Why is everyone streaming?

[dgsddfgdfhgs]

who is really watching it?

and why streaming uses so much CPU resources? cant it just record the coloured pixels and upload?

[Uptivuptiz]

Just now, dgsddfgdfhgs said:

and why streaming uses so much CPU resources? cant it just record the coloured pixels and upload?

The raw video would be too much for the servers to handle. Therefor it's required to compress the footage so it can be streamed without lagging. However the compression process takes a lot of CPU power. If the video is not compressed you would need something like a 30/30 internet connection.

[itisme911]

2 minutes ago, dgsddfgdfhgs said:

who is really watching it?

and why streaming uses so much CPU resources? cant it just record the coloured pixels and upload?

Well the viewers, spend some time in twitch chat and you will see, some people watch while doing something else while some are dedicated. NOW as to why it uses so much CPU, well if you are playing games its taking a good chunk of power alone but especially online games you need to run a few more programs one of them OBS or something similar, also it would be stupid to stream EXACT pixes so your computer needs to (encode i believe the word is) but basically compress and get the data to a standard streaming sites use. Though also note your cpu is also saving and recording the data itself.

[Phentos]

I stream for fun. On a good day I might get more than 6-8 viewers online at the same time.

 

Streaming doesn't always use a ton of CPU resources. Codecs like NVENC or whatever AMD uses (AVC?) shift most of the load to the graphics card because most modern graphics cards have video encoders built into the chip.

 

If you use a CPU-dependent codec such as x264, the CPU is hammered by it because it uses most or all threads available and uses them well. While streaming via x264, the rendered frames are captured by the recording/streaming program such as OBS and the CPU has to encode as many frames as it can handle, and compress this data into a relatively small streamed video output via the aforementioned codecs under an mp4 container to export to Twitch or whatever platform you stream on. It has to do this with as little loss in quality as possible which means reproducing as much data as possible for transcoding into a video stream. If you reduce the streaming codec quality settings, whether it be bitrate or encoding preset as with x264, it will use more lossy compression during the transcoding and packaging processes, which means lower CPU usage at the expense of quality.

 

With NVENC the above still occurs except most of the load is put on the GPU's own encoding processors, which vastly reduces CPU usage at the expense of quality and having to use a much higher bitrate to have comparable quality to a decently optimized x264 stream.

[lewdicrous]

9 minutes ago, dgsddfgdfhgs said:

who is really watching it?

Humans, I believe.

9 minutes ago, dgsddfgdfhgs said:

and why streaming uses so much CPU resources?

10 minutes ago, dgsddfgdfhgs said:

cant it just record the coloured pixels and upload?

That's not how it works

 

[ZeouLs]

Just now, lewdicrous said:

Humans, I believe.

ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT

[Uptivuptiz]

1 minute ago, Phentos said:

I stream for fun. On a good day I might get more than 6-8 viewers online at the same time.

 

Streaming doesn't always use a ton of CPU resources. Codecs like NVENC or whatever AMD uses (AVC?) shift most of the load to the graphics card because most modern graphics cards have video encoders built into the chip.

Didn't even know that there was a codec like NVENC. That's pretty cool  

[lewdicrous]

Just now, ZeouLs said:

- snip -

86% sure, yea

[itisme911]

Just now, lewdicrous said:

86% sure, yea

@viewbots 

 

[Phentos]

1 minute ago, Uptivuptiz said:

Didn't even know that there was a codec like NVENC. That's pretty cool  

NVENC is great for casual streamers or streamers who don't have beefy CPUs. 

 

x264 is for the big boys though 

[lewdicrous]

4 minutes ago, itisme911 said:

@viewbots

That's why I said 86%, I know that some people have bots to boost their view count.

[Phentos]

4 minutes ago, itisme911 said:

@viewbots 

 

[Sfekke]

8 minutes ago, Phentos said:

NVENC is great for casual streamers or streamers who don't have beefy CPUs. 

 

x264 is for the big boys though 

NVENC can look really close to x264 if you give it just the right bitrate and keep in-game settings down while also disabling Shadowplay in GeForce Experience.

I personally use it to power my daily streams and it just rocks; My poor i5 8600 cannot encode while gaming, causes worse quality and low FPS.

 

As per OP's question:

People watch it, I have about 16-20 viewers on a good day, 5-8 on a bad one.

Some are always chatting and interacting, giving me challenges; others just watch while cooking dinner and love seeing someone do the caramel dance while cooking

I often get the reaction "Why would anyone watch for 4 hours" most don't; only dedicated fans do that.

Average  watch time for my viewers is about 2 hours, it also happens that I have 2 phases of viewers.

Phase one is 0-2 hours in, then the from 2-4 we get the other "batch".

Latter tend to be the older ones, as it is when most get home from work.

 

So that is my experience with streaming and who is watching it.

Personally I love being one to stream, occasionally tuning in to streams from people I met on Twitch or other places; more as a friend then a viewer tho.

[Phentos]

Just now, Sfekke said:

NVENC can look really close to x264 if you give it just the right bitrate and keep in-game settings down while also disabling Shadowplay in GeForce Experience.

I'm a pleb with bad upload speed (215 down/~8 up), so I have to use x264 to maintain good quality 

[Ashiella]

8 minutes ago, Sfekke said:

NVENC can look really close to x264 if you give it just the right bitrate and keep in-game settings down while also disabling Shadowplay in GeForce Experience.

