Alright everyone, after searching around for a while to find a fix for only averaging 5000 kb/s on XSplit when my VBV max bitrate was set to 8k, and my internet connection is capable of roughly 20 times that, I came across this uh-mayzing program that some eastern european dude wrote that essentially re-routes the outgoing bandwidth from your streaming program through localhost, then directly to the twitchtv ingestion server, essentially bypassing xsplit altogether as far as uploading goes, but retaining all the features of xsplit.

Now, a lot of what I just said probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it doesn't have to, and as long as you follow the instructions below, you should be able to max out your connection with the greatest of ease.

~~Disclaimer, paraphrased from the program creator's thread: This will not give you faster internet. If you have a shit connection, it will not make that better. This will only allow you to get more out of the connection that you already have, people with shit connections included.~~

**Note: Please don't turn this into a speedtest thread; we already have one, and the previous streaming thread almost turned into one. As hilarious as it is to laugh at some people who have abysmal connections, and for people like me with access to super sweet connections to scoff at the plebians below us, just don't. pls. thanks.**

Alright, let's get this shit started.

1. Before you do anything else, make sure you have Java Runtime Environment installed in your computer (the latest version), which can be found on their website ( http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre-7u3-download-1501631.html ). Simply choose the package that matches your OS, download it, and install it.

2. After you have completed step 1, you will then need to download this file: http://s3.amazonaws.com/tf2pug_eldorado/files/TCPRelay.zip . Once you have downloaded it, open and extract the contents using a program such as 7zip ( http://www.7-zip.org/ ; free, open-source, will get the job don EZ) to the folder/location of your choice. Make sure you have three files: the readme, the command script, and the JAR file.

The xsplit thread about it can be found here ( http://www.xsplit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7159#p30016 ), however if you are not a member, you will not be able to download the file that is at the bottom of the OP, which is why I wasted the roughly 40kb of space to mirror it on natf2.

3. Once you have completed step 2, your first thought may be to go directly the readme and proceed without reading the rest of this post. Well, that's what I thought, but it gets a bit complicated. For the most part, the directions there will get you quite far, but before you are ready to stream, there is one last thing you must do, so I'll simply copy/paste the readme here, and then pick up where it falls short.

****Before we get to that, however, you need one piece of information: go into xsplit, go to edit your channel settings, and make a note of what is in the "Location" field (this is the ingestion server to which you broadcast). Now, go to ( http://support.twitch.tv/discussion/comment/8851#Comment_8851 ), scroll down to the list of twitchtv ingestion servers, and find the address that matches what you just saw in your location field. copy and paste the address, starting with "live" and ending with ".tv" (For example, what I copied is live-iad-backup.justin.tv"), into your preferred text editor (eg., notepad). Keep that document open, because we'll need that server address later.****

4. Open XSplit, click on the "Broadcast" tab, then click on the "edit channels" option from the drop-down menu.

5. Click on "add" and choose "custom rtmp", the first option on the pop-up list.

6. fill in the "channel" fields as such

7. fill in the video/audio encoding fields as you normally would, except in the "VBV max bitrate field", enter a number that is about 90% of your maximum upload bandwidth, in kb/s. This number should be greater than the one you currently use. For kicks, max out the audio quality by picking 44.100 KHz 16-bit stereo and 320000 audio bitrate.

8. Once you have completed steps 6 and 7, click "OK" to save your channel settings.

Now here comes the tricky part.

9. Navigate to the folder to which you extracted the original three files.

10. Right-click on "tcprelay", and choose "create shortcut"

11. Right-click the shortcut you have just created, and click "properties" at the bottom of the drop-down menu.

12. In the window that pops, up, there will be a field named "Target"

13. Click inside that field, hold the right arrow key until you get to the end, press space once, then add the following (without quotation marks): "-th:<the ingestion server address you copied earlier, starting with "live" and ending with ".tv">"

For comparison, the contents of your target field should look roughly like this:
C:\Users\<username>\Downloads\TCPRelay\tcprelay.cmd -th:live-iad.justin.tv

14. Click "apply" and then "ok" at the bottom of the properties window.

15. double click that shortcut, making sure that a command window pops up that says something about listening to port 1935

16. Open xsplit, go to edit the custom rtmp channel you created earlier, test the bandwidth, and voila! you should be able to access a much larger percentage of your upload capabilities and access a higher VBV max bitrate than you had before.

