The U.S. Department of Justice has announced the seizure of nearly 400 domains that were illegally streaming live matches from the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Running under “Operation Offsides,” the effort is being led by the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center alongside Homeland Security Investigations, with a seizure warrant filed in the Eastern District of Virginia. The total number of domains taken down to date is roughly five times the amount taken down during the 2022 Qatar tournament, and HSI has warned that the streams can expose viewers to malware and connections capable of stealing financial data.

The 2026 tournament is being co-hosted by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, giving U.S. authorities firmer jurisdiction than they held when the event was held in Qatar. Investigators traced the streaming infrastructure to servers in Peru and Bulgaria, with supporting takedowns in Croatia, Romania, Poland, and Colombia. FIFA identified the offending domains, and beIN Media Group, NBCUniversal, the Motion Picture Association's Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, UFC, and Warner Bros. all helped supply further information.

Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department's Criminal Division said the seizures reflected the country's duty “as a host nation to protect the FIFA World Cup from criminals.” Domain seizures are a limited tool against operations that rotate addresses and fall back to redundant copies, hence why enforcement bodies suddenly pounce on hundreds of domains at once rather than one at a time.

Authorities have increasingly gone after the people running the streams and, in some cases, their customers. U.S. courts have separately tested the limits of piracy liability, with the Supreme Court ruling that ISPs aren’t liable for their subscribers’ infringement in March. Meanwhile, a Greek court jailed a torrent-site operator for five years last year, and an Irish court ordered Revolut to unmask more than 300 subscribers of a pirate IPTV service in March.

A 2021 Webroot analysis of illegal sports-streaming sites found that 92% carried some form of malicious content, typically delivered through the ad networks that fund the operations. Following the 2024 World Cup, Microsoft Threat Intelligence traced a December 2024 maladvertising campaign that reached nearly 1 million devices back to illegal streaming sites, where redirectors embedded in video frames funneled users through several hops to information stealers such as Lumma and Doenerium hosted on GitHub. Microsoft found the campaign hit both consumer and enterprise machines.

Infections like these often need nothing more than a simple click on a play or unmute button to start the redirect chain, with no download prompt and no need to enter any credentials. Operation Offsides remains active, and the Justice Department said it will continue to pursue the operators behind the seized sites.

Via Licensing Alliance (Via LA), the patent pool administrator for H.264/AVC, quietly restructured its streaming license fees recently, replacing a flat $100,000 annual cap with a tiered system that tops out at $4,500,000 per year for the largest platforms, according to a Streaming Media report published on March 17. The change applies only to previously unlicensed implementers seeking a new license in 2026 or later, with all companies that held an active AVC license as of the end of 2025 retaining their original terms. The new hike for H.264 comes in the wake of disastrous increases in HEVC/H.265 fees that led to widespread issues spanning the globe, including Asus and MSI laptops being banned in Germany.

Via LA told Streaming Media that it contacted unlicensed media companies during 2025 to give them “a window to secure a license” under the previous terms, but the company didn’t go to the trouble of issuing a press release or public announcement, opting instead for direct outreach. Any company that didn’t respond or wasn't contacted now faces the new rate structure as its starting point for negotiations.

H.264 is the most widely deployed video codec on the internet, used as a baseline or fallback by virtually every streaming platform, hardware encoder, and browser. Many of its patents have expired, but patent licensing attorney Jim Harlan told Streaming Media that the expiration of a large share of a portfolio doesn’t automatically eliminate licensing obligations. Courts evaluating fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) rates still consider the strength and remaining life of active patents, not just their quantity, Harlan said.

The new fee schedule divides the market by platform type and size. Tier 1 OTT services with 100 million or more subscribers pay the full $4.5 million annual fee. The same rate applies to Tier 1 FAST services (100 million-plus daily users), Tier 1 social media platforms (1 billion-plus monthly active users), and Tier 1 cloud gaming platforms (15 million-plus monthly active users). Tier 2 and Tier 3 fees are $3,375,000 and $2,250,000, respectively, and only platforms Via LA classifies as small or nascent retain the old $100,000 cap.

