Menu
Broadcasting or streaming video game gameplay has become a popular pastime for many gamers, young and old, with many even turning their hobby into a full-time career via streaming services such as Twitch.
Players can stream gameplay from video game consoles such as the Nintendo Switch, Microsoft's Xbox One, and Sony's PlayStation 4 in addition to traditional computers and even smartphones. Given the technological limitations of mobile devices, broadcasting a quality gaming stream to Twitch from a smartphone is a little more complicated than doing the same from a console or PC. It is possible though and there are already numerous streamers who regularly stream their favorite smartphone games on Twitch and have become quite popular in doing so.
What Is Mobile Twitch Streaming?
Mobile Twitch streaming is the broadcasting of the live gameplay of a video game from an iOS, Android, or Windows smartphone or tablet to the Twitch streaming service.
It is possible to stream only the gameplay footage in a broadcast but most successful streamers also incorporate webcam footage of themselves and an appealing visual layout to engage with their viewers and to encourage them to follow or subscribe to their Twitch channel.
What's Needed for a Mobile Twitch Stream?
In addition to your mobile device and the game you want to play, you will need the following:
Step 1: Preparing Your Smartphone for Streaming
Before you begin streaming from your mobile device, it's recommended to close all of the open apps. This will make sure that your device is running as fast as possible and will reduce any slowing down or crashing of the game you're going to be playing.
It's also a good idea to turn off notifications due to the fact that any that you get during a stream will be completely visible to your audience. You might also want to turn on Airplane Mode to prevent people from calling you though make sure Wi-Fi and Bluetooth remain functional so you can project your screen to your computer with Reflector 3.
Step 2: Installing Reflector 3
To stream the footage from your mobile device, you'll need to get it to display on your computer, which in turn will send it to Twitch. It's similar to how you need to connect a Blu-ray player to your TV so you can watch the Blu-ray disk.
Reflector 3 is a program that works on Windows and macOS computers and essentially makes them compatible with the numerous wireless projecting technologies supported by iOS, Android, and Windows phones such as Google Cast, AirPlay, and Miracast. You won't need to use any cables or additional hardware when using Reflector 3.
After downloading Reflector 3 from its official website, open the program on your computer and then wirelessly project your mobile's display to the computer using one of the following methods.
Step 3: Setting Up OBS Studio
If you haven't already, download OBS Studio onto your computer. This is a popular free program that's used to broadcast livestreams to Twitch.
Once you have OBS Studio installed, you need to link it to your Twitch account so that your broadcast is sent to the correct location. To do this, log into your account on the official Twitch website and click on Dashboard, then Settings, followed by Stream Key. Press the purple button to display your stream key and then copy this series of numbers to your clipboard by highlighting it with your mouse, right-clicking on the text, and pressing Copy.
Switch back to OBS Studio and click on Settings > Streaming > Service and select Twitch. Copy your stream key into the relevant field by right-clicking on it with your mouse and choosing Paste. Anything broadcast from OBS Studio will now be sent directly to your personal Twitch account.
Step 4: Adding Media Sources to OBS Studio
Make sure Reflector 3 is still open on your computer and that your mobile device is mirrored on it. You're now going to add Reflector 3 to OBS Studio and this is how your viewers will see your mobile gameplay.
Step 5: Starting Your Twitch Broadcast
When you have your dashboard looking the way you want, click on the Start Streaming button in the lower-right corner. You'll now be live on Twitch and your viewers should see your webcam footage, any images you've added, and your favorite mobile video game.
Twitch.tv is quickly becoming one of the top destinations for game streaming on the web, with video sites like YouTube following closely behind. But you probably already have a decent streaming program on your computer: Steam.
Sensing the opportunity to set up its own community of streamers, Valve has added the option to easily broadcast your games to friends or anyone who wants to watch using the Steam client as its own streaming client. This makes it easy for users to quickly get themselves up and streaming with just a few settings adjustments, and here’s everything you need to know to get started.
Set Your Account Up for Streaming
To start, open up your account settings by clicking on the “Steam” option in the menu, and selecting “Settings” from the drop-down menu.
Next, find the “Broadcasting” tab from your account window, highlighted below.
By default, your account will be set to “Broadcasting Disabled”. To enable streaming, choose from one of the three following options.
RELATED:How to Use Steam In-Home Streaming
The first option for how your broadcast is shared is “Friends can request to watch my games”. This restricts your broadcast so only people on your friends list can see that you’re broadcasting, and even then, they’ll have to make a request with you to see the stream before it opens up in their client. Next is the option for “Friends can watch my games”, which means that anyone on your friends list can drop in on the broadcast without requesting access first.
