I have some tips I'd like to share! This isn't every possible tip but these are the ones I've found go the furthest to help dance/arcade/rhythm game streams become awesome with minimal effort. With regard to audio, you can buy a mixer, cheap cardioid XLR mic, stand for the mic, and cables, for less than a Blue Yeti and other typical mics, especially if you shop smart ie secondhand (I've gotten 10 channel mixers as low as $20). This will let you feed the mic and game in and combine them into one output, so that they're exactly in sync with each other. You can dial in just enough game audio that it overpowers the weak speaker audio being picked up by the mic, with the end result of hearing the game audio clearly and your voice/footsteps clearly! And it's really easy to do, since you can plug in headphones and preview the mix, and using the level indicators and your own ears you can come up with a good sounding stream in just a few minutes. Familiarize yourself with the Scale Filtering options when resizing a source. I really commonly see people resize their webcam or game source without doing so and it looks pixelated. You could use a bilinear/bicubic/lanzcos scale filter to smoothen it out so that it's anti-aliased and looks a ton better. Different filters look better in different scenarios (real life imagery ie cam, graphics of high contrast ie game) so play with it a bit to see what looks best, but basically any of bilinear/bicubic/lanzcos will look much better than no filtering. Lighting is very important to having a fluid webcam output, but one other thing to try is adjusting the Gain. It's a bit much to go into detail, but Gain boosts the brightness of your webcam in a way that looks natural versus just cranking the Brightness slider high. On a C920, raising Gain to around 75-100% first, then starting low on exposure and adjusting higher until it looks good and is still fluid, seems to work in most indoor lighting scenarios. It will differ for different cameras and different lighting scenarios. But yeah, TLDR, your basic rule of thumb for bright, good looking, and fluid output: low exposure, high gain, will get you far even without adjusting lighting. If your webcam is in front of your pad/controller, flip the webcam source so that it's facing the right way around. ie, up arrow faces up instead of down, or top row of buttons on controller are on top instead of on bottom. It's really difficult to follow along with the action when things are flipped around. I might follow this up with some replies if I think of more simple stuff to add! Thank you for reading.
I remembered another tip that I forgot! This is a fair bit to get into, but odds are, your sources (your game, your cam, separate audio) are not exactly in sync. They will output to OBS at a different split each versus realtime. If this is really far off, the stream starts to feel weird, where footstep sounds don't line up with the arrows, or the player on the webcam starts moving after a break before arrows show up, etc. You can sync this the quick and dirty way or you can take a more scientific approach. When I speak of adding delay to a source: For a video source, add a filter called Async Delay, and adjust that to add delay. For an audio source, open the advanced audio properties, and adjust Sync Offset to add delay. Before starting syncing, first identify the source that has the highest split versus realtime. It's possible that more than one source will have that split or almost that same split, so you might end up with more than one. Why are you looking for this most laggy source first? Because you will add delay to other sources to match it. You cannot add negative delay to your most laggy source to match your least laggy sources, since that would be time traveling! For the quick and dirty way: Once you know your most laggy source, add some amount of delay to your other sources. Maybe go 100ms at a time. Make a test recording and observe if your less-delayed sources are still behind, or are basically dead-on, or have now lagged more than your most laggy source. Based on this, add more or remove some delay, and test again. Once it looks and sounds and feels right to you, you're done. The more scientific way: Make a test recording and use a video player capable of playing frame by frame. You might be able to point your webcam at the screen your game is on and look for some distinct thing (part of the UI glowing with the beat, arrow exactly overlapping a receptor, etc). Or you might not, and look for something like the arrow receptor in the game capture glowing from a step, and the light from your pad in the webcam glowing from a step. Basically you're looking for an event that you can see in both views. You'll use frame advance to seek to when that event starts on the less laggy source. That's frame 0. Now advance 1 frame at a time and tally how many 1 frame advances it takes until that