Since I spent pretty much the entire
day trying to figure that out, as well as going to a few other
services before hand I decided I might as well write about it. It
turned out to be quite a stressful experience that I'm glad I'm
finished with.
The entire story of the experience is
quite a long one, but it came down to that I was just looking for a
streaming service that would allow me to stream in the first place
and be fairly coherent with the hindrance of my not really great PC.
The first thing that came to mind as usual was Procaster which Alice
and I used frequently for other games, and it actually worked fairly
well on my old PC too, but evidently that PC had more processing
power than my current one, and I experienced more than a few
problems. To start off with, I was trying out the new Procaster that
completely shuts off when a computer is above using it's threshold of
80% or higher CPU processing power, so since my computer was
constantly at that limit, I wasn't even able to get the stream to
start. I didn't give up there however , I instead reverted to a old
version of Procaster that Alice and I used to stream games that
weren't enabled on Xfire in the past, however that didn't work too
well either, the sound was stutter and it made my system lag to near
in-playability, I also experienced stutters with the sound on my
computer as well, so that wasn't exactly ideal. With all of that, it
made me renew my quest to find out a new streaming service that would
allow me to broadcast fairly easily.
The first one that I came across and I
had tried to set up in the past was Ustream, and as I understand,
Ustream is a pretty popular streaming service for non-gamers, but
some gamers did find out a way anyway to use it for our purpose. A
very long time ago I followed a guide about setting it up for gaming
and I completed the process about halfway until it gets to a part
where it literally says to buy a external program to allow sound to
come through onto the broadcast. I didn't want to do that of course
so I stopped there, coming back to the Ustream service after all of
this time, I still encountered that problem of course, and it was a
headache to solve, in fact it took pretty much all day. I read many
different guides saying to try out different programs, and some even
said to enable microphones but I found out that was more for enabling
chat programs such as Skype, Ventrilo, and Team Speak rather than
what I was trying to get, so I ignored many of those guides and I
really couldn't find any hints on what to do. This resulted in me
giving up on Ustream once again and trying to go to another service,
since I've played a lot of League of Legends recently I've heard of
Own3d streaming, so of course that was my next stop. When I got there
I literally registered once and then it said to download a streaming
program that is in beta at which point I had to register again,
however every time I tried to register it didn't process and I did
try almost every possible alternative such as changing my password or
user name but it still didn't go through, to make it even more
annoying it didn't actually give me a reason why my action didn't
happen. So of course, I gave up on that, last but not least we have
Justin.tv, again, I heard a lot of good things about the service
however, I don't like that it uses it's own program for desktop and
game streaming that gives 10 free uses and then forces a charge. It
also offers free webcam streaming like Ustream, but that didn't help
as it led me back to my soundless problem, and I decided I prefer
Ustream to Justin.tv anyway so I left that idea behind.
That brings us back to Ustream, after
doing some tests on Procaster again and deciding that it was just too
unstable and more annoying than fun, Ustream was basically the only
option I could think of, so I just had to get sound working. To my
luck I did a few more searches and finally came upon a answer that
seemed pretty good, it was on a post from someone having the same
problem as I was, and it was answered by a moderator, it of course
said to go to another page where the question was already answered
but the mod's answered in a very helpful fashion. While they did say
to go to another page they did identify the problem, and on the other
page the problem was finally fixed as I found out I had to enable a
disabled device that prevented my computer audio devices to be
selected. So for future reference and for anyone that reads my blogs,
I would like to point this part out because it was very helpful, and
just in general, while the process of getting computer streaming on
Ustream to begin with is a hassle, I think if Procaster or some other
stream isn't working out for you, Ustream can be a fairly good
alternative.
1.)You need a video device that would
allow redirection of the desktop to the broadcast, I personally use
Manycam which is a webcam with desktop footage options. Ustream has
also thought of this problem and has released it's own desktop viewer
called Ustream Producer, and while it's not only for the desktop or
it's primary purpose might not be that at all, it definitely would
allow you to stream your Desktop.
2.)As for audio this part is the part
that really confused me, unlike what some guides say, you don’t
really need to do anything special. In order to literally get
computer audio (not microphone or anything like that audio) you need
to do this : go onto the sound window in control panel then go into
recording and make sure “Show disabled devices” is enabled,
afterward all that's left to do is enable “Stereo mix”, and that
solved the problem easily. It's a simple thing but it for the
untechnical savvy such as myself, it was probably one of the things I
would try in a couple of years rather than now.
After that you should be good to go, I
believe enabling a microphone goes through the same process as
enabling the stereo mix but instead it just is through different
ports.
In conclusion, I haven't tried to
broadcast what I wanted to do yet, but so far Ustream is far more
compatible with a low end computer like mine than Xfire, or
Procaster, and it allows me to stream where I wouldn't be able to, to
begin with, so for that I'm thankful, and while I'm sure the stream
won't be the best quality in the world, I'm just happy to finally be
able to have audio on Ustream.
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