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SSS Ep 3: Pinball Streaming - Computers and Cameras and frame rates, oh MY!

Mystery Pinball Theater 3000·video·56m 39s·analyzed·Sep 29, 2019
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Technical deep-dive on pinball streaming PC requirements, USB architecture, and frame rate necessity.

Summary

Mystery Pinball Theater 3000 and Don't Panic Flip discuss the technical requirements for pinball streaming, focusing on computer hardware specifications, USB management, GPU considerations, and camera frame rates. The hosts share their personal streaming setups—from Spuds' underpowered Dell XPS 13 achieving 1080p/60fps with integrated graphics to dream-machine configurations with dedicated GPUs—and explain why pinball streaming differs fundamentally from computer game streaming due to the need for multiple real-time camera feeds.

Key Claims

  • Pinball streaming requires three-camera setup (playfield, player/face, DMD) unlike computer game streaming

    high confidence · Don't Panic Flip directly states 'Pinball streaming is a three-camera shoot. right so it's it's we're filming a sitcom every time right' and emphasizes this is fundamentally different from game streaming

  • Spuds achieved stable 1080p/60fps streaming on integrated graphics (Dell XPS 13 with i7) after months of optimization

    high confidence · Spuds states 'just yesterday, as of this recording, just yesterday, I finally got my final settings where I can run 1080, 60 frames per second. No crashing, no stuttering. it took months to figure out how to do this'

  • USB root hub architecture is critical; overloading one hub with two 1080p/60fps cameras causes problems

    high confidence · Spuds explains 'I can't put two 1080p 60 frame per second cameras on one hub' and discusses his single root hub limitation on the Dell XPS 13

  • 60fps is necessary for pinball streaming specifically due to ball motion blur, unlike general gaming streams

    high confidence · Don't Panic Flip states 'The ball is traveling at a high speed, and so in video world we have something called motion blur' and earlier notes 60fps is 'very different' for pinball than games

  • OBS hardware encoder settings vary by GPU; NVIDIA GPUs benefit from dedicated encoding, but integrated graphics require software encoding

    high confidence · George demonstrates OBS settings showing encoder options and notes 'I can't use the the uh nvidia processor i have to use software encoding right now'

  • Dell XPS 15 models with i9 processors exhibit reliability issues (freezing 1-2x daily) affecting work-purchased units

    medium confidence · Don't Panic Flip states 'I have a brand new Dell XPS 15 that has 32 gigs of RAM, an i9 processor...this is awful' and 'we bought three of them for work...all have the same issues'

  • Standard laptop webcams are insufficient for pinball streaming due to lens distortion and sub-60fps capture

    high confidence · Spuds explains webcams are 'not going to be sharp to the edges' and 'probably not running at 60 frames per second'

Notable Quotes

  • “Pinball streaming is a three-camera shoot. right so it's it's we're filming a sitcom every time right”

    Don't Panic Flip@ 2:58 — Core conceptual framework distinguishing pinball from game streaming

  • “just yesterday, as of this recording, just yesterday, I finally got my final settings where I can run 1080, 60 frames per second. No crashing, no stuttering. it took months to figure out how to do this.”

    Spuds (Mystery Pinball Theater 3000)@ 10:47 — Documents real-world achievement on consumer-grade laptop hardware, validates feasibility narrative

  • “I can't put two 1080p 60 frame per second cameras on one hub.”

    Spuds@ 9:55 — Critical USB architecture constraint for builders

  • “The ball is traveling at a high speed, and so in video world we have something called motion blur”

    Don't Panic Flip@ 36:22 — Explains technical necessity of 60fps for pinball vs. general streaming assumptions

  • “I have a brand new Dell XPS 15 that has 32 gigs of RAM, an i9 processor, a terabyte solid state hard drive...And this was not me purchasing it. This was work. And I don't use this to stream on because it's awful.”

    Don't Panic Flip@ 29:44 — Quality concern from premium-tier hardware; raises brand reliability questions

  • “You're going to get a lot of sites tell you that 60 may not be worth it unless you're really trying to put out a high-quality stream. But it's very different for pinball.”

    Spuds@ 36:05 — Distinguishes pinball streaming requirements from generic streaming guidance

Entities

Mystery Pinball Theater 3000organization|mediaDon't Panic Flipperson|mediaSpudspersonManupersonGeorgepersonBrian O'Neillperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Mystery Pinball Theater 3000 and Don't Panic Flip producing multi-part technical education series on pinball streaming (Episodes 1-3 documented, series continuing)

    high · Episode 3 references Episodes 1-2 covering hardware and cameras; hosts announce intention to continue with further granular topics; planned future show on OBS deep-dive

  • ?

    community_signal: Streaming community standardizing on specific hardware configurations (i7/Ryzen 7 minimum, 16GB+ RAM, dedicated GPU, multiple USB 3 controllers) for pinball streaming

    high · Hosts converge on recommendations: i7 or Ryzen 7, 16GB+ RAM, dedicated GPU (GTX 1060+), multiple USB controllers; Pinsomniac provides specific Dell laptop link matching these specs

  • ?

    product_concern: Dell XPS 15 (recent i9 models) experiencing systematic freezing/stability issues across multiple purchased units; hosts no longer recommending Dell XPS line

    high · Don't Panic Flip states work purchased three XPS 15 units, one returned for severe issues, remaining two show same freezing pattern (1-2x daily); 'I haven't been recommending them anymore'

  • ?

    technology_signal: OBS version 2.4 upgrade causing stability problems; hosts recommend waiting for next version before upgrading

    medium · George upgraded to 2.4 and encountered streaming problems; Spuds advises 'I don't suggest on the major upgrade to OBS right now. Maybe wait for the next one'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Pinball streaming requiring specialized USB architecture knowledge (root hub awareness, powered hub management) not typical of general computer use; emerging as technical literacy barrier