The Via LA fee restructuring adds to a broader escalation in codec licensing costs. Avanci's Video pool and Access Advance's Video Distribution Patent pool are both now seeking content royalties from streaming services for the use of HEVC, VVC, VP9, and AV1. Access Advance's rates are capped at roughly $63 million per year, and Avanci has published rates of 1.6% to 2.0% of revenue or $0.12 to $0.15 per user per month. Combined, these pools could push major streaming platforms toward nine-figure annual codec licensing costs.

We’ve already seen these patent escalations trickle down into consumer PCs and laptops. Nokia won a patent ruling in Germany that forced Acer and Asus to halt PC and laptop sales in the country, and Dell and HP disabled H.265 decoding in select PCs to dodge royalty costs. But H.264 has a much, much larger footprint across devices and services, meaning that the new Via LA fee structure, while currently limited to unlicensed implementers, could cause similar issues across the wider industry if Via LA chooses to extend its scope.

“Floppy disks are the best storage media ever invented,” claims tech tinkerer and maker Mads Chr. Olesen. The devoted dad has made it his mission to prove that assertion to his three-year-old son, by making an easy, tactile, Smart TV control system that is fed by these distinctive physical manifestations of the save icon. Say hello to the FloppyDiskCast smart TV remote system for kids.

Modern Smart TV controls are disempowering for toddlers, reckons Olesen. The maker considers the bundled remote control, or using smart device controls, to introduce too much ‘noise’ and distraction to the use of a Smart TV. The tile-based UIs may even cause little ones to develop short attention spans – if they can even successfully navigate the interfaces.

The Smart TV meets toddler problem played on Olesen’s mind, until he decided that kids would benefit from the floppy disk experience of yore. Putting the idea into practice, the first idea of using a floppy shell to enclose an RFID tag was set aside. Olesen wanted the floppy disk remote control device to exhibit the authentic “click, whirrr, brrr brrr,” feedback that veteran users of this portable removable storage media were familiar with.

The maker seems most familiar with retro-Windows ways of loading removable media. That meant “floppy drives basically don’t know if a disk is inserted until the operating system tries to access it.” But those of us who used Apple Macs and Amigas back in the day remember the former’s whirring clicky auto-feed mechanism, and the latter’s constant FDD ticking, ready to sense media, if the slot was empty.

Olesen eventually figured that pin 34 on old floppy drives could relay disk change information. But to get it to work, he needed to make a physical switch to engage when a disk was inserted. When a floppy is detected, the Arduino FDC Floppy library by dhansel comes into play.

Making the insertion of a particular floppy disk fire up the playback of a particular TV show comes down to a short configuration file ‘autoexec.sh’ that Olesen adds to each floppy. Since the disk read bursts are so short, it was feasible to make this floppy disk-driven remote battery-powered, despite the ancient desktop computer tech at its heart.

Different config files reside on different disks, featuring different colors and artwork, and play different shows. It is a highly intuitive Smart TV control method for the toddler. It likely ‘feels’ to the user that the media playing is the disk, but the Arduino code simply fires up the corresponding streams via a Chromecast.

If you are interested in making your own FloppyDiskCast, click this link to head on over to GitHub and get making.

Microsoft has quietly removed ‘find album information’ and ‘update album info online’ tools from the Media Player apps supplied with Windows 11. We checked both Windows Media Player Legacy, and the latest Media Player app, and neither could connect to retrieve album artwork, track names, and other useful data like genre/composer, when an audio CD was popped in to play. Several music CDs were tried.

It might be understandable that Microsoft let this feature wither away from Windows Media Player Legacy – as it is a legacy tool. The removal of this feature in the Legacy app was confirmed by The Register earlier this week. Microsoft PR didn’t respond to that site’s queries about whether the service has been retired intentionally.

When we tested the Legacy app with a few audio CDs, we observed that musicmatch-ssl.xboxlive.com wasn’t reachable by the ‘Find Album Information’ service that is built-in.

