I have finally gotten Wirecast to broadcast without any dropped frames!

Here are my hardware specs:

HP Media Center PC m1070n
CPU : Pentium 4 (HT) @ 2.80 Ghtz (single core)
RAM: 1 GB
Graphic card: PCI-express ATI Radeon X300 128mb DDR
OS: Windows XP
(I am planning to upgrade but I am undecided on the hardware)

Here is some info about my setup:

I am broadcasting with 2 DV Cams, Graphics (lower 3rds and bug), and video.

My Output Rez is 360 X 240 @ 29.97 fps flash and I am streaming to ustream.

Here are some setting I tweaked to make Wirecast run faster:

I did a clean install of windows XP (with all drivers) turned off all themes and visual effects, and set the screen resolution to 800X600 @ 16bit (the lowest possible for my video card)

Here are some Wirecast settings I changed:

In preference under Advance/Capture device size, I have it set to reduced (this seems to help a lot)

Under performance I have unchecked draw high quality Icons.


After Wirecast is up and running I open task manager and close Windows explorer!
This seems to decrease the CPU load by about 3%.
I also set the wirecast process priority level to high (real time seems to cause slowdown and crashing for me).

I have run a test broadcast for over 5 hours with video and switching between cams without any problem.

After trying a lot of video codecs I have found that encoding in Apple video as an .mov seems to take up the least amount of system resources when played back during broadcast. Also, for some reason, encoding to this format with Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 and CS4 with identical settings produces completely different results.
CS3 does a much better job and the video looks much cleaner (less visual noise).
A drawback to this format is that the file size is huge! (almost 2 GB for 20 mins)

I rendered out all of my videos at the native program resolution 360 X 240 @ 29.97 fps and I do not experience any dropped frames even when I use transition effects between cams and video. Even broadcasting a shot with multiple video windows will still not drop frames!


So here is my question, Is Wirecast coded to take advantage of mluti processors or would I be better off upgrading to a single 3.8ghz processor with 3 GHz ram?

Some multi core processors have cores with individual clock speeds like 2.8 GHz. If Wirecast is not coded to use multi cores wouldn't this mean that the cpu power is maxed out at 2.8 GHz? And the same goes for the encoding process, even if I had a multi core processor and wirecast and the encoding were processed on different cores wouldn't this still mean that each process is individually limited to 2.8 GHz?



If I were to build a system with dual+ cores:

is the encoding processed on a separate core from Wirecast?

If this is true and each core is 2.8ghz is the encoder coded to take advantage of dual+ cores or is it limited to only 2.8ghz?

Hmm, I'd recommend Quad or even Two Quad cores. Keep in mind that here are other things you might want to do on the computer while streaming. One example is taking Skype Video calls and one person did this by setting up several Virtual Operating Systems (each using a core) so each would get a Skype call. When processing (decoding/encoding) Wirecast wants more cores.

For files, I Frame codecs are easier to decode than GOP based codecs so that's one reason why you may see an advantage with the specific MOV codec you're using. On the Mac side I see similar results using Apple Intermediate Codec for example. That too will create a bigger file than other codecs but it's I Frame so it's easier for the CPU to decode for use in Wirecast.

BTW I've run Wirecast on a Pentium D and a Dual Quad (8 core) under Windows XP SP3 and those cores really help.

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CraigS
Telestream Desktop Forum Moderator