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.170

0:00
Hello, my friends. Are we in? Yes. Hello, my friends. Welcome to Second Stream. Silver Ball. This is Spuds, aka MPT3K, because I have 27 names. Over there is Don't Panic Flip. He has two names.
0:25
Yes. uh today welcome friends today we're going to talk uh this is episode three we're going to talk more about pinball streaming specifically about computer setups and what is required for you to do this crazy thing that we call pinball streaming how are you doing uh don't panic uh i'm doing well it's sunday i feel like i i really dig our our sunday streams because sundays of the one day where I feel like you kind of kick back a little bit and enjoy what's going on. Argrin, one, two, three, welcome to the stream. Pink Ninja Man, also welcome to the stream. Whoa, this dual stream stuff. Nice. Yeah, it's super fun. So yeah, I'm digging Sundays, man. How about yourself? Yeah, I really look forward to this because, yeah, like you said, we can kind of recap what we've done, you know, over the past couple of weeks. And yeah, it's Sunday and work's tomorrow. And that sucks. That does suck. I'm going to go play some pinball. See you.
1:33
Awesome. So I guess tonight we're talking about computer setups. We've already gone over in our first episode, it was your streaming rig. So that was the mounting hardware, the cameras. I think you also went over just very quickly the PC you're using. And then episode two was the same, but on my side. And and now we're talking about computers. I imagine we'll move on to something even a little bit more different, but much more granular and specific on the on the next episode. But I guess where do we start with with computers? That's a great question. Where do you start with computers? So so OK, so let's talk about what are we really doing with pinball streaming? And we're not just – so we're not just – I'm trying not to belittle it because it's a thing, too, where you stream computer games. That's a whole thing. That requires a different kind of – similar but different tool set. But I think when you have the ability to take your capture card, capture your screen, or capture a second machine screen and then broadcast it out, you're not dealing too much with the, shall we say, in real life stuff, right? You're, for the most part, dealing with ones and zeros. You're dealing with bits, capturing bits and spitting bits back out. Right.

  • i7 processors are recommended minimum; i5 can work but may require offline remuxing instead of live OBS remuxing

    high confidence · Hosts conclude 'I recommend an i7. An i5 can work. you might need to not do like remuxing at the end of your videos'

  • “OBS really loves to use the GPU because when you start to composite different screens, like we talked about, Playfield, DMD, and player cams, All that compositing can be offloaded to a dedicated GPU”

    Spuds@ 10:19 — Explains GPU benefit architecture and CPU load reduction

  • “this is how you pin bromance on Twitch”

    Spuds@ 11:59 — Humorous aside referencing capturing player faces for personalization and community connection

    • Jack Danger
    person
    Pinsomniacperson
    Dell XPS 13 (9370)product
    Dell XPS 15 (i9 variant)product
    OBS (Open Broadcaster Software)product|software
    FreegalWatchorganization|venue
    Anchorproduct
    NVIDIA GTX 1060product
    Cameron Silver Ballvenue|location
    Jurassic Parkgame
    X-Mengame
    TNAgame
    Zoomsoftware|product
    Pull My Focusmedia

    high · Spuds spends significant time explaining single USB root hub limitation, separate powered hub requirements, and controller saturation; George asks technical clarification about root hub termination

  • ?

    technology_signal: Pinball streaming ecosystem transitioning from single-camera (disembodied voice) to three-camera professional setups with face capture, requiring advanced USB management and GPU acceleration

    high · Spuds references 'before, someone used to do these tutorials where all you saw was the play field' vs. current three-camera standard; Don't Panic Flip emphasizes face capture as critical for community connection