Our efforts shifted to the new Media Player app that is the default tool for consuming video and audio, as well as handling playlists, on the latest Windows 11 packing PCs. Sadly, this app suffered from a very similar issue. The error message when I tried to update album info online read, “We couldn’t connect to the service. Check your internet connection, then try again.” There was no issue with my internet connection.

Alternative CD audio media players and rippers are available, but it is a shame those built-into the latest Windows OS distributions have been neutered in this way.

Not many computers ship with optical drives nowadays. We have reported on just a handful of PC releases in 2025 which involved optical drive hardware, ready to handle media like Blu-rays, DVDs, and CDs.

Some movie, music, and computer enthusiasts are still very fond of their optical media. Even though we are firmly in the ‘age of streaming,’ movie and music aficionados still prefer physical media due to the quality they offer, and the shifting-sands upon which streaming providers like Netflix, Amazon Prime Movies, Spotify, and others, build their offerings.

In this how-to, I will show you how to create a Plex server on a spare computer running Debian Linux, in my case, a Raspberry Pi 4, but you could easily replace it with an old laptop, spare PC, or a dedicated mini PC.

There are a myriad of streaming services available, and all of them want your money. That’s not a bad thing. Some content is only available via streaming, or the best possible version is streaming. But I like physical media. I like knowing I have every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and The X-Files. Those were the shows that I watched as a teenager, and they bring me comfort.

I don’t want to buy my media again, heck, I’ve owned Deep Space Nine on VHS and DVD, and my copies of Star Wars stretch back to Betamax! I want my media ready to watch at a moment's notice, and this is where DIY services such as Plex and Jellyfin come into their own.

The best source of media for this project are DVDs and Blu-rays that you already own. Check your local laws before doing so, but you should be able to rip your discs using a tool such as Handbrake. We also have a full guide on how to rip your discs to digital files.

So let's build our own media server!

Setting Up Your Media Drive

For this, you will need a USB drive formatted as NTFS, along with your media sorted into folders. I tend to organize my media into the following:

• Movies
  • A-Z list of movies
• Series
  • Series name
    • Season

With the media already on the USB drive, let's get it connected to what will become our Plex server.

1. Insert the drive into a spare USB 3 port on the machine. The OS should auto-mount the drive.

2. Locate the drive’s name, label and UUID using blkid. In my case, the device name was /dev/sda1, its label was “Files,” and the UUID was “2EB36FFA4908D959.” Make a note of these details.

blkid

3. Navigate to the mounted drive and list the contents to prove that the system can see the files. On my Raspberry Pi the drive was /media/pi/Files.

cd /media/pi/Files

4. Set the permissions for the folder so that it is accessible to anyone. Yes, this is bad security practice for production servers, but for a small home media server, we can mitigate the risk. Remember to change the path to match the location of your media files.

sudo chmod 777 /media/pi/Files

5. Unmount the drive and then remount using NTFS to test that the process works. Remember to replace the device name and the mount point with values that match yours.

sudo umount /dev/sda1sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/pi/

6. To automatically mount the drive on boot, edit fstab and add this line to the end so that it detects the drive as the system boots. Remember to change the UUID and /media/pi/Files mount to match the results from Step 2.

UUID=2EB36FFA4908D959  /media/pi/Files  ntfs-3g  defaults,uid=pi,gid=pi,umask=002  0  0

7. Save by pressing CTRL + O, ENTER then CTRL + X.

8. Reboot the Raspberry Pi for the changes to take effect.

How to install Plex Server

1. On the Raspberry Pi, open a browser and visit the Plex Media Server download page.

2. Click on the dropdown and select the version you want to download, in this case, Linux. Click Choose Distribution, then select the correct version for your Linux distribution. I’m using the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS, so I chose the Armv8 download. If you are adapting this how-to to run on an Intel- or AMD-based machine, select the 32- or 64-bit version for your architecture.