Last, there’s the option for “Anyone can watch my games.” This option makes your broadcast fully public on the game’s “Community Hub” page. Anyone scrolling through the “Broadcasts” section of the game’s hub will see your stream, and can tune in without being on your friends list or requesting access first.
Change Your Quality and Bandwidth Settings
Now that you’re set up to broadcast, it’s time to configure the stream settings that fit your PC’s power and broadband speeds best. To adjust the video resolution of your stream, select the drop-down menu for “Video Dimensions”.
There are four options, ranging from 360p up to 1080p, and which you choose will depend on your gaming PC’s power. Valve hasn’t released any hard guidelines or specification requirements you’ll need to run broadcasting, likely because of the wide variety of games that the Steam service supports.
For example, streaming a low-resource 2D game like Terraria in 1080p would take less of your system’s resources to power both the game and the broadcast at the same time, so it would be possible to stream it in 1080p on an older machine without slowing anything down. If you tried to do the same thing with The Division, streaming in 1080p with the graphics set to Ultra could bring the same PC to its knees.
Next, you need to choose the Maximum Bitrate that your stream will broadcast with. This controls how much internet bandwidth your broadcast will use to get video off your computer and onto the web, and it will also dictate the overall quality of how your stream looks to other viewers. For example, if you stream at a video dimension of 1080p but limit your bitrate to just 750 kbit/s, even though viewers will see the window at a full resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, the quality of the video itself will still be grainy and pixelated.
If you have a fast broadband connection (anywhere above 60Mbps), the maximum bitrate of 3500 kbit/s will be fine. If you’re unsure if your connection is fast enough, try several different bitrates to find the one that fits your connection best.
It’s possible to fine tune these settings further with the help of the “Optimize encoding for” menu. This setting gives you two choices: Best Quality, or Best Performance. Again, Valve hasn’t released specifics on how these two settings actually change your broadcast on the software side of things, so the only way to find out what works best is to try both and see which option your system can handle at load.
Next, you can choose where the viewer chat window appears in the game window. The four options rest in each corner of the screen (top-left, bottom-right, etc), or choose “Off” to disable chat completely.
Last, there’s the option to control what viewers can see while your broadcast is live. By default Steam will only broadcast the video and audio coming from your game, and nothing else. If you click out of the game window during a broadcast, viewers will see a “Please Stand By” message that goes away once you’re back in the game.
To give viewers the ability to see or hear content from other windows that are active on your desktop, tick off the boxes for “Record video from all applications on this machine” and “Record audio from all applications on this machine”, highlighted above. With these two options selected, any movements you make on your desktop in other windows will be visible as a part of the broadcast.
Get Your Microphone Ready for Streaming
Of course, streaming isn’t all that exciting if we can’t hear the user on the other end of the game. To configure your microphone’s settings for a broadcast, start by checking off the box to “Record my microphone”.
Next, click on the “Configure Microphone” link next to that box. This will take you to the “Voice” tab in Settings.
Configuring your microphone in Steam is the same process as configuring it in Windows proper. To start, click on the “Change Device” button, which will take you to the Audio Control panel found in your current build of Windows.
If your microphone is properly installed, it will appear in the list of available sound devices.
Click on the microphone you want to use, and choose “OK, I’m finished changing settings” once your done.
RELATED:How to Connect a Headset to a Laptop, Tablet, or Smartphone With a Single Audio Jack
Finally, there’s the option to switch between automatic voice transmission, and using a push-to-talk key to activate the microphone when you want to talk. The first option automatically detects when it hears noise from your microphone, and records for as long as the receiving volume is pushed past a certain threshold.
The second will only turn the microphone on when you push a key. To change which key it is, click on the setting highlighted above, and then hit the key you want to use. Hit the “OK” button, and all your settings will be automatically saved. Now any game you launch within Steam will automatically begin broadcasting.
To verify you’ve set everything up correctly, look for a small “Live” icon that appears in the top-right corner of your game the next time its launched. This is also where you’ll find information on how many viewers are tuned in, and whether or not the audio from your microphone is being picked up.
How to Watch Other Game Broadcasts
To watch a friend’s broadcast, simply find their name in your friends list, and right click their name. If they have broadcasting enabled, the “Watch Game” option will appear from the drop-down menu. Click this, and you’ll be taken to their stream inside the Steam client.
To view other people’s public broadcasts who aren’t on your friends list, there are two options available.
The most convenient method is to view the stream in the Steam client itself. Open Steam, and click on the “Community” button from the menu at the top of the window.
Select “Broadcasts” from the drop-down menu, and any open streams that are broadcasting will load in a scrollable list.