    • 2:58
    Pinball streaming is a three-camera shoot. right so it's it's we're filming a sitcom every time right every time we stream we have multiple cameras going on we generally speaking have three sometimes we have two if we're lucky like jack danger and we can feed one of the screens directly into uh you know our obs or exploit or whatever we're doing but typically we're talking about playfield camera and we're talking about a player camera.
    3:30
    Which is one of the things that was very compelling to me about getting into Pimmo streaming is that now we're capturing the face. I remember before, Bowen used to do these tutorials where all you saw was the play field, and that's it. Heard his disembodied voice. Capturing the face is all about the thrill of it, the agony, oh, I just drained, and natural-born hosts like Bill Panicflip over there.
    3:55
    Well, it personalizes it, right? Like, you, that disembodied voice, I have no idea what would Bowen look like, right? And now I can watch his videos or check him out on a stream somewhere, or when he showed up, I think it was last week on, it wasn't Leet Sandman, it was another stream, he showed up and they were destroying Jurassic Park, like, I know who he is. And that's huge. That's absolutely huge. Yeah. And that's the thing that we have to do. Now, obviously gamers do that too, right? They have a webcam, and they're They're shooting themselves with a webcam. But what inherently makes it different for us is we have multiple. And if a gamer has multiple cams, it's maybe other shots of their room or other shots that they can cut to. But we have these inherent, I'm going to say three, because generally speaking, people are going to be using three cameras. For that, you need a computer or some kind of mixer before your computer that can handle and composite three screens together. okay um there are devices like the black magic atm whatever it's called i can't remember we're not going to talk about that which is a mixer before it gets to obs um we're going to talk about how to take all these cameras into your desktop or laptop to do that you need to have number one some ways to get them into your computer mostly usb we're talking about mostly USB, maybe mostly USB 3. Oh, and also a microphone.
    5:25
    Right. Right? So you're probably dealing with one, two, three USB 3s and maybe one USB 2 for a microphone, but the microphone's probably going to need power. So now you're going to need the power and run all these mics. So... Not only to complicate it, but it also, as opposed to game streaming, just another difference, you don't have to worry about the game moving. at all when you're streaming on a computer game, right? But somebody slaps the pinball machine, and now it's slightly out of adjustment, and you've got to deal with that. Or leave yourself enough room, but have everything close enough to where it can still see you. Yeah, pinball's a lot harder than computer games. Yeah. Pinball's like playing one of those organs where you play with both feet and your hands. I forget. it um also what's his toes welcome to the stream hey what's up um color magenta you're still changing the colors we're gonna do a whole show where uh don't panic flip just talks to us about like the deep deep stuff he's doing in real life with the uh the apis and stuff on twitch and such that would be fun there's there's so much going on there's so much going but yeah computers i have no idea how to do this stuff okay so as an example of the low-end version of what you can do with a computer i'm going to use my computer as an example uh when i got into streaming pinball i'm a computer guy i build computers i worked in it every day every machine in this house i built um but i didn't think about what i needed to do pinball because i didn't know and um I bought a machine that I would consider underpowered, but I want to show you what I'd be able to pull off with this machine. Okay. Do you want to share my, or I can share it. I have to share it. Yeah. So you over to your screen. So when you share, now we can see your screen, full screen. And what's his toes says, even just the power alone, trying to power four to six USB devices on a laptop or even a desktop, separately powered USB hub is your friend. Absolutely. I think we went over that in the hardware. It was that, like, anchor, 10-port, separate powered device to run all these guys. Yeah, and actually, yeah, once it's told you're correct, I don't have that one of the anchor things, but I do have a dedicated USB on my rig that is just for power.
    8:03
    Just for power. So let's talk about MPT3K's computer, which is not really powerful. I am running once again I will say I by no means endorse you buy this but I'm showing you what is possible I am currently running a Dell XPS 13 9370 some of the good things about it is it does have 16 gigs of RAM it does have an i7 they don't say that there I see but I'm running an i7 it's maximum resolution is 4k I am not running it in 4k I am running it in HD meaning desktop and everything is HD. Plenty of big hard disks.
    8:44
    In fact, all my stuff is actually in an SD card. And what else? It does have three USB 3.0 ports on the side. Now, I'm curious on those ports. Do you know if those are, and for lack of a better term, you probably have the real term, but are those USB ports home runs? Do all of those terminate in their own USB controller? Or are two of those connected to a hub? Or three of those potentially all on a hub? So you really have to be worried about overloading your USB 3.0 controller. That particular laptop has one USB root hub, which is what you're referring to, right? Okay, cool. Yeah, there's the technical term. Like it. It has one USB root hub, but I am running off of... Hello, Wolfman Turkey.
    9:39
    I am running a separate USB hub and external also with it. And I have to really be careful about what plugs into that because ultimately all of it's going into one root hub. Yep. So I have to balance. I can't put two HD 60 frame per second cameras on one hub.
    10:00
    Now, notice something huge that's missing from this configuration. And that would be a dedicated GPU. Ah, yes. There is no dedicated GPU on this. It is Intel integrated graphics, which is terrible for OBS. OBS really loves to use the GPU because when you start to composite different screens, like we talked about, Playfield, DMD, and player cams, All that compositing can be offloaded to a dedicated GPU in your desktop slash laptop, which takes a huge load off the CPU. When I'm running now, and I'll show you, this is what I'm able to pull off with an integrated graphics card.
    10:47
    And I am currently running, just yesterday, as of this recording, just yesterday, I finally got my final settings where I can run 1080, 60 frames per second. No crashing, no stuttering. it took months to figure out how to do this. Yeah, congratulations on that. That's huge.
    11:15
