Using livestreaming to record gameplay

[Happy Hunter]

Lately I've been toying with the idea of using livestreaming to record big chunks of gameplay, on Xbox One. Xbox has its own built-in recording features, which I do use, but they have a limited amount of space - recording for a long time can be a bit awkward. I heard people say that through livestreaming, you could just download the stream later and do whatever you want with it.

 

I tried Mixer, and while the quality was generally good enough, it had a few too many moments where it cut out/went a bit funny.

 

Looking into it, I saw Twitch lets you lower bitrate, etc. which could get the stream more stable. I used it a bit, got more stable results than Mixer gave me - but it still cuts out a little more than I'd like, even with settings turned way down from what my internet should theoretically be able to handle.

 

My internet is something like 40mbps down, 5mbps up. When I set it to automatically pick a bitrate and settings based on my internet, it chose 4000kbps bitrate, 1080p. I don't need that though. Even setting it much less than that - down to 2000kbps, 720p (or even 480p), I still get a little interference.

 

Like this:

 

 

My question then, is if it's possible to livestream for a good deal of time (hours, or at least an hour or two) without what you see in the gif? Or is that just not how it works? If it is possible, what could be letting it down for me? I've tried putting the settings down way lower than what my internet should be able to do. It helps put it off a bit, but still doesn't stop it happening.

 

I don't mean to put down any of the streaming apps or anything. It's pretty understandable if they can't have a 100% solid video. I just want to know if it's normal or not.

[K^2]

Yeah, with 5mbps up, you're unlikely to get anything good. It's technically enough for 720p stream, but only if you don't hit any hick-ups whatsoever. In practice, if you have just barely enough, you'll always be running into problems. There might be ways of handling decrease in bitrate more gracefully than the above, but you'll have some quality losses during some parts of the video.

 

Your best bet is probably capturing video directly. There are USB dongles you can buy that allow for video capture from an HDMI directly to your computer. I haven't looked into them recently, but I'm seeing some under $100 with decent reviews. Before consoles streamed directly to Twitch, that's what almost everyone used to stream their console games. It's what a lot of people still use to stream from some of the older consoles. And, of course, you can just record directly to HDD without streaming this way, which will let you store hours of gameplay without relying on network at all.

[uNi]

AFAIK the Xbox One lets you use a external drive to save captured footage to.

 

If you have any spare 3.5/2.5 drives around, it's cheaper to buy a usb 3 enclosure for it and use that. 

[Happy Hunter]

Thanks. I ended up getting a USB drive instead. Nothing huge, 32GB - but it lets me record clips up to an hour. Max it can hold is probably something like 2 as well, still toying around with it. So far it works out well though.