event starts on the more laggy source. Let's say you saw the pad arrow glow on frame 0 on the webcam, hit the next frame button 10 times, then saw the receptor glow in the game capture, so you have a split of 10 frames. This is where you eliminate the guesswork: now that you know how many frames the split is, multiply (frame split amount) * (1 / (framerate)) to get an amount in milliseconds to use for your your Async Delay filter. Your framerate is probably 60fps. So in this example, 10 frames * 16.667ms (1/60) = 160.6ms (then round up to 161). If you have multiple video sources, find a way to have a distinct event visible on other sources, and repeat. Maybe you have 2 cams, so you can sync 1 cam to the game, then point both cams at your hands, then clap, and when you see your hands close on one cam, count up until it's visible on the other cam, etc. If your audio is coming from an audio source paired with a video source (such as a webcam's mic or capture card's audio input), just take the Async Delay amount for the video source and use that in the advanced audio properties Sync Offset for that audio source. Manually syncing audio to a video source might be needed as well, like if you're using a mixer (since it won't have a video device it's paired with). For me, I actually do this with the quick and dirty method, adding 16-17ms at a time until footstep sounds line up with pad arrows lighting up. For me this is basically needed since you don't know how much total split from realtime your baseline lag is, only how much you've added to other sources. You could probably assume that a dedicated audio device has a low baseline lag, so you can start from the Async Delay amount from your least laggy video source, then increase. For some science with audio, I don't feel like writing this all out, but let's just imagine that you record two audio sources in your test recording, and pan one hard left, other hard right. If possible, see if you can record something that starts silent then plays something loud, which you can hear through both sources. With this recording, open the audio track in Audacity. You should see two waveforms that have a silent part, then show the loud noise occur. Measure the difference from the start of the loud noise between the more and the less laggy source, then add that amount in ms to Sync Offset. The above could be used if for example, you're using a webcam and capture card, and the capture card's laggier, and you want the webcam mic to be the sole audio source like Dom recommends. If you didn't use Sync Offset, the webcam audio would still match the webcam's original split versus realtime, so the sound would be ahead of the game capture. (Hmm, but you'd be able to easily get the sync offset from aligning the video first, which I'd recommend doing first. Let's just pretend you're doing something weird to where you didn't do that.) You could in theory use the Audacity method to line up two sources (like a mic + game audio) but it's basically impossible to get perfect (audio is sampled about 40K times per second, so you would have to align sources down to the individual sample to be perfect). I've tried, others have tried, and every time I've seen the result it's always an echo-y mess... ...So instead, get a mixer, pleeeeease. Once you use one, you will be kicking yourself for how much time you wasted chasing a ghost of better audio in impossible circumstances, with crummy results. You can get a cheapo Behringer for probably $35 used (that's on the high end), Monoprice Dynamic mic for $20 new, XLR and other cabling for probably $20-30, and you're set, with a setup that can (depending on your mixer's inputs and features) potentially expand to accommodate more involved setups down the line. I've brought my streaming setup to tournaments and recorded two mics (one per commentator) + a cabinet (one at a time of two cabs, switching the cab depending on who's playing), which is double what I normally record at home. And you know what people have said? "DanAdamKOF's stream was the only stream of this tournament that had good audio." ...because the other setups didn't use mixers!
For the audio situation, I use an analogue XLR mic and a sound mixer (Behringer 12 XENYX 1202FX) to pre-sync all of my audio before it hits the Streaming PC. The directional mic I use(Audio-Technica AT2020PK) is inexpensive and it, in my opinion, sounds pretty good. I'm able to get good voice capture and use a direct line from the game for high quality audio and it's all synced perfectly.
@@stephaniedannenberg901 can't believe obs does this that's kinda stupid that it's a problem. If I streamed more and wanted high quality I'd probably get so fustraited. Kudos to you two for actually doing that every time like lol
@@fabsab4434 it has nothing to do with obs, it's hardware/driver issue. I mean, OBS COULD save those settings and reapply them automatically, but shouldn't.