    Months. And my background is not like Don't Panic Clip's background. My background is static. The Chrome you see, it's called the Chrome, which is the Mystery Pinball Theater logo and everything around it, is one screen with three cutouts. And those Playfield and DMD and PlayerCam, those are just alphas. and the camera windows are sitting behind it. That took me a while to get there, because you said our backgrounds were different, and I thought you meant, like, I'm in software, and you're on the video and hardware side, but you meant the background of your display is one image with cutouts in it, right? Yes. Yes, okay. I'm slow, I'm sorry. And yes, Wolfman, this is how you pin bromance on Twitch. so uh let's keep going by the way this this is uh brian o'neill he's uh ranked 58 in ipa and he kicked our asses at um jurassic park but i was happy just swiped left i want you to know pinsomniac what's up man all right this let's move on from my machine um to my dream machine and people can make feel free to make fun of my dream machine but i did throw this up in discord on don't panic flips discord channel and uh they said yeah it looked fine um this so basically what's separate about this is it it is a little short on the memory i would probably want to upgrade to eight gigs of ram but it has it's an i7 and it has a nvidia geforce 1650 graphics card in it, which can offload all the compositing so OBS can run at lower, you know, much cooler. By the way, my machine running that screen I showed you guys, my machine generally runs the CPU is at 60-75% load. Wow. Which is huge. Yes. Yes, Wolfman, he did, yeah, it's at 8, I think you meant you wanted to upgrade to 16 from 8, right? Yeah, up to 16 from 8, yeah. but this puppy here it's an example i want to use this as an example of something that you should start at notice that it has three usbs two one two on one side another one i think it has a usb3 on the side also i'm not sure how many root hubs it has but i'm i'm guessing it might have two because it has a lot of inputs and i'm sure they're not going to try and overload their own inputs in this machine. Running Windows 10, because I wouldn't even bother running OBS on a Mac, trust me, don't do it.
    14:01
    Are you serious It doesn work well on a Mac Well a Mac inherently has weird USB ports and I tried OBS on my Mac and it just doesn do well Got it.
    14:24
    Okay. Yeah. And Pinsomniac, go ahead and send your link. I think others would be interested in seeing what laptop you ended up going with. and we're specifically going to talk about laptops guys because uh i'm making an assumption here that you want your rig to be somewhat mobile and lugging a desktop even if you're at home can you imagine don't panic flip lugging a desktop tower from his x-men the machine all the way down to the tna machine every time it wants to stream i don't think that's practical no no that sounds awful um there's a and and somebody feel free to to jump in but uh i have a buddy of mine who is the kind of person that does like all of his own home improvement stuff and builds all of his own machines kind of like what you were describing but but he really gets into it and exactly i was waiting for it what's his toes just threw it out there what about the atx mini so that's what he just did is he built a mini pc specifically for vr and he brought it over and it has handles to pick it up and move it around easily. Now, where I see that being a problem, oh wow, that was one heck of a link to Walmart, Vince Zabdiak. What I see as being the problem is what do you do with that box when you want to go on location? Because that box is not going to sit well on, like I have a portable desk, basically, that sits on a tripod and creates a surface. And it's perfect for the laptop, my big microphone, and my little stream deck to all be on that. And the ATX Mini, while it might work, you're going to have to have an external monitor. You've got the ATX Mini case, which technically gets there, but it's almost like you'd have to build, in my opinion, like a custom stand in order to make that work. The benefit, of course, being that you can stick some really nice hardware in there at a lot cheaper of cost.
    16:28
    And Wolfman says, what about an NUC? I feel like that's going to lead into some sort of a Three Stooges joke.
    16:37
    Because I don't know what an NUC is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you for doing that. So anyway, I digressed only because I was waiting for somebody to throw in the new miniature portable desktop systems that are becoming really popular for, I think specifically for the VR market. Yeah, I have looked into those. Actually, the first thing I was going to build was going to be a mini ATX with handles and stuff. You're right, George, about you got to have a screen also. And I was figuring I'll get one of those tiny HD screens with a touchscreen and all this stuff. But remember, you're still dealing with a separate bit of stuff. right right yeah it's not it's just it's two things instead instead of one thing okay so we've got a lot of links coming in wolfman of course with the wise guy the poking the the eyeballs i'm gonna uh sorry we we went to chatting mode and i realized we were just staring at like the same screen so i i flipped over but uh but if you want to i guess it potentially either pull up some of these links and we could take a look going over um i i don't think you've you finished going over your your like baseline dream machine because i'm really interested i think in seeing uh i guess in finishing up that in in in what on that machine kind of uh what components on it really made you be like hey this is it and obviously the the the gpu and it had three different ports we're thinking maybe two different home runs or two different you said uh usb controllers but was there anything else on that besides what you had pointed out that you were interested in?
    18:21
    Personally, no. I mean, I'm interested in many USBs that work. I'm interested in a dedicated graphics card, and I'm interested in RAM. Not so much, and we may be different, not so much on SSD versus mechanical spinning drive, right? South State versus mechanical spinning drive. I could care less um i couldn't care less i gotta get that right um i don't care too much about hd i mean uh 4k i just want hd right and touchscreen is nice to have but you don't need it okay okay and uh so i think the screen so is this the this is not this is the walmart link so this is what pinsomniac went with yep is what pumps pinsomniac went with and boy oh boy i like this machine it's the Dell too. I like Dells. So this has 16 gigs of RAM. It's a Dell. It has the 256 solid state. I think yours had a 512. Oh, but this only has the i5 processor. And it seems like in streaming, processing power is your biggest bottleneck, right? Yeah, although the GPU is going to... You can offload to the GPU, but at the end of the day, you're offloading it so that way it's not on the CPU. I guess in this instance, it actually has a GTX 1060. So I imagine you could push quite a bit onto the GPU here. Yeah, and the CPU is going to deal with like the bit rate and the streaming. I mean, you know, the streaming of the data. My assumption is that once you get a nice GPU in there, LBS is going to really, you know, use it. Right. Let's see, we got another one. Let me see what else. Yeah, and then there's one from What's-His-Toes, and Wolfman wants to know how we are rapping without latency. So Wolfman, this is kind of interesting. This took a couple of hours, our first session, to try and figure out how to do this, and what we're using is OBS and a Zoom meeting, and I have a Zoom meeting on full screen on one of my other screens, which is actually sitting on Jurassic Park right now. And I'm using OBS to capture a screen.
    20:37
    So Manu is coming through on full screen on one screen, which is a capture device. And then when we switch back over to chatting, it all condenses down really nicely because it's still the same standard 16 by 9 form factor.