I personally use it to power my daily streams and it just rocks; My poor i5 8600 cannot encode while gaming, causes worse quality and low FPS.

 

Yeah my r7 1700 @4ghz cant encode while gaming too well either. (Rainbow Six: Siege uses 16 threads so I actually cant lol)

[voiha]

30 minutes ago, dgsddfgdfhgs said:

who is really watching it?

and why streaming uses so much CPU resources? cant it just record the coloured pixels and upload?

It's watched by people who follow particular streamer, just hang out in chat or watching some random stuff. Twitch has a lot less audience than YouTube for example so most of the people are actually dedicated fans, that's why there are so many donations with big numbers happening.

People above me already explained your second question.

Twitch can save your uploaded footage and you can re-run your stream but you can't upload video file directly to Twitch.

[itisme911]

Just now, Ashiella said:

Yeah my r7 1700 @4ghz cant encode while gaming too well either. (Rainbow Six: Siege uses 16 threads so I actually cant lol)

My I7 6700k does pretty well surprisingly

[Sakkura]

1 hour ago, Uptivuptiz said:

The raw video would be too much for the servers to handle. Therefor it's required to compress the footage so it can be streamed without lagging. However the compression process takes a lot of CPU power. If the video is not compressed you would need something like a 30/30 internet connection.

Without compression it's much worse than that. 24 bits per pixel, 1920x1080 pixels, 60 frames per second... That's almost 3 gigabit per second.

[emosun]

I got to admit i don't watch streaming or stream.

not a big fan of unedited content , or rather not a fan of long awkward pauses.

I understand watching a stream is free , but the whole weird donating specific amount to get stars or whatever or get the person to un enthusiastically give you a shout out is weird. it reminds me of old people sitting in front of slot machines. idk , i'm not feeling it

[Phentos]

1 hour ago, Ashiella said:

Yeah my r7 1700 @4ghz cant encode while gaming too well either. (Rainbow Six: Siege uses 16 threads so I actually cant lol)

My 1700 at 3.9Ghz used to do x264 based streaming quite flawlessly at 1080p 60 FPS. You just need to optimize your codec settings and fine tune them until you are happy with how they work in a game.

4 minutes ago, emosun said:

I got to admit i don't watch streaming or stream.

not a big fan of unedited content , or rather not a fan of long awkward pauses.

I understand watching a stream is free , but the whole weird donating specific amount to get stars or whatever or get the person to un enthusiastically give you a shout out is weird. it reminds me of old people sitting in front of slot machines. idk , i'm not feeling it

I feel the same way tbh. I'll never sign up for monetization on Twitch for that reason. People donate to a streamer only to get their name up on their overlay and/or get a shoutout is almost asinine to me. That being said I'm somewhat of a cheapskate so I guess I just don't understand that.

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, dgsddfgdfhgs said:

who is really watching it?

Thousands of people depending on the streamer...

1 hour ago, dgsddfgdfhgs said:

and why streaming uses so much CPU resources? cant it just record the coloured pixels and upload?

Because you need to encode the video in a format that can be played by a browser and doesn't take up 5GB per minute.

[emosun]

7 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Because you need to encode the video in a format that can be played by a browser and doesn't take up 5GB per minute.

meanwhile a 1950's tv station broadcasts to thousands wirelessly with no computer at all. but oh it's 480p.

nah the reason why it takes a lot of resources is because developers forgot how to program. it's just code stacked on code stacked on code now with a hundred bandaids holding it together. Computers get faster and developers get lazier.

[Sauron]

2 minutes ago, emosun said:

meanwhile a 1950's tv station broadcasts to thousands wirelessly with no computer at all. but oh it's 480p.

TV works nothing like the internet. Nothing is uploaded to anything and the user has no say in what they receive - they either tune in or they don't, the signal is the same for everyone and its reach is only determined by the power of the antenna transmitting it. 1 or 1 million people could be watching and it would make no difference to the broadcaster in terms of power requirements. Unlike game streaming, TV stations use a camera or play back video that was already encoded.

 

The internet is designed for on demand content that is hosted on a server somewhere. Twitch uses it for something similar to TV, but the infrastructure is completely different and you must account for that. If you think TV is superior, why don't you "just" buy a bunch of massive antennas all over the world, point an analog camera at your computer screen and broadcast whatever you want in glorious 480i? You're comparing apples to oranges.

7 minutes ago, emosun said:

nah the reason why it takes a lot of resources is because developers forgot how to program. it's just code stacked on code stacked on code now with a hundred bandaids holding it together. Computers get faster and developers get lazier.

Nonsense. Encoding is a hard problem that requires a certain amount of computing power, no matter how efficient your algorithm is. We progressively develop better encoding methods (e.g. h265 > h264) but those require hardware support to run efficiently on both sides as well as platform support on the side of twitch, which takes time to implement.

[emosun]

3 minutes ago, Sauron said:

TV works nothing like the internet.

omg i didnt even read your novel trying to mansplain a joke , yeesh

 

3 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Encoding is a hard problem

and cows go moo

[Sauron]

4 minutes ago, emosun said:

omg i didnt even read your novel trying to mansplain a joke , yeesh

Well sorry for misunderstanding, it wouldn't be the first time I've seen someone say something like that seriously.