Wow wow wow, a shutterstock star is a dedicab owner and a avid ITG/DDR/SM player ? didn't knew that, now I understand all the faces. I want to buy that clip
I might have a solution for you. With 2 computers you can just open obs on the itg pc with all of your settings and with pc number 2 with Obs you can link the source to the 2nd pc making stream without having a need for a capture card. It's called Ndi, it's what I've been doing for 2 months
@@Hsarus this blew my mind. I'm not quite sure I understand everything, and not sure my ITG (very old) PC could handle the load, but maybe worth a shot if I can get it figured out. The ITG pc runs on Linux if that's an issue.
Nice Vid man, good thing I had already fixed the cam thing ahah but my foot cam I won't place it near the body cam, it's going to have too many movements distracting the eyes with the bodycam. I'm surprised you didn't mention people with reverse camera which I find horrible lol.
4:52 Dom: "but it will make the text on your t-shirt reversed" Me: does that really matter??? Dom: yes Btw really happy that this video was made. Thanks man!
I dont think I could fit my whole body on camera, my platform is in between two sofas. Ceiling cam would be nice but is out of the question where I live. Is footcam-only ok for streaming?
Finally, a dom notices me
5:01 that is the best obs layout i have ever seen thank you Dom ITG
I have some tips I'd like to share! This isn't every possible tip but these are the ones I've found go the furthest to help dance/arcade/rhythm game streams become awesome with minimal effort.
With regard to audio, you can buy a mixer, cheap cardioid XLR mic, stand for the mic, and cables, for less than a Blue Yeti and other typical mics, especially if you shop smart ie secondhand (I've gotten 10 channel mixers as low as $20). This will let you feed the mic and game in and combine them into one output, so that they're exactly in sync with each other. You can dial in just enough game audio that it overpowers the weak speaker audio being picked up by the mic, with the end result of hearing the game audio clearly and your voice/footsteps clearly! And it's really easy to do, since you can plug in headphones and preview the mix, and using the level indicators and your own ears you can come up with a good sounding stream in just a few minutes.
Familiarize yourself with the Scale Filtering options when resizing a source. I really commonly see people resize their webcam or game source without doing so and it looks pixelated. You could use a bilinear/bicubic/lanzcos scale filter to smoothen it out so that it's anti-aliased and looks a ton better. Different filters look better in different scenarios (real life imagery ie cam, graphics of high contrast ie game) so play with it a bit to see what looks best, but basically any of bilinear/bicubic/lanzcos will look much better than no filtering.
Lighting is very important to having a fluid webcam output, but one other thing to try is adjusting the Gain. It's a bit much to go into detail, but Gain boosts the brightness of your webcam in a way that looks natural versus just cranking the Brightness slider high. On a C920, raising Gain to around 75-100% first, then starting low on exposure and adjusting higher until it looks good and is still fluid, seems to work in most indoor lighting scenarios. It will differ for different cameras and different lighting scenarios. But yeah, TLDR, your basic rule of thumb for bright, good looking, and fluid output: low exposure, high gain, will get you far even without adjusting lighting.
If your webcam is in front of your pad/controller, flip the webcam source so that it's facing the right way around. ie, up arrow faces up instead of down, or top row of buttons on controller are on top instead of on bottom. It's really difficult to follow along with the action when things are flipped around.
I might follow this up with some replies if I think of more simple stuff to add! Thank you for reading.
I remembered another tip that I forgot! This is a fair bit to get into, but odds are, your sources (your game, your cam, separate audio) are not exactly in sync. They will output to OBS at a different split each versus realtime. If this is really far off, the stream starts to feel weird, where footstep sounds don't line up with the arrows, or the player on the webcam starts moving after a break before arrows show up, etc. You can sync this the quick and dirty way or you can take a more scientific approach.