    20:52
    Anyway, sorry, that was a digression. That's just a cool tech on how we're doing what we're doing just right now. Yeah, it's so funny. We're doing a how we're doing on how we're doing what we're how we're doing.
    21:04
    So meta. We just broke 16 walls right then. Wolfman. Is this Wolfman's link, I think? No, that was What's-His-Toes. This is What's-His-Toes. I looked into this, too. I looked into this more for Free Gold Watch tournaments when we need to.
    21:25
    For Free Gold Watch, we're using a desktop machine. We're using a different kind of rig at FreegalWatch. And this is terrific because it's a touchscreen. It's very portable. So if you do want to go the Mini ITX box route, and this is a great screen. Also, there are configurations of Mini ITX. I keep saying Mini ITX. That's what it is, though. Yeah. There are configurations where the screen can actually attach to the side of the monitor, the case. Yes. And I've seen those, too. It really depends on how much pain you're ready to... Yeah, right? I do want to throw out, right now, I am using something very similar to stream right now from my laptop, except, and I'm doing it wrong. I'm going to switch back over to chatting if you want me to show you for a second.
    22:18
    So let's see if I can pick this up. I've got... Please don't disconnect. So I've got this guy. That's nice. Yeah, you can see Manu on this screen. And I've got this over on Jurassic Park. Now, the problem is that this only connects via USB 3.0. So this is using one of my cherished USB 3.0 controllers to send data. I couldn't do this in Pinball, likely, at the same time. What's nice about what's-his-toes-just-sent-out is that that one accepted an HDMI connection. so that's cool awesome yeah that was that that was it if you're gonna do it make sure it accepts hdmi or something besides your usb controllers because you want to conserve and use those usb controllers for data coming in from your two or three or four if you're going to do the tilt bob cam uh from your four other other video sources that you're going to be putting in to do pinball, which is way harder than computer games. Anyway, I'm going to switch back over to full screen and go back to your demo. Sorry, your PowerPoint presentation. Sure.
    23:38
    And a mic. Thank you. What's his toes? Let's see. So we're back at mine. Was there another link in there that I missed? I don't think so.
    23:47
    I think it was Wolfman, just with the wise guy thing. I think that's it. Okay. So we want to be a little abstract because we don't want to steer you guys in any directions of like, you know, brands and stuff like that. It's not that we're afraid of sponsors just because there's so many different choices in laptops nowadays. But we do want to stress some important things. I think really important are how many USB ports you have, because ultimately, that's how you're going to get your cameras into your desktop, laptop, whatever, through USB, USB 3 or USB-C.
    24:28
    And a good processor. I recommend an i7. An i5 can work. you might need to not do like remuxing at the end of your videos or something like that and not run too much stuff in the background sorry i i'm unfamiliar with that term what is remuxing uh it's basically when you tell uh there's a feature in obs that allows it to uh take say if you're recording to an flv or an mkv it will uh it'll uh create an mp4 for you okay got it yeah you can do that externally too you don't need you can do that after right right right you do that in post you do them post uh shut up i just learned that phrase from you i think it's great um you make when you when you really make me laugh i tell you to shut up okay cool um other things yeah so definitely maybe try and push towards an i7 i5 is cool definitely push to it. I wouldn't go anything further down below that. There are AMD processors also.
    25:36
    I don't have the stats on the AMD processor. I did build a machine for a buddy of mine using a Ryzen 7, and it cooks. It's fast. It's terrific. It's not for pinball streaming, though. Right.
    25:51
    George, you did have a question, and there was a mention of What's-His-Toe said, the 256 D6 SSD is nice for running your operating system and OBS.
    26:02
    Yes, but you can still get that loaded on a mechanical spinning drive. Where the SSD is nice is, and George can speak more on this, is loading in media. Right. Right, yeah. So in OBS, I love having animated components to my streams. In fact, I'm going to switch back over.
    26:27
    And you'll notice they're actually not animated right now. And that's because I upgraded to the newest version of OBS and started running into some real problems streaming today. So I suggest that you don't... Nice. What's his toes on the color change? So I don't know that I suggest on the major upgrade to OBS right now. Maybe wait for the next one because I ran into some problems. But I like all of these different components to be animated in some little way. It adds a little something to the stream. But what's nice is on each one of these components, you can right-click and go to Properties. And in OBS, you can tell it how to load it and whether or not to unload it and reload it again later. Now, these files can get quite large. The majority of these are either WebM or MP4 files that you bring in as the media type in OBS. and if I had a spinning drive, I would tell it to not unload it when I switch scenes or when it's no longer visible. So basically before every stream, I would open up the first view and then switch to every view, have it load all of that content into RAM, assuming I had enough RAM to take care of that and then start streaming so that we didn't pull anything else off of the slow spinning hard drive. Yeah. so there there you do have some control in in obs at least as to as to how things are loaded yeah um so i hope hopefully we touched on some of the stuff and there are some really nice examples in there of machines you would buy in fact i'm gonna really look at uh look at that other dell rig because the nice thing about that dell is this light too it very light I have here I show you This This is all my streaming gear in a backpack Wow.
    28:29
    Where's the phone there? Including, I'll show you guys, this is hilarious. Including this, because I need this very bad for my Dell XPS so it doesn't explode. This is a heat cooler. Wow.
    28:44
    I have it sit in the laptop sitting on this. It's running full blast. So my laptop stays cool. That's nice. You've got it condensed down. Let me show you what I use.
    28:58
    So this is how I carry everything. This is the dry goods box that I've been using now for a couple of months.
    29:08