Feel free to test this out, and post here with any questions/problems that need troubleshooting. You of course can check the xsplit thread, but I believe that if you have done everything in order, no issues should arise.

Happy streaming!

link to the TCPrelay is broken, but thanks alot for this!

Sorry for that; link has been fixed and should download just fine now; I a) accidentially copied too much and b) put a period at the end of the link, which screwed up the download key.

post changelog 1.1: remembered you don't copy from "live" to "/app", just "live" to ".tv"

the guide has been updated accordingly.

Will this let me stream with .5 mb/s upload, or is that too slow no matter what?

Zigzter wrote:

Will this let me stream with .5 mb/s upload, or is that too slow no matter what?

500 kb/s, even if you're as close to maxing it out as possible with this program, is only enough to get you a non-laggy 480p stream. 1mb/s nearly maxed out is the lower limit for a (slightly choppy) 720p stream.

thanks harb.

so tl;dr, does this make streaming easier for people with slower bandwith and improve the quality of streams overall?

I don't think it'll help with low bandwidth streamers. Sounds more like a method of circumventing some artificial bandwidth cap that xSplit probably put in to either ensure smooth playback for viewers or to ease the load on JustinTV's servers.

tl;dr, this will allow you to get the most out of the internet connection you have, this is not a complete substitute for having a shitty computer that can't run xsplit at the same time as TF2, or having an internet connection with an upload speed of less than 500 kb/s

edit: had the reply window open and forgot about it, leading to atmo beating me to it. yeah, this won't make streaming with low bandwidth a whole lot better, but it will let you sqeeze every drop out of the upload speeds you have. Although I should note that split tends to perform pretty well at low bandwidth/low VBV max bitrates.

I have definitely noticed that a lot of the time my stream will hover around 1300-1600kbps, rarely hitting the 2000kbps cap I have set. This method/program will trick/force XSplit into using all 2000kbps all the time, correcT?

yes, as long as you stream to the custom rtmp channel, you should be able to max out the vbv max bitrate.

lange, what's your upload speed look like?

svfrey wrote:

yes, as long as you stream to the custom rtmp channel, you should be able to max out the vbv max bitrate.

lange, what's your upload speed look like?

It's about 2.9mbps, but its not super stable so I have my stream at a conservative 2mbps.

aight, then you should be fine; let me know if you have any problems

anyone else test it yet besides those who have hit me up on IRC/steam for troubleshooting? have you seen a noticed increase in available upload bandwidth?

I've used it and streamed for a couple hours yesterday, seems to work like a charm, got visable higher upload bandwidth and it even seemed less choppy while i played :D

Any chance I could see an objective quality comparison?

I tested it and I got a less input lag and more bandwidth. Wish there was a way to remove input lag. Also, does game source normally cap you at 30 fps?

I don't think gamesource caps your in-game FPS, because I've seen the FPS counter on seanbud's stream and it's in the 200's. then again, he probably has a ridiculously fast computer, too...What xsplit DOES cap is the FPS that you stream at (I think it recommends 30, and will grudgingly allow you 60, but won't allow you to stream any higher than 60), but that won't affect your in-game performance more than streaming already does. Also, tragic, if you're running windows 7, make sure you have the windows Aero theme disabled either in xsplit or in your windows settings. That is known to cause huge FPS drops and screen tearing.

Also, lange, I don't know how easy an "objective quality comparison" would be, but I guess you could look at, for example, VODs from before and after foster used the program, and check for quality differences and amount of choppiness. Or anyone else who is currently using it and has seen a substantial difference in performance.

yeah what i did to check to see if it actually did anything was i streamed for like 3 hours yesterday, watched the vod and saw it look really nice, and then watched the next closest vod before that (one of the ones thats longer than 30 seconds :p) and to me the quality is crazy better

After using TCPrelay
http://www.twitch.tv/itsfostababy/b/315714893

Before using TCPrelay
http://www.twitch.tv/itsfostababy/b/313515437

wow, holy fucking shit, that is insane how much of an improvement that program gave you.

the difference for foster alone should be enough to convince anyone who might've been on the edge to absolutely use this.

svfrey wrote:

I don't think gamesource caps your in-game FPS, because I've seen the FPS counter on seanbud's stream and it's in the 200's. then again, he probably has a ridiculously fast computer, too...What xsplit DOES cap is the FPS that you stream at (I think it recommends 30, and will grudgingly allow you 60, but won't allow you to stream any higher than 60), but that won't affect your in-game performance more than streaming already does. Also, tragic, if you're running windows 7, make sure you have the windows Aero theme disabled either in xsplit or in your windows settings. That is known to cause huge FPS drops and screen tearing.

