adapters” it will tell you what you have.
Xsplit is going to be a little bit more restrictive in that regard. I believe it requires GeForce/Radeon Class. OBS will probably work with an integrated Intel, which I’m guessing is what you have. If you do have that, it means your processor is having to do all the graphics work ,and encode your video.
Xsplit lets you try it for free, and OBS is free, so you can go ahead and download them to test it out. Even if you don’t have cameras yet, you can stream your computer monitor or a youtube video to see how well it works.
I tried the C922 and I was underwhelmed. As soon as you switch to 60fps the image quality becomes very poor. As mentioned above, you’ll need lots of light to get the C922 to work on 60fps.
I bought a Sony CX405 and a Blackmagic Ultrastudio mini recorder. Getting much better results with 60fps now. BTW I’m on a mac using OBS.
@akm what I don’t understand is that some of my early WOz streams had great quality on the playfield cam. I just watched one in archives and the ball is easily seen without any jerkiness which leads me to believe I can achieve the same look with that same set up.
You definitely made me a believer in CX-405. I agree they are the best. They are better than those Panasonics I was using. The hardwired USB cable is an excellent feature,and the UI of the setup screen makes it so settings can be changed with your thumb. Panasonic is cumbersome to say the least, and it requires two hands. This is a huge factor to consider when doing tournaments. And like JRE and others have said,it looks great.
If you’re considering one, don’t think you have to get brand new for $200. I’ve gotten both mine off Ebay for right at $100 each. The market is flooded with them, you just have to keep an eye out. Check out the recent sales history for them. Many have gone for <$100. All you need is the camera and the power cable, so people will sell them cheap if they lost the battery, card, etc.
I use the CX-405 as well. I am really happy with it for the reasons you state. I do want to eventually upgrade further so I can do 1080p/60 on the video-out/preview instead of 720p/60, but for the price it’s a no-brainer.
Checking Amazon now, it’s strange to see it at about $210 NIB. I got both of mine NIB for $130 shipped each from Amazon last year. I’m not really sure why the price has gone up. But yeah, eBay looks like a better alternative.
There could be several factors. How powerful is your computer? What other software have you installed on it since you started? Are you plugging the hardware into the same ports every time you stream? Have you raised the resolutions on the cams without realizing it? Are you using more stream overlays now or embedded chat apps (all these eat into your computer’s resources/memory)? How many times have you updated the PC since (Windows particularly if that’s what you use)? Lots of things can affect the performance over time, especially if your computer wasn’t fully up to snuff to begin with.
Case in point, when I first got into pinball streaming, I used a cheap laptop that was barely suitable for the task, and while the stream was passable at first, it become unwatchable as time went on despite using the exact same hardware and only installing the usual Windows updates to it. I still had the computer running about as lean as it could and it wasn’t used for anything other than streaming.
*Edit: I checked out your stream. I’d try lowering the resolution on the playfield camera a bit. It looks really sharp which makes me think you’ve got it fairly high. Take it down to 1280 x 720, and lower if that’s not working, then see how your performance works from there. You can get away with a lower resolution on the playfield cam because it’s not taking up the whole screen. Also, 1080p feeds from the cam can bog down the USB bus pretty quickly. Another troubleshooting method is to switch the cams around on your USB ports. Also, is that a Mac, or a PC? I couldn’t tell in the background.
As an aside, make sure you have auto-focus disabled, I noticed that kicking in a couple of times. That probably won’t effect the smoothness of the performance, but it will make things blurry randomly as it thinks it needs to re-adjust.
I will have to double check. I am pretty sure mine just gives me 720p or 1080i for 60fps. I could be misremembering though since when I originally bought it I didn’t have a capture card that could do 1080p/60.
oh i’ve definitely confused some things here and there. It’s a lot to keep up with.
Pretty certain about this because I recently had to set it up that way when streaming the Flippers tournament. I had to mix CX-405s and Pany v110, on the same switch, and the only way to get that to work smoothly was to set it to 1080 because the Panasonics can only do 1080i or 480p, and they are only 30fps. The change in frame rate didn’t seem to matter to Xsplit, just the resolution.
I never saw a way to change FPS. Just select resolution 1080p, 1080i, or 720p. Yeah, there aren’t too many cards that can do a proper 1080p60fps. At least affordable ones. The internal ones I have only do 720p @60fps. The Avermedia LGX I have can do the 1080p @60fp, but its USB and it can act real quirky.