3. Open a terminal and install the downloaded Plex package, which will be in your Downloads folder. Wait for the installation to complete.

sudo dpkg -i <>

4. Add the user plex to the Pi user group. This will give Plex access to drives and other devices.

sudo usermod -aG pi plex

5. Get the IP address of your Raspberry Pi via the terminal. The -I is a capital i.

hostname -I

6. On another device, on the same network, open a web browser and go to the IP address of your Plex server, followed by port 32400 and then /web. Here is what my URL looked like.

http://192.168.0.192:32400/web/

7. Start the Plex setup process and then name your server. I used PlexServer.

8. Create a library of movies, this will point to the location of the USB drive that has all of your media.

9. Click Done to finish the installation.

The Plex User Interface

Plex’s user interface is familiar to anyone who has used a streaming service. It is designed to get the media to us without any issues. In the free version that we are using, it also gets the advertisements right to your eyeballs. There are plenty of free streams to watch, but we’re really here for our content. Let's take a look around the user interface and get to know Plex.

1. Main menu: Here we can look through our watchlist, live TV shows, movies & shows. Just above is the “hamburger menu” to go in depth on your configuration.

2. Filters: Filter the content to show trending, what friends are watching, and activity.

3. Settings: Advanced settings for your Plex server. This includes user accounts, libraries, and we can even cast our Plex viewing to a compatible device.

4. Libraries: The mounted USB disk full of our movies is linked to from here. Clicking the link will open the drive and our content library.

5. Content: This section changes as the user navigates the content. Here we can see the advertised content.

If we click on the library (4), then the screen changes to show the content on the drive hosting the library. As you can see, my library is pretty light, as this is a test setup.

Wrapping Up

You’ve just made your own streaming service, one that will share your DVD and media library to devices across your home. You can use the web interface to watch your movies, or use one of the many Plex client apps for Smart TVs, phones, consoles, and Amazon’s Alexa.

Spotify, the largest music streaming platform in the world with hundreds of millions of active users, and an extensive library of music has allegedly been hacked by Anna's Archive. The shadow library, who labels itself as archivists, has apparently scraped nearly the entirety of the platform, downloading roughly 300 TB of music that is now being distributed illegally via torrents.

Spotify has already acknowledged and responded to this attack, issuing the following statement to Android Authority:

"An investigation into unauthorized access identified that a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM to access some of the platform’s audio files. We are actively investigating the incident."

That "some" in the above comment is key because the leaked collection consists of around 86 million files in particular, representing ~37% of all music available on the platform (but 99.9% of listens). Most of them are preserved in Spotify's original OGG Vorbis 160 kbps format, but if any song has a popularity rating of exactly 0, then they've been re-encoded to 75kpbs to save space.

With that, there's 256 million rows of metadata that accounts for 99.6% of all listens on Spotify and it has been complied into query-able SQL databases. The group has done a near-lossless JSON reconstruction of Spotify's API, including 186 million unique ISRCs. — identifiers for individual recordings worldwide; think of them as ISBNs for music. All the album info, artist info, cover art etc., is included.

The blog post released by Anna's Archive going over this leak is surprisingly informative, including a bunch of charts that break down how Spotify treats music in general. For instance, around 70% of all songs on the platform barely get any attention, while 0.1% of the tracks are the most popular of all time. Most songs are also singles, rather than part of an album, and 120 BPM is the most common tempo.

Anyhow, the reason for this large-scale hack, as described by Anna's Archive itself, is preservation of music. Since the group is notorious for open-sourcing books without consent, it's applying much of the same logic here, arguing that Spotify's collection is too overtly focused on popular artists and sound quality. There needs to be an "authoritative list of torrents aiming to represent all music ever produced."

The torrents are self-hosted, and the files are packaged using Anna’s Archive Containers (AAC), a custom format the group has used for years. The metadata has already been released while the rest of the data will follow a staggered release pattern in huge chunks, categorized by popularity. Therefore, the aftermath of this scrape will only truly show up down the line.

The Internet as we know it was born through a series of unexpected developments in networking technology. So it isn’t very surprising that, along its crooked growth trajectory, there were several rather fruitless branches. One such branch was the Internet Stream Protocol (ST), which is also sometimes referred to as IPv5, as tech tidbits Twitterer Laurie Wired recently highlighted. However, the industry has skipped IPv5, moving directly from IPv4 to IPv6, leaving it as a forgotten protocol.

