AthenaScope was THE BEST service for streamers who wanted automatic highlights and clips
of gameplay and it’s now DEAD.
DOWNLOAD YOUR CLIPS NOW!
Let’s talk about what this means and what your alternatives are.
I’m EposVox, the Stream Professor, and honestly I’m a little heartbroken.
AthenaScope quickly turned into one of my all-time FAVORITE services for streamers.
This is very sudden and out of nowhere - we were JUST talking to and working with the
people over there for more Backing Track music integrations and new features - but they just
announced that they are shutting down the service on April 5th, and you need to download
all of your clips, highlights, and showcases that you want to preserve by then, or they
will be GONE!
This came as a shock to everyone, but we don’t have a clear answer as to why.
It almost smells like an acquisition - much how paid access site Vessel abruptly shut
down when the team and technology was acquired by Verizon, but this would typically come
with a big announcement of said acquisition.
AthenaScope was recently seeking to hire new engineers, were regularly posting feature
updates - it seems like they may have been rug-pulled by VC funding and just immediately
no longer be able to afford to keep operating, which is tragic.
I hope everyone involved will be alright and can get solid positions elsewhere.
For you the user, what are your options?
Obviously download your clips NOW before they vanish, but beyond that you will have to look
into some alternative services, and thankfully there ARE competitors - just not the exact
same service.
So for context, AthenaScope was a service that would automatically scan your Twitch
or YouTube VODs - or you could stream directly to them - and use machine learning to automatically
detect big game moments - such as killing sprees, goals in Rocket League, wins, and
so on - and cut them out as clips, make entire montages set to music - like our Backing Track
rock tunes - and let you set up playlists to show in your be right back and starting
soon screens.
The machine learning training seemed to take a while, so their supported game catalog was
limited and they were slow to add new ones, BUT the results were generally phenomenal
(short of their obnoxious-looking logo) and IMO it was a service that could be worth a
significant subscription cost to a lot of creators.
By the way, my Merch - awesome retro-themed desk mats, pins, and stickers is on sale through
April 6, so pick it up while you can and get a free trial to Nebula while you’re at it!
EposVox.GG/Merch
If you download your existing clips and Showcases and want to keep using them for the time being,
that’s easy.
Put them in one folder, add a new VLC Media Source in place of the browser source you
were using (you will need to install VLC Media Player to get this source, if you don’t
have it already) add the directory for your clips and set it to shuffle playlist.
Resize and fit as you normally did.
But if you want to start using a competitor, here’s a list: SteelSeries Moments, Insights,
Sizzle, Overwolf Outplayed, Combo, Powder.gg, Eklipse, and just clipping yourself using
the replay buffer or incentivizing your chat to clip for you, of course.
The good news is this is a pretty substantial list, there are a lot of competitors.
The bad news?
They aren’t complete replacements.
Most don’t automatically create awesome music-synced montages, they don’t automatically
scan your Twitch VODs, that kind of thing.
They generally rely on OBS forks to stream directly to them - which conflicts with using
OBS to stream normally, since game capture sources can’t hook in multiple instances
of OBS and it adds compositing and encoding load.
Let’s test a few out.
Sizzle seems appealing, as it can scan your Twitch or YouTube VODs and automatically generates
highlights reels - but it only supports a tiny handful of games: Fortnite, League, Apex,
and Warzone.
Unfortunately they don’t provide an option to stream existing captures to them like AthenaScope
did, so I linked it with my test account so I could feed it some existing captures.
I streamed some Apex Legends and it couldn’t auto-detect the game from the VOD, despite
the game being the category on Twitch, and when it asked me to manually select, Apex
wasn’t there... but then somehow after spending another half hour submitting Warzone footage,
the Apex option showed up, wellp.
You refresh the feed to detect new VODs, assign the game, and wait for Sizzle to process your
stream.
More than 12 hours later, I still don’t have any clips from these VODs - join us on
Discord at Discord.gg/EposVox and I’ll post updates as the clips come in.
Insights.gg is less of a highlights-focused service and more of a gameplay review and
analysis tool for eSports teams, so that’s what its focus is on.
You make a team, invite people to review gameplays with you and so on.
But they have a direct video uploader, accept VOD links from video streaming sites, or provide
a direct tool to record and log while you play.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t generate auto-highlights at all.
And if you submit high-bitrate captures from something like Shadowplay, the player CHUGS
and can’t do anything.
But I was able to gleam that you can overlay maps and player icons from some games - including
Smash - and mark specific parts of the video to remember or emphasize, lots of great collaborative
coaching tools, overall!
Combo, on the other hand, is more geared towards creating vertical clips for TikTok and YouTube
Shorts.
You can import existing Twitch clips - though the auto-importer likes to just not find any,
you have to manually feed it links - and choose from a variety of templates to customize the
layout, including moving your facecam for the vertical view.
This is pretty sweet, and you can even link up your YouTube or TikTok to send clips directly.
For manual file uploads, you’re SUPER limited on file size.
Both bigger files and auto-editing after your stream ends is paywalled for $12 per month
or $120 per year.
Paying once for a year is a reasonable price here if you’re someone who needs to regularly
convert gaming clips on Twitch to TikToks, Reels, or YouTube Shorts, especially with
the auto-edits — but again, this doesn’t replace what AthenaScope specifically did.
Powder.gg - which is a weird name - is also a weird service.