    We have that same box at Freegal Watch with our other stuff in it. That's nice. Okay, so I'm going to flip back over to your screen if you want. I know we've got some more fun questions coming up. Yeah. So let me share again. So I think are we – have we talked enough about the machines, I think? Yeah, a few examples. Well, now, I do want to throw out that, and I don't want to bash any one particular manufacturer, but I have a brand new Dell XPS 15 that has 32 gigs of RAM, an i9 processor, a terabyte solid state hard drive. And this was not me purchasing it. This was work. And I don't use this to stream on because it's awful. Like, it has so many problems. and I feel like at least on the XPS line, I've run into that often over the past maybe two years. Are these problems specific to streaming or problems specific to the computer? No, just in the computer. Like unrelated to, like I have problems with it freezing once to twice a day and this is after me booting it up and what's interesting is we bought three of them for work and once again, this is work related We bought three of them for work. One of them had issues so bad that the guy ended up returning it. And the other two that we kept all have the same issues across both laptops. The same kinds of issues. Wow. Yeah, that's a drag. It is. And I don't know if it was specific to the i9 processor on the XPS 15, or if it's just the 15 line, or if we just happened to get a bad batch. or if there's some recent issues with the Dell XPS line. But I've had some problems recently with Dell to the point where I haven't been recommending them anymore.
    31:15
    Okay, fair enough. My Dell was kind of gifted to me, so I had to take what I could get. But I generally haven't had any... What's up, Dirty Toes? Dirty Toes! I haven't had any problems with my Dell. Okay, that's good to hear. Yeah, the only problems I had was specifically with OBS and all the USB crazy things that I'm plugging into it. Oh, and the overheating, I guess. Well, that's my fault.
    31:47
    That's your fault? That's really my fault. I mean, I was pushing it so hard. I saw it coming. Dude, you're getting Adele. It's now an insult. and also wait what's this toe said uh fair to say you'd be looking for an i7 or ryzen 7 16 gigabyte plus ram solid state drive nice but not necessary as many separately bust usb controllers as possible i think that's a perfect summary yeah and the only thing i would add is a gpu a dedicated oh right right right let's let's make sure that's in there. And that is settings right in OBS. When you choose the different type of video,
    32:31
    shoot, what's the settings? Hold on. I'm actually in OBS right now. So I'm going to open settings and I'm going to go to output. And that is the encoder. So an encoder, you can switch it to one of the hardware encoders. They have one for Asus and another one for NVIDIA. and that allows you to uh uh uh move processing power from don't do it don't don't do it don't upgrade skip yes i would skip it because my i i can't use the the uh nvidia processor i have to use software encoding right now so my cpu is hovering between 20 and 30 percent anyway sorry that was a there oh nice yeah you can show it that's great so that's here you're talking about encoder yep um yeah what i i would love uh george i would love uh to do a show where you kind of we can talk about um obs stuff because you're way ahead of the curve on this stuff than i am way more ahead of the curve than i am about the obs stuff so Okay, cool.
    33:47
    Let's see. Always wait until the upgrade for the upgrade before you upgrade, which is funny because that is almost word for word what Manu said before the stream started. George said, George was like, I upgraded to 2.4, and I was like, yeah. Yeah. hmm um any other questions about pcs i think because we have one we have i have one more thing that would be of interest to people i think um and it's the big question now because we see shall i continue uh george yeah yeah please man let's go so i've seen twitch streamers um uh dirty toast bees can i can i ask a non-stream question yeah go for it yeah go for it um while he's typing his question i've seen twitch streamers who are starting off and they run out and they get themselves a nice logitech you know webcam just like i did just like i did and they pointed at the play field and they're golden. They're like, ah, I'm streaming. I'm streaming pinball. I'm hanging with the big boys. And sometimes it doesn't look so good.
    35:10
    Part of the reason it doesn't look so good, number one, is we already talked about this, I think, on episode one, is that the webcams are not going to be sharp to the edges. They're only going to be sharp in the middle because the amount of lens distortion that they have to deal with from being such a small form factor is insane. So it's going to be sharp in the middle, which is what webcams are for. They're sharp in the middle and they foveate out to the edges. The other reason though is because they are probably not running at 60 frames per second.
    35:46
    And if you have, if you're looking at a pinball, especially pinball, that ball is running around in the machine, destroying the machine and also running really fast. Also, worth pointing out that if somebody who's getting into streaming goes online and looks up what the requirements are for streaming, you're going to get a lot of sites tell you that 60 may not be worth it unless you're really trying to put out a high-quality stream. But it's very different for pinball. Very. Very different. And I think you're going to explain or perhaps demonstrate exactly why. Yeah, it's a huge difference. The ball is traveling at a high speed, and so in video world we have something called motion blur and i'll show you what what i mean by that um this is an example of a shameless plug i have a youtube channel called pull my focus and we talk about how to shoot video right for youtubers and just and people in general we did an episode on the exposure triangle but one of the things we showed off was uh how changing your shutter speed changes what things look like. Now, on the left, we have, I think it's roughly 60 frames per second shutter speed. Sorry, 30 frames per second, 30 shutter speed, 1 30th of a second. And this one here is 1 60th of a second. And when I press play, it's a fan. You can tell. One of them, you can see the blades and the other one, you can't. And I'll play it a couple of times because it might be a little jittery on. um yeah it's playing through a zoom shared meeting yeah and then restreamed out so uh hopefully that that's coming through okay yeah that one was really nice i'll be happy to share these on youtube too but generally speaking if you're looking uh the higher yeah the higher frame rate which is one on the right you can actually see the blades of the fan Yeah, and Manu, when you put this up on YouTube in the show notes, can you link this and any other videos that you've put together? Definitely. Awesome. And you know what? So we edit this show later to throw up on YouTube. Yeah, I'll put in the actual video. Also, there's no we about it. Manu is definitely the video editor. So by we edit it, he just fixes it and makes it look awesome on YouTube. so what does this mean to pinball streaming well let's get a real example i ran over to free go watch today and i avoided talking to anyone and i took my two-year-old with me and he's the one playing pinball right now and we'll show you i'm just gonna let this run uh hopefully in twitch you can see it a little bit but if you look at the ball movement 60 frames per second nice crisp ball 30 frames per second and I do the wave to show you that there is a lot of smear on the 30 frames per second can we call that shmear instead of smear it's actually motion blur but I'm calling it smear and not shmear so what I was saying was like a lot of pinball streamers beginning pinball streamers just turn on their camera and i generally speaking the camera maybe default will default to 30 frames per second or obs will push you to 30 frames if that's what you have in your output settings