Yeah, I normally have it off by default once I launch TF2. But, I don't get it. It auto caps to 30 in-game as soon as I even enable game source. Weird.

Seanbud doesn't use gamesource though, he uses Dxtory.

oh, I thought that was lansky

or maybe it's both of them

foster wrote:

yeah what i did to check to see if it actually did anything was i streamed for like 3 hours yesterday, watched the vod and saw it look really nice, and then watched the next closest vod before that (one of the ones thats longer than 30 seconds :p) and to me the quality is crazy better

After using TCPrelay
http://www.twitch.tv/itsfostababy/b/315714893

Before using TCPrelay
http://www.twitch.tv/itsfostababy/b/313515437

can you post your settings plz, also if youre using dxtory or just xsplit

thanks

So I tried this, and it made me lag like CRAZY in game, even with only 100-200kbit bitrate increase. I dunno if I'm just already pushing my bandwidth that close to the limit (which im not according to the numbers) or something else is going on.

One thing I should note - Twitch ingestion servers vary on how much downstream bandwidth they have. It helps to walk through a couple different servers, once you set you bitrate and what not in XSplit, and see which one offers the best bandwidth with little or no dropped packets. That makes a HUGE difference for me when streaming.

lange, did you put on net_graph and monitor your usage for a little while? I'd do that and see if anything looks abnormal. If not, then it's a performance problem, not a network one, and maybe JRE is causing the lag? I dunno. need some more info to work with.

also, to clarify something from duder's post about testing different ingestion servers: you don't have to do that manually; just set your "location" field to "default", then go live a few times in a row, and see what xsplit fills in the location field with. It will automatically select the ingestion server that is best suited to you based on a formula that probably includes factors such as available downstream bandwidth, distance, and a few other things. For example, I'm in NYC, but I get waaaaaay less from the bandwidth test to that server than I do from the one that it defaulted to, the Ashburn VA one.

svfrey wrote:

lange, did you put on net_graph and monitor your usage for a little while? I'd do that and see if anything looks abnormal. If not, then it's a performance problem, not a network one, and maybe JRE is causing the lag? I dunno. need some more info to work with.

also, to clarify something from duder's post about testing different ingestion servers: you don't have to do that manually; just set your "location" field to "default", then go live a few times in a row, and see what xsplit fills in the location field with. It will automatically select the ingestion server that is best suited to you based on a formula that probably includes factors such as available downstream bandwidth, distance, and a few other things. For example, I'm in NYC, but I get waaaaaay less from the bandwidth test to that server than I do from the one that it defaulted to, the Ashburn VA one.

this was in the faq on twitch, ingest ranker, just run ingest-ranker.exe and it tells you the 3 best choices

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33446/twitch/ingest-ranker.zip

unf wrote:

foster wrote:

yeah what i did to check to see if it actually did anything was i streamed for like 3 hours yesterday, watched the vod and saw it look really nice, and then watched the next closest vod before that (one of the ones thats longer than 30 seconds :p) and to me the quality is crazy better

After using TCPrelay
http://www.twitch.tv/itsfostababy/b/315714893

Before using TCPrelay
http://www.twitch.tv/itsfostababy/b/313515437

can you post your settings plz, also if youre using dxtory or just xsplit

thanks

I use 1280x800 res for streaming, native is 1680x1050 at 25fps
Upload is about 6mbs, usually hovering around 5.8 or 5.9, and i read somewhere that the xsplit upload should be can be about 90% thus the 5400kbs.

My only problem that i have using this method is that you can't see the number of viewers directly on xsplit. Other than that i get about the same amount of in game lag that i did before trying this and the same amount of input lag that i used to get that's just enough to not make me want to stream scrims. I've been trying to figure out a way to improve in game quality on my side without destroying the quality on stream, but not with much luck.

I get about 100-130 fps streaming in a pub, around 200 in a scrim, but when I play it feels like 30 which is ok for pubbing and jumping and stuff but it's a pain in the ass for scrimming.