IPv4 and IPv6

IPv4 was established as the first version of the Internet Protocol back in 1982/83. It used 32-bit addressing to provide about 4.3 billion unique IP addresses, but developers quickly realized that the explosive growth of the Internet meant the humongous number would be exhausted in due course.

IPv6 would ride in, like a knight on a white charger, in 1989 (adoption grew post 2000) with 128-bit addressing to provide approximately 340 undecillion addresses, which should be enough for anyone. It also introduced IPsec security, simpler headers, and better mobile device support. Nevertheless, for reasons such as easier configuration, reduced complexity, legacy support, and human readability, the dwindling IPv4 pool has remained a preferred choice.

Internet businesses have had decades to get on board the IPv6 train, but still resist and pay heavily to do so. Earlier this year, we reported on the increasing value of IPv4 addresses. In fact, companies are now accepting IPv4 addresses as collateral to borrow millions of dollars.

IPv5 wasn’t a Goldilocks solution

We’ve seen some organizations have a strong desire to hang onto IPv4 and a resistance to moving wholesale to IPv6. However, IPv5 wasn’t an idyllic middle ground, sharing some advantages of both these protocols. Rather, it was used solely as an experimental branch, almost contemporaneously with the introduction of IPv4.

IPv5’s special, flavour-dominating sauce was reliable data streaming using 32-bit addressing. Prototype equipment for Network Voice Protocol (NVP) over Internet Stream Protocol (ST) telephony was made, as shown above. So, its streaming abilities were tested to support an embryonic VOIP feature.

But IPv5 wasn’t a replacement for IPv4; more of an extension that ended up being pruned as an unnecessary limb. The superfluousness of its architecture became apparent when broadband technologies came along to solve the problems of bandwidth and latency. IPv5 was proposed to crack.

Though IPv5 wasn’t a general-purpose Internet Protocol, it took the v5 designation in development documents. It was never ratified as a global protocol, but to avoid confusion, we moved straight to IPv6 as IPv4’s genuine successor.

With many motherboard manufacturers sacrificing smaller PCIe x8, x4, and x1 slots on modern boards, the humble M.2 slot is finding new life beyond solid state drives (SSDs). Magewell, a company known for its video capture solutions, has created the Eco Capture Dual HDMI M.2 card, a compact M.2-based device that can be used for video capture. It supports dual 2K video inputs, as indicated by the name.

Superficially, the device resembles a typical M.2 2280 SSD, with a green PCB and a black heatsink on top. It also includes two SHD connectors and comes bundled with two SHD-to-HDMI Type-A cables. According to early testing by Interfacing Linux, the device does not come with any mounting hardware for the HDMI cable ends, but you can find cheap ones from Amazon or MODDYI.

If you want a computer that meets your exact needs and budget, you need to put it together yourself. When you build a gaming PC, you get total control over the parts, choosing the exact make and model of the motherboard, the case with the look you like, and even the layout of RGB (or non-RGB) fans. You could save time by purchasing one of the best pre-built gaming PCs, but you'll give up control (and sometimes spend more). To help you assemble the best PC build for gaming or productivity that you can get, we've created recommended parts lists for every budget: from an inexpensive $800 system ($500 just won’t cut it at today’s prices and we’ve dropped that price tier) to an affordable and more powerful $1,100 build, up to a $4,000+ (which ended up at $6,000+) dream machine for those with deep pockets. Prices for RAM and storage have risen significantly over the past several months, so we are forced to raise prices across our tiers to compensate or risk performance degradation. It’s pretty impossible these days to create a competent 1080p gaming machine for our typical $500 entry point.

That said, with pricing for RAM, storage, and most GPUs remaining prohibitively high, the best way to build it yourself right now is to check out our Best RAM combo deals page, which offers heavy discounts when bundled with other items (like CPUs, motherboards), and then build around that. Because this is, sadly, now the way, we’ve left out RAM pricing in the total as with some bundles, you can get the RAM for pre-apocalypse pricing or even better. The problem with adding those to these builds is that they tend to sell out quickly.

