Best Software for Live Streaming Video to YouTube:
- OBS: Price: It is available for free. OBS or Open Source Broadcaster is a popular recording and live streaming software tool that can be easily operated by all beginners.
- Wirecast Play: Price: Wirecast Play 6: Free/ $9.99.
- XSplit Broadcaster: Price: Free and Paid.
Hardware Encoders are costly solution. There are less number of chances to upgrade it for new codecs. So scalability is the issue with hardware encoders. If you are streaming on Twitch or Streaming on Youtube just for normal use then Software Encoding using OBS Studio is good solution for you.
Let's get to it.
- Wirecast. With unlimited inputs, unlimited destinations, and simultaneous video conferencing, Wirecast studio is the perfect live stream broadcasting software.
- vMix.
- VidBlasterX.
- OBS Studio.
- Streamlabs OBS.
- FFmpeg.
- XSplit Broadcaster.
- SplitCam.
There are three basic tiers of audio live streaming equipment:
- Low—Medium Quality: For example the built-in microphone on entry-level and prosumer cameras.
- Medium-High Quality: USB and 3.5mm microphones, or built-in microphones on professional live video cameras.
- Professional Quality: XLR microphones.
An encoder is a software program — a type of electronic “codebook” that assists in choosing codes by using a “tree” of terminology. Without a doubt, encoder software is important for more efficient work, and the use of an encoder helps speed up the coding process.
There are two types of encoders, hardware and software. The key difference is that a hardware encoder is a piece of physical equipment you'll need to hook up, while a software encoder is a program that runs on a computer.
Recommended video bitrates for HDR uploads
| Type | Video Bitrate, Standard Frame Rate (24, 25, 30) | Video Bitrate, High Frame Rate (48, 50, 60) |
|---|
| 2160p (4K) | 44–56 Mbps | 66–85 Mbps |
| 1440p (2K) | 20 Mbps | 30 Mbps |
| 1080p | 10 Mbps | 15 Mbps |
| 720p | 6.5 Mbps | 9.5 Mbps |
NVENC is good but only at high bitrates. You are going to notice a much bigger quality drop off if you use NVENC at 3mbps because it is meant for higher bitrates. x264 works a bit better at lower bitrates.
Even if you encode with CPU (x264), OBS needs a minimum amount of GPU power to do the video compositing. A GT 710 isn't suited for OBS operation at all. You will get rendering lag with it. Even iGPUs might become overloaded, if you compose your scenes with more than 1 or 2 sources.
A CPU (central processing unit) works together with a GPU (graphics processing unit) to increase the throughput of data and the number of concurrent calculations within an application. Using the power of parallelism, a GPU can complete more work in the same amount of time as compared to a CPU.
In order to start streaming online, you will need to capture the signal from your audio and video sources. If you are using a computer with a software encoder to stream, then simply connecting a camera to a computer using an HDMI™ or a SDI cable will not work. You will need an intermediary device called a capture card.
"Why does OBS even need to use the GPU?" OBS needs GPU time and resources because it has to composite and render a scene. If you want OBS to require less resources, you must construct additional pylons you'll have to build simpler scenes and scene collections.
An encoder is a software program — a type of electronic “codebook” that assists in choosing codes by using a “tree” of terminology. Without a doubt, encoder software is important for more efficient work, and the use of an encoder helps speed up the coding process.
What Is A Hardware Encoder?
- Receive an uncompressed video and audio signal (usually through HDMI or SDI).
- Encode it into a compressed format.
- Transmit the compressed data over IP to a CDN or a decoder (a device that can convert the compressed stream back into an uncompressed signal or another playable format).
Game capture cards take the raw feed of gameplay and put it into a language that a video player, like YouTube or Twitch, can understand. Capture cards don't encode the data itself, but they facilitate the transmission from one end (a computer) to another (a video player).
hardware nvenc new. it offers the best performance, but the quality isn't as good as software x264. using software x264 will make basically your entire pc lag as it uses your cpu, nvenc is nvidia's custom encoder that's designed to be efficient. it's the same thing shadowplay uses.
To put it simply, the encoder you choose will decide which piece of hardware is going to render your video. If you choose NVENC or AMF, you're telling OBS to use your graphics processing unit (GPU), or if you choose x264 you're telling it to use your central processing unit (CPU).
Generally x264 can usually achieve better quality than NVENC. The difference is only really noticable at low bitrates though. The advantage of NVENC is that it doesnt slow down your computer as much since the encoding is done on your graphics card instead of your CPU.
I would recommend trying CPU encoding to begin with and test whether you take an in-game FPS hit. If you don't, you can continue. If you do, try using GPU encoding.