Simply, you can check some kinds of drivers for any HP printers on our website. There are so many types of HP printers and you have to download the driver according to the type. You need to check the series of your printer to make sure that the driver will work on it. If you use HP Deskjet F4100 All-in-One Printer series, then you can install a compatible driver on your PC before using the printer.Where to download HP Drivers? Deskjet f4100 series driver.
If you’re not at home or don’t have access to your Steam client, Valve also hosts broadcasts on the Steam Community website. To access public broadcasts, click the link here or visit the URL “http://steamcommunity.com/?subsection=broadcasts” in a web browser.
Max payne 3 old school mode. Once the broadcast is loaded, you can change the quality of the stream by clicking the gear icon in the bottom-right corner, and chat with the broadcaster by typing in the highlighted chat window.
The Limitations of Steam’s Broadcasting
Unfortunately, Steam has yet to add support for users running the client in Linux or OSX, though the company says it has plans to integrate compatibility with these operating systems in the near future. Also, broadcasting games only works on Steam accounts that have at least one verified purchase ($5 or more) tied to their username. This verifies you as a “non-limited” account, a tool that Valve uses to cut down on community abuse.
Lastly, unlike Twitch.tv, there are no options to add custom overlays to your stream. Steam is only capable of recording the game and any windows/applications you have running alongside the game. To stream with overlays or with your webcam placed somewhere on the window, you’d be better off streaming with a program like XSplit to Twitch instead.
Although watching streams of people playing video games may not be for everyone, there’s no denying there’s a huge market for it that only continues to grow by the day. Thanks to Steam, jumping in on this trend is an easy process, and gives you the opportunity to share your favorite gaming moments with your close friends or anyone else who might drop by to watch.
READ NEXT
Yesterday, Steam released its In-Home Streaming feature to everyone. The feature allows you to install games on one PC and stream them via your home network to any other machine. Here's how to get it set up (and fix some of the quirkier problems).
Step 1: Set Up Your Streaming Server and Client
Advertisement
To use the In-Home Streaming feature, here's what you'll need:
Advertisement
Once you've got both computers connected to the network and running the beta client, here's how to get the In-Home Streaming set up:
When connected to a network with another Steam-enabled host computer attached, games installed on any of the host machines will appear in the client Library. The normal 'Play/Install' button will be replaced with a 'Stream' button. You can, however, click the dropdown arrow next to the button to install the game locally if you'd prefer.
Advertisement
Assuming you don't have any technical hurdles to overcome, the In-Home Streaming is relatively straightforward. In fact, if you're already enrolled in the beta on both machines, you may not even notice that your computers can now stream between them. However, there are still a few oddities that can be cleaned up.
Step 2: Tweak Your Settings for Maximum Performance
Advertisement
While Steam does a pretty great job of making things effortless, there are still a few settings that are worth tweaking (or at least keeping in mind).
On the host machine: In the Settings menu (Steam > Settings), select In-Home Streaming on the left-hand side of the window. Under 'Host options' click 'Advanced Host Options.' Here, you'll be able to enable hardware encoding (which may be on by default) and 'Prioritize network traffic'. Kenapa pada saat nambang diamond tidak bisa di ambil. The latter's availability may depend on your network hardware, but if you've got a relatively recent router, enabling this option can help make your game streams a little less choppy.
Advertisement
On the client machine: Here's where things get fun. In the same In-Home Streaming section of Settings, you have a simple radio button under 'Client options' that allow you to choose between Fast, Balanced, or Beautiful. They're pretty self-explanatory and don't require a lot of technical tweaking.
However, click the Advanced Client Options button and you can get some more fine-grained control. Your first option is 'Limit bandwidth to'. This is set to Automatic by default. The manual options range from 3Mbit/s to 30Mbit/s, or Unlimited. If you have either a Wireless N or Wireless AC router, you can probably go as high as you need to without disrupting other network traffic. If you find your game is streaming at a slow rate, try manually turning up the bandwidth limit.
Advertisement
Alternatively, if your game is lagging and you don't think bandwidth is the problem (say, you're on a Wireless AC connection with no other users), you can try limiting the game resolution. In the second drop down box, you can choose 1080p, 720p, or 480p as a hard limit for your host machine to stream. Obviously a lower resolution won't look as good, but you can get a higher frame rate, which can mean the difference between victory and defeat in many games.
You can also select 'Display performance information' in the client options dialog. This will add a small indicator in the lower left corner of your screen with the current streaming resolution and framerate.
Advertisement
Live Stream Youtube
In-Home Streaming has been in beta for several months and so far it seems like it's paid off. The feature works relatively painlessly right out of the box with little setup. If you want to tweak your options, though, you still have a few buttons and knobs to fiddle with.
Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |