Live streaming osu!
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If you're visiting this page it's because you want to learn how to live stream osu! on twitch. Doing so is a very simple process but you require a strong computer to be able to run both osu! and send live encoding to twitch.tv (which from now on will be referred to as TTV) at the same time.
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Step: 1 - Registration
Registering for an account for TTV is very easy, just head to the website www.twitch.tv and click on 
Afterwards fill in the fields on the right
Once you're done signing up your channel will be at www.twitch.tv/username (username being your username).
Step: 2 - Specifying a game
Twitch.tv is a gaming community, and as such there are a lot of gaming libraries, however you only need to worry about osu! since that's what this guide is for.
- Once you're logged in, click on your username at the top right:
- Click on Dashboard from the list.
- Input the title and click on the icon where it says "Not Playing" to change into "Playing" then type Osu and a list of games with similar names should appear, the one you want is osu! since that's the one osu!'s website will pick up, it looks like this:
Once you're done with that you are ready to start streaming if you want, however how will you make TTV recognize your osu! window and live stream it? we cover that in the next step, if you already have a preferred program you use for this then go ahead and start streaming, otherwise read on.
Warning: If you don't pause/mute the stream preview in either your channel or dashboard your viewers may get echo. Also You may click on the wheel icon on the chat and click on popout to pop out the chatroom and put it wherever you want without the need to have your browser open.
Moderation
Twitch.tv commands for chat moderation (all usernames must be converted to lowercase when using these):
| Action | Command | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Mod | /mod username | Mod "username" in your channel |
| Unmod | /unmode username | Opposite of /mod |
| Timeout | /timeout username | Silences an user for 10 minutes |
| Ban | /ban username | Permanently ban a user from your channel |
| Unban | /unban username | Unban a user from your channel |
You, the broadcaster, are responsible for whatever happens in your chatroom.
Step: 3 - Live streaming programs
XSplit
XSplit is one of the most common live streaming programs nowadays, specially because it doesn't cause too much stress on your computer and comes with a neat screen capture feature, the downside, some options are disabled and has lower quality unless you pay for it.
Pros
- Able to setup your own scenes with multiple screens / media / text
- Up to 4 different scenes unpaid, and up to 12 if you pay.
- Low stress on the computer
- Easy to link your TTV account with it
- Your own account has saved up all data on scenes and settings so you can access it from any computer
Cons
- Low quality (including audio) if you don't pay
- Price is quite high.
To get started with XSplit head to their website: http://www.xsplit.com/ register and download the program. Once you've logged you'll be in a window that looks like this:
To capture any region of your screen or a window click at the bottom left on Add, then click Screen Region, afterwards just click on your osu! window and you'll get this:
Window too small? Don't worry, you can drag and resize it as you want along your streaming area, you may add multiple screen regions/cameras or even text/watermarks to a single scene, and you can easily switch between scenes, for example I have the AFK scene to let viewers know that I'm AFK, anyways if that's all you want to include then you want to expand it like this:
Afterwards you want to connect your XSplit account with your Twitch TV account, click on Broadcast then Edit Channels...
On the window that appears click on Add then click on Justin/Twitch TV. Now you should see this:
Input your username and password (you may use your stream key instead of your password if you know it, but it's not necessary). Now here's where it gets complicated so I'll explain each part in detail:
- Preset - Always use XSplit Default.
- Quality - The higher this number the less compressed the frames are, more importantly the higher this number the better the quality of your stream but may also lag on the your viewer's end if your bandwidth cannot support it, also the higher this value the more stress on your PC.
- VBV Max Bitrate (kbps) - This set the maximum amount of bandwidth you want to allocate to your video portion of your stream, use testing websites like http://www.speedtest.net to check how high is your upload speed and know how much you can allocate, remember that you must split bandwidth on both video and audio encoding, the higher this value the more bandwidth you'll use for your video frames, so your viewers will get faster and higher quality frames, also setting this too high will lag on people with download speed lower than the amount you set here. A fair warning, if you set this higher than your upload speed every viewer in your stream will experience lag.
- VBV Buffer (kbit) - This should not be necessary, but this is the max amount of kbits stored in the buffer for viewers should you lag for some reason while streaming.
- Audio Encoding Format This is better set to Stereo, the default is mono tho.
- Bitrate this number in bytes adds to your bandwidth used along with the video max bitrate, this also comes from your upload speed and from the viewers' respective download speed
If you have trouble figuring out the best video and audio bitrates, click on Test Bandwidth.
Once you've done setting, go ahead and go back to the main window, since there's a few other options there that you will need to use, just remember that you can only change these settings while you're offline so if you need to change them you need to turn off the broadcast momentarily to change them.
On the main window, click on View, here you can set different options, these options only affect what the viewers see, not what you see.
- Resolution - Or as I like to call it, the recording resolution, this is the size of the frames that will be sent to twitch.tv, the higher the resolution, the more stress on your PC, but the better quality for your viewers, if your resolution isn't listed click on Edit Resolutions, it will show you a list of resolutions you can use, and if even here it's not located you can click on Add to add your own resolution by inputting the width and height manually. For twitch.tv to use the whole screen the Resolution you set must be a widescreen (16:9) any other combination will result in twitch.tv only using the middle.
- Frame Rate - The rate that you upload frames to the server, again, the higher this value the more stress on your PC, and the smoother the stream becomes for your viewers.
- Transition - If you use multiple scenes, transition is the type of transition when you switch scenes.
- Projector - Never seen this one before so I'm not sure of what it does.
- Scale Viewpoint - This adjusts the size of the preview on XSplit for your stream, I normally tend to keep XSplit minimized so I don't really use this.
OBS (Open Broadcaster Software)
OBS is a fairly new streaming program currently in development and gaining traction among TTV streamers. Although highly debated it is often claimed that it uses less CPU than XSplit.
Pros
- Free / Open Source
- Can have many different scenes
- Better audio codecs / Quality than XSplit Free
- Can stream at 60FPS
Cons
- Incompatible with some older GPUs
- Less mature than XSplit
- Slight learning curve
Indifferent
- No Windows XP or below support
- Interface isn't skinned, fairly basic.
| List of guides in osu! | |
|---|---|
| Official FAQ and Ranking Guidelines | Game FAQ • Ranking Criteria • Standard Ranking Criteria • Taiko Ranking Criteria • Catch the Beat Ranking Criteria • osu!mania Ranking Criteria |
| General Mapping/Modding Info | How to mod? • List of Mapping Techniques • Taiko Map Guidelines • Filling The Song Set-up fields • Making Good Sliders • Fitting the Size-limit |
| Modding Aides | AIBat |
| Skinning/Hitsound Info | Skinning in General • Making Properly Centered Spinners • Custom Hitsound Library • Adding Custom Hitsounds • Making the Background of Things Transparent |
| Storyboarding Info | Storyboard Scripting • Reducing SB Load |
| Video Editing | How to Compress Videos Without Destroying Their Quality • How to Add Videos taken from Youtube |
| Common Mistakes | How To Correctly Change Map's Artist/Title • Basic MP3 Modifications |
| Miscellaneous | Changing Title Text • Music Theory • Setting the Offset on the Correct Beat • Collab Information • Starting a Beatmap Project • Live Streaming osu! • Getting songs from Videogames |