    39:11
    um definitely 60 or die i i'm not talking resolution i don't care about your resolution could be 720. it's got to be 60. but yeah i i completely agree at this point i feel like I if I'm if I'm actually interested in watching pinball and it's not at 60 frames per second and and like and exactly like you said 720 1080 I'm fine with either of those if it's not at 60 frames per second I I change channels I I just don't like watching it it's really hard to watch so I should answer your question pinsomnia um I was running I think George was too we were both running 720 at 60 for a long time correct yep and a lot of people couldn't see that in fact if you have a well-lit a well-lit and good cameras 720p 60 you won't be able to tell i have to check the little cogwheel and twitch and go what yeah i do the same thing absolutely and pinsomniac it's not even a hesitation on the question i would take 720 at 60 every day of the week and twice on Sundays over 1080 at 30. I just don't like watching 30. Yeah, yeah. And that was, yeah, oh, great. That was the layup question. And that's it. Yeah, I would take 720 at 60. Yeah, definitely. And, you know, we can talk about other things. This table right now is being lit by Penn Stadium's Xtremes. In fact, actually, just one Xtreme on one side is lighting it. The other one's not even on and uh that gets your play field looking much much nicer i'm curious this looks like the same video with two different cameras it is i'm glad you brought that up another another thing that we're showing uh let's see dirty toast be more fps over resolution for life yes yeah another thing that i'm trying to show here is uh on the left is the sony x uh you know this is the pinball the pinball mainstay of um a pinball streaming this is the workhorse that most pinball streamers use the sony uh cx405 um which streams at 60 in fact you can't even turn it down to 30 there's no way to turn it down to 30 it only streams at 60 you can change the exposure but it's locked at 30 and the other one is the Logitech 920 webcam and one other anomaly that is happening I rigged both of these on the same rig and I played at the same time or my kid played at the same time I'm not this bad we watched and I knew I would see motion blur but one thing that we noticed and a bunch of guys were at Frigo Watch watching this they were like oh wow one thing we noticed was the Logitech webcam lagged behind the Sony camera. And part of that is because the webcam is offloading a lot of its work to the computer.
    42:23
    Oh interesting Okay so the Sony is doing more of the work and the computer doing less of the work The Sony is doing more of the work Well the Sony plus the capture device that I have because there is a capture device sitting between the Sony and the computer, and that would sometimes be an Elgato Cam Link. For me, I got rid of the Cam Links because they just were too buggy, and I bought a very generic, I think we showed it in the last episode, Very generic capture device that goes from HDMI to USB 3.0. It only does 1080, 60. So my computer is actually more relaxed using it than the Logitech webcam, which I had to change a lot of settings. It was lagging way behind. So when you stream and you talk and you go, oh, I tilted, and the people don't see a tilt until like two seconds later, it really reads as amateur hour and you don't want your stream to look like amateur hour so we're trying to help you guys do the work so dirty toes just jumped in and said real talk if it's not 60 frames per second and there isn't a face cam i don't even bother to watch that face cam apply applies to many many games for me and while maybe not this stream specific um i think you nail something huge in streaming that so many people don't realize and i'm going to give another example which is i was talking i i went and met with a new doctor uh last week to get a physical because my wife's like dude it's been forever you should go get a physical and i'm talking to the doctor and a twitch comes up and pinball because i was waiting to get jurassic park delivered and he's like wait a second wait a second you you twitch like the stuff my kids watch and i'm like yeah and he goes you must be an amazing pinball player and i'm like no No, that's exactly it, and that's what everybody gets wrong. It's while you have to be, I think, somewhat competent because people do want to see fun stuff. I feel like it's really about being personable and being responsive. It's that new type of media where you're not just watching a newscast and people talking to themselves or between themselves. you're actually able to interact which is another reason why the light changing stuff I feel like has been so popular on stream it's another way to interact and become kind of part of the entertainment yourself while you're watching it exactly I completely agree Dirty Toes watching somebody stream pinball when there's no face cam makes it very impersonal and I'm not interested in that I want to get to know the person who's streaming, which I think says a lot about the cameras that should be displayed on you. Like right now, Deadflip's new camera that's on people that focuses entirely on the person and blurs the background, I think is absolutely amazing. I think that is exactly what's needed to make it that much more personal. And where this all ties back in is 60 frames per second on multiple cameras like this all requires more processing power, which means your hardware either needs to offload more to the GPU or your processor needs to be pretty BA in order to handle it. Actually, let's get our faces back on here because I'm done. My presentation is over. All right, exactly. I watch Twitch for personality. I don't care about your skill level. Thank you, Dirty Toes. That totally explains why you watch my show, at least. I think MPT3K is pretty decent. Well, unfortunately, I wasn't even going to get into this game if I couldn't show my face cam or the face of the people playing. I wasn't even going to bother because that's where the emotion is. That's where the, we're doing a sports cast. Once again, I think I've used this analogy before.
    46:14
    There's no way that I'm going to miss that moment where I just, all the balls run out and they all drain at the same time and I lose the jackpot, right? It's funny because you just went for losing all the balls. And in my mind, I was thinking like finally hitting that million point shot, the mystical millions or something. Like when you finally get to the wizard mode or whatever that is, that's the moment I want to catch and I want to see. And it doesn't even have to be me. It could just be somebody else on stream. but to capture that moment where... Actually, even better, would be to capture the moment where you take somebody who doesn't play pinball and you explain it, or they have that moment in the game where they get into a multiball and they trap up for the first time and they start playing the multiball the way it was kind of meant to be played, where you're controlling the game as opposed to the game controlling you, and you can see those gears turning where you just change somebody from someone who's like, you know, F pinball. It's just about flipping and it's a waste of quarters, right? To somebody who, like, it just happened. They just had that aha moment, that epiphany that pinball is really cool. And I think pinball is one of the really weird, odd sports