When I speak of adding delay to a source: For a video source, add a filter called Async Delay, and adjust that to add delay. For an audio source, open the advanced audio properties, and adjust Sync Offset to add delay.
Before starting syncing, first identify the source that has the highest split versus realtime. It's possible that more than one source will have that split or almost that same split, so you might end up with more than one. Why are you looking for this most laggy source first? Because you will add delay to other sources to match it. You cannot add negative delay to your most laggy source to match your least laggy sources, since that would be time traveling!
For the quick and dirty way: Once you know your most laggy source, add some amount of delay to your other sources. Maybe go 100ms at a time. Make a test recording and observe if your less-delayed sources are still behind, or are basically dead-on, or have now lagged more than your most laggy source. Based on this, add more or remove some delay, and test again. Once it looks and sounds and feels right to you, you're done.
The more scientific way: Make a test recording and use a video player capable of playing frame by frame. You might be able to point your webcam at the screen your game is on and look for some distinct thing (part of the UI glowing with the beat, arrow exactly overlapping a receptor, etc). Or you might not, and look for something like the arrow receptor in the game capture glowing from a step, and the light from your pad in the webcam glowing from a step. Basically you're looking for an event that you can see in both views. You'll use frame advance to seek to when that event starts on the less laggy source. That's frame 0. Now advance 1 frame at a time and tally how many 1 frame advances it takes until that event starts on the more laggy source. Let's say you saw the pad arrow glow on frame 0 on the webcam, hit the next frame button 10 times, then saw the receptor glow in the game capture, so you have a split of 10 frames. This is where you eliminate the guesswork: now that you know how many frames the split is, multiply (frame split amount) * (1 / (framerate)) to get an amount in milliseconds to use for your your Async Delay filter. Your framerate is probably 60fps. So in this example, 10 frames * 16.667ms (1/60) = 160.6ms (then round up to 161). If you have multiple video sources, find a way to have a distinct event visible on other sources, and repeat. Maybe you have 2 cams, so you can sync 1 cam to the game, then point both cams at your hands, then clap, and when you see your hands close on one cam, count up until it's visible on the other cam, etc.
If your audio is coming from an audio source paired with a video source (such as a webcam's mic or capture card's audio input), just take the Async Delay amount for the video source and use that in the advanced audio properties Sync Offset for that audio source.
Manually syncing audio to a video source might be needed as well, like if you're using a mixer (since it won't have a video device it's paired with). For me, I actually do this with the quick and dirty method, adding 16-17ms at a time until footstep sounds line up with pad arrows lighting up. For me this is basically needed since you don't know how much total split from realtime your baseline lag is, only how much you've added to other sources. You could probably assume that a dedicated audio device has a low baseline lag, so you can start from the Async Delay amount from your least laggy video source, then increase.
For some science with audio, I don't feel like writing this all out, but let's just imagine that you record two audio sources in your test recording, and pan one hard left, other hard right. If possible, see if you can record something that starts silent then plays something loud, which you can hear through both sources. With this recording, open the audio track in Audacity. You should see two waveforms that have a silent part, then show the loud noise occur. Measure the difference from the start of the loud noise between the more and the less laggy source, then add that amount in ms to Sync Offset.
The above could be used if for example, you're using a webcam and capture card, and the capture card's laggier, and you want the webcam mic to be the sole audio source like Dom recommends. If you didn't use Sync Offset, the webcam audio would still match the webcam's original split versus realtime, so the sound would be ahead of the game capture. (Hmm, but you'd be able to easily get the sync offset from aligning the video first, which I'd recommend doing first. Let's just pretend you're doing something weird to where you didn't do that.)
You could in theory use the Audacity method to line up two sources (like a mic + game audio) but it's basically impossible to get perfect (audio is sampled about 40K times per second, so you would have to align sources down to the individual sample to be perfect). I've tried, others have tried, and every time I've seen the result it's always an echo-y mess...