Picking and Pricing the Best PC Builds

Note that our best PC build recommendations are based on our component expertise, market research, and testing of the key components in each build — namely, the CPU, GPU, and SSD. You can find performance details for each of those in our CPU benchmarks, GPU benchmarks, and SSD benchmarks. Because we are trying to hit price points and frequently changing these lists to accommodate price changes, we have not tested all of the parts in each build. Some of the less performance-centric parts, such as the case, motherboard, and PSU, may not have been reviewed.

Intel recently launched its Core Ultra "Arrow Lake" refresh chips, and we found they offer as much, if not more, performance than the original Core Ultra series, especially in gaming. However, the new chips won’t find their way into these builds because this page is for gaming, and AMD still rules there, too. Some X3D chips aren't on discount, but we managed to include them where we could.

On the GPU front, we have some good news and bad news: The good news is that you can now purchase the latest Nvidia cards from reputable retailers like Newegg or Amazon. Now you can get these cards, including budget models (typically 8GB cards), close to their MSRP. The bad news is that most other cards are still much more expensive than the SEP, particularly those with more than 8GB of vRAM. It’s tough sledding out there.

While we have expansive options for building your own PC mapped out below, it's no secret that component pricing has skyrocketed. As such, some might take a now often-cheaper route and purchase a prebuilt PC instead. This is one example of a PC that generally costs less than the sum of its parts. For those of you interested in building a PC, our guide and reccomendations continue below

Prime Day Exceptional Prebuilt Gaming PC deal

Here is just one of the standout deals from the Prime Day event, which is currently taking place. Our list of best overall picks continues below.

Also note that we don't include the cost of an operating system, because you can get Windows 11 for free or cheap. Nor do we include the price of peripherals such as the best gaming monitors, best gaming keyboards, best gaming mouse, or gaming chair. And if you've never built a computer before, you should start with our guide on how to build a PC. In addition to the PC builds listed below, we also have example build logs you can peruse, like our recent Rising Phoenix build.

Best ~$800 PC Build for Gaming

To keep this build under $800, we updated the processor to the Intel Core i5-14400F (6P-cores, 4E-cores) instead of the unlocked i5-1400KF, which increased in price, pushing this build to nearly $900. While we did lose a few cores/threads, the 6P cores will do fine for a budget gaming build. To go with this Intel processor, we're sticking with the same Asus B760M-AYW Wifi D4 II motherboard as on our $500 build. It uses cheaper DDR4 memory, which saves money; however, with the price increases on outgoing DDR4, we chose to stick with 16GB to keep the final price as close to $800 as possible while keeping focus on a solid graphics card.

With our lowest-tier custom-built machine, you can still get solid 1080p gaming performance, even with a last-gen budget graphics card, and a system built using DDR4. Your lowest glass ceiling will be the 16GB of RAM, so you may need to close unnecessary applications when playing resource (RAM) intensive games. The i5-14400F isn't on this list, but it's close to the i5-14600KF that was previously there.

To go with this Intel processor, we're sticking with the same Asus B760M-AYW Wifi D4 II motherboard as on our $500 build. It uses cheaper DDR4 memory, which saves money; however, with the price increases on outgoing DDR4, we chose to stick with 16GB to keep the final price as close to $800 as possible while keeping focus on a solid graphics card.

Our graphics card at this price point is the AMD Radeon RX 7600, which is now around $290. The 7600 has solid performance at 1080p ultra settings, averaging well over that magic 60 FPS we’re after. It ranks just above the RX 6650 XT and below the RTX 4060 on our GPU benchmarks hierarchy.

For our storage, we're going with the 512GB Patriot P300. This budget-oriented PCIe 3.0 SSD can't beat top-of-the-line drives like the Samsung 990 Pro or WD Black SN850X, but it delivers better performance than any SATA-based storage options, with sequential read and write speeds of 1,700 and 1,200 MBps, respectively. Here again, we’re hit with ridiculous prices forcing us to a smaller drive to fit within the budget.

