Game streaming on a single computer comes with some inherent issues and struggles
with performance and workflow. As hardware improves more and more, some of the primary,
low-hanging fruit performance concerns have become less of an issue - a Ryzen 3950x or 5950x are more
than good enough to game and stream with virtually any settings you’d realistically be able to stream
with a single PC setup, and GPU encoding, at least on team Green, is more than good enough
for the vast majority of creators out there. But there are other reasons you might feel
compelled to set up a secondary streaming PC. One such reason has been issues hooking
certain games: Be it games that block the hook like Counter-Strike GO or Destiny 2,
or games which do not cooperate well with game hooks, such as Warzone. Let’s talk about this.
I’m EposVox, your Stream Professor, and the beta for OBS version 27 update has just released
and in it includes a fix for an issue that has kept me on dual PC streaming for my PC streams,
despite the fact that I have absurdly powerful hardware at my disposal.
OBS v27 includes updates and fixes to the game capture hook for DirectX 12 games. DX12 games
have been notoriously frustrating to deal with as a streamer, none moreso than Call of Duty Warzone.
The specific scenario which pushed me back to dual PC streaming when I was
still living at my apartment was Warzone capturing frames with a massive stutter,
or even sending frames to OBS completely out of order.
This PLAGUED my streams, despite the fact that the core render or encode performance of OBS
had zero reported issues. It was simply the DirectX12 hook itself causing the issue. It
didn’t matter that I had a Threadripper 3000 CPU, an i9-9900k, or a RTX 2080 or RTX Titan - raw
performance wasn’t the concern. The hook just wouldn’t cooperate. Switching to dual PC and using
a capture card to hook the video data over HDMI instead of software was my only fix at the time.
This and other hooking issues have been widespread with Warzone and with some other DX12 games,
and OBS 27 comes with a fix for DX12 game capture hooks that should alleviate this
issue for most users. Huzzah! Some people were even using capture cards within their
single PC streaming setup to alleviate this, which should be less necessary now, as well.
There’s a second fix which can be helpful here, too. This fix adds a new capture method
for Display Capture called “Windows Graphics Capture” or WGC. This was previously added
for Window Capture sources a couple updates ago which helped with capturing Vulkan and UWP games,
and now it’s available for Display Capture. This method should have less performance issues or
hitching than was experienced with the old DXGI (or DirectX Graphics Infrastructure) method.
This can help smooth things over when you NEED to use Display Capture instead of Game Capture
sources. Even better, this new method seems more stable when your graphics driver hiccups
a bit, AND it seems to have a lot better time capturing displays hooked up to secondary GPUs.
This means that laptops with both an iGPU and dedicated GPU - as well as dual GPU desktop
systems - will have less black screen issues now. I still haven’t seen substantial evidence,
nor been able to re-create a scenario where dual GPUs for streaming is a good idea, nevertheless
helps anything, but for those who insist on doing it anyway, this will make your life easier.
Is dual PC streaming dead? No, it’s not. If performance was your only real concern,
dual PC could have been dead for you a couple years ago now - but Single PC streaming will
still struggle to be viable once you start introducing multicam configurations, a ton
of media sources, automation, management of other tools, etc. But these latest OBS improvements will
certainly make lives a lot easier for those of you who want to stick with single PC streaming.
Both are completely viable options, and I’m stoked to see OBS making things better along the way.
You know what else I’m stoked for? New creators getting into streaming or YouTube to
find a new career path or build an audience. For that, I recommend checking out Marques Brownlee’s
latest Skillshare course on YouTube Success. Skillshare is our sponsor for today’s video and
is an online learning community for creatives, where millions come together to take the next
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Skillshare is for real, working creatives and lifelong learners who are never content being
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it’s a fantastic deal - but if it’s not good enough for ya, the first 1,000 people to sign
up with my link in the description will get a free trial of Skillshare Premium. Happy learning.
This is the first of a few videos I have coming out on the new OBS version,
so get subscribed for more. The beta JUST released at the time of recording, so there’s lots of cool
stuff to dive into and test before it’s even fully released, but there’s some neat stuff.
If you have any questions about the update, sound off in the comments below or join us on Discord.
I’m EposVox, your Stream Professor , and I’ll see you next time.