Streaming Resources

Streaming adds a social aspect to the speedrunning process that can help you stay motivated during attempts and connect with the speedrunning community at large. A brief overview of the process is included below. If you're already familiar with the basics and want to see some more advanced content jump to our streaming guides.

Requirements

• Stable broadband internet connection - Most video games run at 30-60 frames per second. In order for the video feed to look smooth you'll be sending a lot of high resolution images rapidly. That takes a decent internet connection.
  
  
• Streaming software - There are a lot of options available. Right now Open Broadcaster Software and XSplit are the two most popular choices.
  
  
• Capture Device - If you plan to stream gameplay from a console, you need a capture device to stream. You don't need this if you are streaming a PC game.
  
  

Streaming Software

• Open Broadcaster Software - Free and powerful. Using OBS to stream is rapidly growing in popularity.
• XSplit - A popular streaming software. The beta period for it has ended, so now it costs $40/year to use unless you want your videos to have a watermark.
• See Mac Recording and Streaming page for the OS X options.

Streaming Services

Use Twitch. Twitch is a streaming service will let you broadcast your capture over the internet. Once you've created an account you'll have a dedicated channel where people can watch you play live. Twitch is currently the most popular and widely used streaming service. We currently recommend that you use Twitch to stream. A major reason to use Twitch is that as you become more established in the speedrunning community you can be added to the SpeedDemosArchive or SpeedRunsLive team streaming pages.

NicoNico Live is another option. You can either use much the same software as people do for Twitch, or their in-browser streaming which takes a video and audio output, and streams them for you, albeit at low quality. A small monthly fee is required to create a channel to stream to, but only free accounts are required to watch. Nico, being a long-established service with a proven foundation to support high traffic, tends not to have the same, constant stability problems some people report Twitch to have.