Power use with this system shouldn’t peak over 400-450W at worst so we’ve picked ASRock’s Challenger CL-650B. As the name implies, it’s a 650W Bronze-level power supply. Even though it’s a budget unit, it will easily handle the build's output, with some headroom, and is ATX 3.1-ready.

Our case for the $850 build is the DIYPC MicroATX chassis with wrap-around tempered glass panels. It fits MicroATX and Mini-ITX for a small footprint. It also includes three ARGB fans, including two reverse fans for the side. The chassis supports up to 330mm video cards, easily housing the ASRock graphics card we chose, and 170mm cooling height (SAMA CPU cooler is below that).

We have decided not to include RAM prices in our builds because there are so many combo deals at Newegg that could cut the cost in half or more, taking the sting out of these horrendous prices. The problem with entering them here is that the deals tend to not last long, so by the time you read this, it could have expired.

Best ~$1,000 PC Build for Gaming

If you can bump your budget a bit over the $1,000 mark, you can build a PC with the ability to play games really well at 1080p and competently at 1440p. The best GPU option in this price range right now is still the Nvidia RTX 5060, which goes for as little as $299 for the 8GB model. As shown in our RTX 5060 16GB vs RTX 5060 8GB faceoff, there is a compromise with going with less VRAM, so take that into consideration.

Our recommended CPU for this build is the AMD Ryzen 7 7600X3D. The 7600X3D is a 6-core, 12-thread CPU with 96MB of L3 cache, making it great for 1080p gaming. Although we went down in core count, the generational upgrades are well worth the change from AM4 and the 5000 series. It also gives you an upgrade path to the 9000 series processors and moves into DDR5. We didn’t personally test this CPU, but it’s well known that it beats out non-X3D CPUs and all Intel offerings in gaming.

To support our Ryzen 5 7600X3D, we're using an MSI Pro B650-S Wifi motherboard. It does hail from the budget side of the house, but it still fully supports the suggested processor and offers BIOS Flashback capability, which lets you update the BIOS before you install the CPU. This is helpful for the 9000 series and future-compatible processors that weren’t native to the chipset. There are enough USB ports, a basic audio solution, and capable VRMs to handle our processor. The Ryzen 7 7600X3D doesn't come with a stock cooler, so we're adding an inexpensive, mid-range 360mm AIO cooler to the mix.

With this $1,000 build, we're stepping up to DDR5. We only managed to sneak in 16GB (2x8GB) Corsair Vengeance DDR5-5200. While not the fastest kit around, it will do just fine. There's no real need to go faster or increase the capacity at this price point, as costs tend to increase quite a bit for small percentage gains.

Storage on this build is the 1TB Patriot P400. It’s a step up from the $800 build, moving to PCIe 4.0 x4. It delivers strong performance for the money, with sequential read and write speeds of 6,200 and 5,200 MBps, respectively, solid IOPS of 740k/800k reads/writes, and a massive 1,280 TBW endurance. If we’re weak here, it’s with capacity, but there isn’t much we can do about it without sacrificing performance in other areas.

We’ve also updated the case to the Montech Sky 3 mid-tower ($90), carrying that over from the $800 build. For under $90, it offers three ARGB fans, great video card cooling, and supports multiple radiators, up to 360mm (top). There’s plenty of room for large graphics cards and expansion, too, in this panoramic glass chassis.

We’ve updated the power supply for this build to match the new graphics card's connector. The new PSU is ATX 3.1 and includes a native PCIe 5.1 cable (12V-2x6) for your GPU. ASRock backs the unit with a 5-year warranty. While not the 10 years some expect from high-end devices, it’s more than the 3-year warranty for some of its direct competitors, and certainly capable of driving this build without concern.

Best ~$1,500 PC Build for Gaming

With a $1,500 budget, we're moving up to a build that should be brilliant at 1080p gaming, really strong at 1440p gaming, and capable of running ray tracing games well. We recommend going with an Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti with 16GB (avoid the 8GB model) at this price point.

