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Starting up a local stream

Alfguitar

Smash Rookie
Joined
Jul 6, 2011
Messages
4
I'm not sure if this is the place to post this or not (if it isn't the place please tell me where is.)

The local smash scene in my community is starting to pick up (project m and melee) and I want to start live streaming it. I have a 2010 MacBook Pro and it works pretty good (needs a new battery and ram upgrade [4GB currently]) and a portable mixing board. I know I will need a capture card, I'm leaning towards elgato based on what I've seen but anyways onto my main question.

I've had people tell me to buy another cheaper laptop for streaming and I've had others tell me to use an external hard drive with my Mac and I should be fine. What would you recommend?
 

Kadano

Magical Express
Joined
Feb 26, 2009
Messages
2,160
Location
Vienna, Austria
There were several (3, afaik) 2010 MacBook Pros. Depending on which one you have, you can select more demanding encoding profiles. If you have an i5, you should be able to go with the Faster preset. If it’s only an Intel Core 2 Duo, you’ll have to go with Veryfast probably. But both of these will look very fine, so in my opinion it’s unlikely your CPU will be the bottleneck.
4 GB of RAM are enough.

Your MacBook probably has USB 2.0 and ExpressCard slots for capture cards. In theory, ExpressCard would be the better connection to use, but I don’t know about any current capture cards for that which work well and aren’t super expensive.
So yeah, the elgato Game Capture HD is probably your best choice.

Don’t buy another cheaper laptop for streaming, wtf is the logic behind that?
If anything, build a dedicated streaming PC with an internal capture card and an i5 processor (45xx or 46xx). Assuming you have enough power outlets for PC and monitor where you are streaming.
 

Alfguitar

Smash Rookie
Joined
Jul 6, 2011
Messages
4
I believe mine is the Intel core 2 duo. If this takes off more I'll probably invest in a pc for streaming.
Thank you very much for your help.
 
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