Streaming PC Upgrade

[sGerli]

Hello, I work in a Church's media team. We are in charge of video production, livestreaming, lights, and projecting to the screens.

We have a mac mini that we use to livestream the video feed that comes from: Blackmagic ATEM Production Studio 4K, this outputs 1080i (why not 1080p, that's a long story) through a SDI cable that's then converted to HDMI to finally get converted into Thunderbolt/Mini Display Port which is  then connected to the Mac Mini.

We have been having problems with our Mac because we are getting about 10 to 20 fps (we stream to YouTube in 720p) so we have been looking into building a PC, but we need to know we are doing things right, so we need someone's advice.

 

Stream Details:

• Software: Wirecast
• 720p 30fps (target)

 

Right now we have 2 alternatives:

1. This first one accepts direct input from the SDI cable: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/igerli/saved/tzTv6h
2. In this second option we input the mini display port cable we have https://pcpartpicker.com/list/TJG92R

So which of this 2 option is better? And should we change anything from them?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id probably get the capture card, that normally works better.

 

For the builds, there over kill, you can use a i5 and the igpu just fine if you want.

[sGerli]

7 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id probably get the capture card, that normally works better.

 

For the builds, there over kill, you can use a i5 and the igpu just fine if you want.

Ok but if we ever want to start streaming in 1080p would it still be enough?

Note: we use many graphics and 1 desktop presenter (desktop screenshare through lan)

And telestream suggests using a dedicated GPU with Wirecast

Edited December 9, 2016 by sGerli
Aded Wirecast info

[Unexas.]

1 minute ago, sGerli said:

Ok but if we ever want to start streaming in 1080p would it still be enough?

Note: we use many graphics and 1 desktop presenter (desktop screenshare through lan)

What is your budget? You could just get a i7 6700 and that would easily do 1080p and probably 4k as well.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, sGerli said:

Ok but if we ever want to start streaming in 1080p would it still be enough?

Note: we use many graphics and 1 desktop presenter (desktop screenshare through lan)

I don't think the gpu would help, as wirecast only uses the cpu for encoding the video.

 

1080 should be fine on a i5. 

[sGerli]

I'm not sure about the budget, but I know that those two machines up there are still in it.

[Doramius]

Encoding will mainly use the CPU, so you're gonna need beef in that area.  Unless you're dead set on getting new, it sounds like you need some power in the level of Server grade.  Servers tend to go way up in cost when new.  BUT, getting a used one isn't so bad.  I've bought from ServerMonkey.com several times, and you can get a fairly nice 2x XEON CPU machine with RAM for very little money.  The advantage of this is the savings of funds allows you to put more $$ into the GPU and other desired accessories.  Just make sure you look at dimensions available for video cards and other add-ons.  

 

One of my most recent purchses from them was a Dell T5500 with 2x Hex core XEON X5670 CPUS with 32GB DDR3 ECC Registered memory for under $600.  Space was a bit tight for the GPU, so we had to order a PCI-e flex riser for the first video card and ran the system without the side panel.  We later got the Radeon FirePro 7100, and while still tight, we were able to close the side panel.  More money was spent on the video card than the tower, itself.  It encodes like striped Gorilla on fire at a Crisco factory.  It is blazing fast and sheer power.

[sGerli]

That could be an option, I'm going to consider it.

[Doramius]

Awesome.  I'd love to see what your final decision turns out with.  Overall, I don't think you'll be disappointed with any of your current choices, considering what you're already working with.  But I know you also want to get the biggest bang for your buck, and right now encoding is driving you the processing power, overall.  Good luck on you decision.

[sGerli]

At the end we had some difficulties but after some times we have our final build: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/igerli/saved/yRhwP6

Some may think it's overkill but we need something really stable that can stream at 1080p to Facebook Live and Youtube at the same time. And we've achieved it.

 

It took us so much time because of all of the changes in the market. You can see that we ended up with an AMD Ryzen CPU instead of an Intel i7 which is supposed to be better for live streaming because of it's high core count.