where that can happen because you're not going to get that in football. You're not going to get that in soccer. I don't even think you're going to get that in some of the other niche sports like bags or um or maybe maybe in skeeball would be another really good opportunity like that skeeball yeah no what's worth it for me is just watching Kai rage tilts when he uh misses that shot on the um Pirates of the Caribbean uh sorry Kai Tai oh got it yeah I'm like i don't remember did you see the one where he pulled off the lock bar yes yes that was funny uh i'm interested in the player's reaction i don't care as long as i see the progression right yeah and and at the same time there's something to be said about being there uh we i was watching skip natty the other day and uh and he was on reactor 8 of tna and that was keeping me in the game like on and he was he was so nonchalant about it apparently he's he's he's completed reactor 9 multiple times and he was back at 8 and ended up dropping and he's like that's cool we'll get right back there and uh and and it was and and and that that is a moment that that actually does draw me in right like i'll i had a hard time focusing on work while he was sitting there trying to destroy Reactor 8. Damn. That's pretty good. And Twitch derp. I'm unfamiliar with the term derp, so I don't know what that means.
    49:15
    So, in conclusion, because I think we're going to wrap it up soon. Right, yeah, it's 11. Awesome. Hopefully that gave you guys some insight on machines, what's important on the machine, and why our baseline of pinball streaming. because, come on, we want this community to look good, right, guys? Yep. Our baseline of pinball streaming will be 720p at 60 frames per second. Anything above that is butter. But 60 is the key. Yeah. You can do 120, go for it. I don't know if we'll notice. I don't think Twitch even goes higher than that.
    49:54
    I think Twitch goes to 60, and that's it, right? Twitch doesn't. Well, if you're a partner now, apparently you can do 4K at some other settings. I don't know that it does 120 yet, though. Oh, yeah, Dirty Toes had a non-pinball-related question you wanted to ask. Or at least a non-streaming-related question. Maybe it's pinball.
    50:15
    My unrelated thing, yeah. So I now have a high-end computer, but it doesn't support my 5.1. Do I buy a line-in speaker system, or do I buy a sound card for 5.1? I ditched 5.1 like five years ago.
    50:30
    I'm not saying you should, but I don't care about 5.1 anymore. And 5.1 means it handles five speakers and one sub? The .1 is the sub, yeah. So front left, front right, rear left, rear right, and sub. There's 7.1, which also has, I think, sides.
    50:48
    3.1 is what I'm dealing with. Okay. Two speakers and a sub. Yeah, I guess you eschewed the higher, I guess, number of speakers to drop back down to three, which would be like center, left, and right in a sub?
    51:06
    No, the point one is the sub. Correct me if I'm wrong, chat, but point one is always the sub. Right.
    51:13
    Left and right. Three would be center, right, and left? I guess so. I don't know. Do you do center, right, and left, and that's it? Well, even in the five, wouldn't it be like front left, back left, front right, back right, center, and then a sub? You're right. That's the point one? You're right, because you can do math.
    51:35
    Apparently this guy can't do math. Dirty Toes, it's cool to be obsessed with audio. I ran a recording studio for four years in New York. I'm obsessed with audio. So I don't know if I can answer your question because do you buy a line-in speaker system or do you buy a sound card for 5.1? Oh, I don't know. A 6-in-1 half a dozen or another for me. Yeah, I'm not a – I blew out my left eardrum playing drums when I was 20-something, and I've been to a lot of shows. So my hearing sucks. I've never really cared about audio all that much or at least audio quality we might not be the guys to ask for this yeah I know that we're like audiophile level and sorry it's not even I don't know I am definitely not audiophile mpt3k you might totally be an audiophile yeah I think you'll achieve whatever you want on either side I mean the nice thing about a 5.1 sound card is it's all right in there you know in the cart but I think you have more flexibility if you don't go with a 5.1 sound card I'm not sure and Pink Ninja Man, I don't even know if 7.2 is a thing left and right subs now that somebody has said it, I want it because I have the Sonos the big square sub upstairs on our television and now I want two of those one on either side of the uh i guess one in the front and one in the back i don't think it is but it does sound like fun okay uh as far as i know you could stick a sub anywhere the low frequencies make it across the room it's not he's saying i don't think so but it sounds like fun dice welcome to the stream and this other guy is manu otherwise known as mpt3k he is another amazing pinball streamer. Nice, hats off.
    53:39
    And this is our occasional, it seems like once a month stream where we geek out about streaming pinball and talk a lot about the technology. So we're just finishing up now talking about the actual computers that are required to do it. And the last two episodes focused on our different streaming rigs.
    54:01
    All right. It's like the chat's popping off and we're about to go. Yeah, yeah, right? It is 11. We try to keep it to an hour. So if you missed it, of course you can watch it on Twitch because George keeps it on his channel here on Twitch. You can also check out my YouTube channel, which is Mystery Pinball Theater 3000, where we will archive all of these in a playlist so you can go back and look at episode one, two, this episode, any other episodes that we come out with. Yeah, and also Manu cleans it up. So I suggest if you're going to go back and watch it, do it through Manu's channel and uh and yeah i don't know do you want to post that in chat so people can uh can like and favorite it yeah because his is it always looks better and it sounds better and we take out the weird awkward pauses and the all of that it it he takes care of it in post do it in post i hate that no one no post-production person wants to hear do it in post ever uh let's see i just got a pair of Sennheiser 599 HD open backs today. They're so great for both gaming and music. Awesome. Congrats on the amazing sound.
    55:10
    I don't know what that technically is, but it sounds really cool. There it is. Awesome. So check out MPT3K's channel. Subscribe. Now, Manu, are you building a folder or something like that under your channel where we can go back? I don't want to use the term masterclass, right? But whatever, like a name for where somebody could go back through and kind of walk through what it takes hardware-wise or software technology-wise to stream pinball. Yeah, there's basically a playlist on YouTube for Second String Silver Ball Streamcast. And you can go to the playlist and then pick anyone you want and watch it. Okay. Awesome, guys. thank you so much for hanging out Manu thank you so much for essentially running and researching and handling this stream that was amazing yeah anytime that's what we're here for right yeah awesome guys have a wonderful night make sure to subscribe to mpt3k's both twitch and youtube channel in order to check out those videos that have been fixed up in post and have a great day guys. Thanks for being in an awesome week.