...So instead, get a mixer, pleeeeease. Once you use one, you will be kicking yourself for how much time you wasted chasing a ghost of better audio in impossible circumstances, with crummy results. You can get a cheapo Behringer for probably $35 used (that's on the high end), Monoprice Dynamic mic for $20 new, XLR and other cabling for probably $20-30, and you're set, with a setup that can (depending on your mixer's inputs and features) potentially expand to accommodate more involved setups down the line.
I've brought my streaming setup to tournaments and recorded two mics (one per commentator) + a cabinet (one at a time of two cabs, switching the cab depending on who's playing), which is double what I normally record at home. And you know what people have said? "DanAdamKOF's stream was the only stream of this tournament that had good audio." ...because the other setups didn't use mixers!
Also squashed goblin yutsi is a king
nah it's an SCP
For the audio situation, I use an analogue XLR mic and a sound mixer (Behringer 12 XENYX 1202FX) to pre-sync all of my audio before it hits the Streaming PC. The directional mic I use(Audio-Technica AT2020PK) is inexpensive and it, in my opinion, sounds pretty good. I'm able to get good voice capture and use a direct line from the game for high quality audio and it's all synced perfectly.
"work smart not hard"
Reconfigures obs cam settings every time
😔
my life :'(
@@stephaniedannenberg901 can't believe obs does this that's kinda stupid that it's a problem. If I streamed more and wanted high quality I'd probably get so fustraited. Kudos to you two for actually doing that every time like lol
@@fabsab4434 it has nothing to do with obs, it's hardware/driver issue. I mean, OBS COULD save those settings and reapply them automatically, but shouldn't.
Wow wow wow, a shutterstock star is a dedicab owner and a avid ITG/DDR/SM player ? didn't knew that, now I understand all the faces. I want to buy that clip
Dang I wasn't roasted for my webcam game capture !
(Though if I could direct capture I would, thanks for the video doms)
I might have a solution for you. With 2 computers you can just open obs on the itg pc with all of your settings and with pc number 2 with Obs you can link the source to the 2nd pc making stream without having a need for a capture card. It's called Ndi, it's what I've been doing for 2 months
@@Hsarus this blew my mind. I'm not quite sure I understand everything, and not sure my ITG (very old) PC could handle the load, but maybe worth a shot if I can get it figured out. The ITG pc runs on Linux if that's an issue.
Also the wide cam thing is a life hack to look thiCC
Something I had to figure out was putting a delay on the game because my camera and audio wasn’t synced up to the game.
Nice Vid man, good thing I had already fixed the cam thing ahah but my foot cam I won't place it near the body cam, it's going to have too many movements distracting the eyes with the bodycam. I'm surprised you didn't mention people with reverse camera which I find horrible lol.
I love you Dom. Please be my husb
~ahn
Ship
The collab we all need.
greendom
(anyone with a better shipping name?🤷)
@@TC19 I love it.... #GREENDOM
4:52 Dom: "but it will make the text on your t-shirt reversed"
Me: does that really matter???
Dom: yes
Btw really happy that this video was made. Thanks man!
Yes
Well put together and informational. Thank you
Also fun fact Razer makes no lag wireless ear buds for good audio
great video Mr. D
I dont think I could fit my whole body on camera, my platform is in between two sofas. Ceiling cam would be nice but is out of the question where I live.
Is footcam-only ok for streaming?
I'll allow it
2:06
cool video bro
Very helpful!
Missed dance game tip from this video... Don't play 3 seconds of song then quit complaining about how much you suck 🤣
@@TheJestinator grrrrrr!
Good video. Not using game audio kinda cringe tho 😳. also sexy goblin
🍎thank you dom 🍎
❤️
No thanks, I'm happy having shitty 0 view dance game streams :)
but hopefully this helps someone
But how do we stop DMCA overlords from striking us down
Stream among us
@@domitg kek