They support a healthy amount of games and tout AI highlights detection, but they ways
they force you to use it are super limiting and uncomfortable.
You install the Windows app and it hooks your game and then you can use a hotkey to save
clips, which....
at some point the AI does... something?
It also detects videos in your Videos folder, so it picks up Shadowplay clips - but there
seems to be no way to analyze them for AI highlights and even a 400MB clip is “too
big to upload” for sharing.
Also to edit ANYTHING you HAVE to be pushed to their mobile app, which is just plain silly.
So many extra steps and convoluted actions make me worry they’re trying to get your
data on as many devices as possible.
HOWEVER once you do get set up on mobile, it can import clips from even the Xbox app
that you save on the Xbox itself, which no other service I’ve looked at can do.
Impressive.
Trying to link the app to my new gaming YouTube channel lost_saves - go watch my Call of Duty
4 in 2022 video over there, by the way - it... couldn’t find the channel, weirdly enough.
It’s 100% associated with the Google Account I logged into, but Powder just couldn’t
see it.
Very odd.
Playing a game, if you play windowed it captures your whole desktop instead of just the game,
despite that being an option I had off.
Also it seems to be lacking the kind of GPU prioritization OBS gets so all of the clips
in Apex Legends came out super low framerate and choppy.
Kind of disappointing.
The AI seems to just find any moment with combat rather than necessarily specific kills.
BUT it finds the highlights automatically as you go - or you can manually trigger the
hotkey - which is neat, since other services like Sizzle take HOURS to comb through your
VOD.
Eklipse.gg - that’s with a K, by the way, lets you link up Twitch, YouTube and Facebook
Gaming, and then scans your VODs to find clips.
This again, takes a few hours.
The entire site, every experience from trying to register to linking an account, to just
navigating through the pages here has been an incredibly slow experience, I was kind
of bummed about that - but they do support more games than most other AI highlights options.
SteelSeries’ app is an interesting one.
They just added functionality for it to act basically like Voicemeter - we’ll be covering
that in the future - but for the Moments capture, it hooks your game in a way that conflicts
with OBS, even installing the app with OBS open crashed OBS somehow.
But once you’re going you can capture any game with a keyboard shortcut, control over
quality levels frame rates, and so on.
However, as with Powder, it doesn’t seem to hook your game itself, so Windowed mode
games show your entire desktop.
I was trying to use windowed for these since I’m testing on a PC with ultrawide, but
apps have not been very cooperative.
The app does have “GameSense” to detect in-game events, supporting CS:GO, League and
Dota - which gives you timeline indicators of deaths and kills and things like that.
Weirdly, after I switched the capture to 60FPS it captured a cropped view of my screen, but
still desktop capture?
Super weird.
But the timeline editor lets you add Giphy overlays, text, trim your clips, and export
them to share.
Pretty neat app, we’ll probably cover in a full video later on.
Medal.tv is REAL impressive.
It supports a ton of games, provides a LOT of recording options including high framerate
captures, has neat editing tools for text, memes, sound effects, zooms and blurs, your
own overlay files, and so on - and even has mobile capture support in the works?
Again, there’s seemingly zero actual AI clip making or montage making here, but it
seems like an awesome service.
I tested it out while playing splitgate and was super stoked with the general workflow
and usability of making clips, naming them, editing, and so on.
It even auto-tagged the map I was playing!
I think BY far Medal is the most complete package for creating and publishing game highlights
on the market right now - my only complaint is what seems to be a lack of tool to crop
and edit for vertical like Combo and others have.
If they get that going...
ooh boy Medal might be perfect.
We’ll see it again on the channel - but again, it’s not actually an AthenaScope
replacement.
Another service that came up on Twitter was Make Echoes - a paid service that lets you
and your chat make clips on Twitch, has a stream deck plugin, and can automatically
cross-post to Twitter, YouTube, or upload to AWS and Dropbox.
Seems pretty neat.
Lastly, it’s also worth noting that Nvidia Shadowplay supports detecting multikills and
specific moments for auto-clips in many games, Intel’s upcoming Arc Control for their GPUs
will as well, and I THINK AMD ReLive does, too?
No montage-making, though.
Keep in mind any of these tools aside from the ones that directly analyze Twitch VODs
will conflict with OBS or Shadowplay either by directly conflicting with the game hook
or by adding extra load to your system, so be careful.
Though some like Medal let you upload clips, so you can still send them your Twitch or
Shadowplay (or OBS Replay Buffer) clips and edit on there anyway.
Ultimately, I hate to say it, but there really isn’t a true AthenaScope replacement.
It’s a real bummer that they’re shutting down so quickly and there really isn’t anyone
else offering the same kind of service.
I think Sizzle and Eklipse are the closest, but thus far Sizzle is taking FOREVER to scan
a VOD, and Eklipse is still at 0% a few hours later, and generally slow as heck to load
even the website.
Hopefully they can get up to speed to live in AthenaScope’s position in the future.
I know this video was a bit rushed, but I REALLY wanted to provide a somewhat comprehensive
list of options and alternatives before the service ends, as you literally only have days.
We’ll look at some of these services more in-depth in future videos.
If you know of any better alternatives or there are specific ones you want to see covered
more, let us know on Discord.
If you want to see more about how awesome AthenaScope was, check out this video here,
or if you want to optimize your stream audio to sound better than 90% of Twitch, check
out this one.
Remember, Be Kind, Rewind.