The RTX 5060 Ti is more than capable of handling 2K gaming, delivering around 61-62 FPS at 1440p with Ultra settings across 14 games. It can even handle high-FPS/frequency gaming (read 144 FPS/Hz+) at 1080p. You can also look at the Radeon RX 9060 XT, which is as fast as the RTX 5060 Ti at 1080p, but it starts to fall behind at 1440p, and especially when you enable any ray tracing.

With ray tracing on at 2K and Ultra settings, those frame rates were a still-playable 51 frames per second. However, consider adding DLSS to further boost those frame rates, as it fell below 60 frames per second.

The Ryzen 7 7800X3D is an 8-core 12-thread processor with slightly higher clock speeds (4.7 GHz to 5 GHz). The additional cores and threads help with modern gaming, where a few titles can benefit from more than a 6C/12T configuration.

We're going with the MSI MAG B850 Tomahawk MAX Wifi, one of the best budget AMD motherboards we’ve tested. It has just about everything you need from the platform, including ample storage options, fast Wi-Fi, and more. Overclocking, PBO, or manual settings are not a concern with the 14+2+1-phase digital VRM design and comprehensive BIOS. It also features built-in Wi-Fi 7, USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps), 5 GbE LAN, and BIOS flashback capability for next-generation AMD processors.

For RAM, we chose Patriot’s Viper Elite 5 32GB DDR5-6000 as it’s one of the least expensive around at a mind-numbing $380. Again, we didn’t include this cost as you can find RAM in bundle deals for a lot less.

To keep the total price down, we've opted for the Patriot P400 PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 drive with 1TB capacity. If we’re weak anywhere in this build, it’s storage capacity, but between the increase in RAM, GPUs, and storage, this is the area we can skimp a bit. Hopefully, we can resolve that for the $2,000 build. We’ve also updated the case to the Montech Sky 3 mid-tower ($90), carrying that over from the $1,000 build. For under $90, it offers three ARGB fans, great video card cooling, and supports multiple radiators, up to 360mm (top). There’s plenty of room for large graphics cards and expansion, too, in this panoramic glass chassis.

Last but not least, we chose ASRock’s Steel Legend SL 750-G power supply. It’s 80 Plus Gold (Cybenetics Platinum) and, like the previous ASRock power supply, uses the latest ATX 3.1/PCIe 5.1 standards and includes the native 12V-2x6 cable for the graphics card.

Best ~$2,000 PC Build for Gaming

At a current price of $1,965, our high-end gaming PC build should provide enough performance to dominate games at 1080p, run 1440p ultra settings with strong frame rates, and 4K ultra with playable frame rates. The system derives its GPU muscle from an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT (the RTX 5070 Ti increased price by over $150 since the beginning of the year), which is currently available at major retailers for around $740 (aftermarket cards are still more expensive), or at its MSRP. The card is powered by AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D, featuring 8 cores, 16 threads, and a massive 96MB of cache to enhance gaming performance. In our tests, the 9070 XT averaged 97.5 FPS at 1440p on our 16-game rasterization test. It was also capable of 60 FPS at 4K.

The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D offers a superior experience thanks to its 96MB of 3D cache, along with its 8 cores, 16 threads, and 5.2-GHz boost clock. Yes, AMD makes the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, which has 16 cores, but it costs significantly more.

On our suite of Windows 11 tests, running at 1080p with an RTX 4090 card, the 9800X3D averaged 195 FPS, leading the pack along with the much more expensive Ryzen 9 9950X3D and still way ahead of Intel. If you haven’t seen the trend by now, if gaming is your primary use, AMD’s X3D offerings dominate Intel in most tests.

To cool the CPU, we're using an ID-Cooling FX360 LCD 360 mm Cooler. When we tested the FX360, we were impressed by its low noise and excellent cooling performance. It has attractive RGB and a small screen, too; you get all of that for $90.

We again opted for the MSI MAG B850 Tomahawk MAX WiFi, one of the top budget AMD motherboards. That may seem odd for a $2,000 build, but it has just about everything you need from the platform, including ample storage options, fast Wi-Fi, and more. So why pay more? If you want to overclock, you can do so with the 14+2+1-phase digital VRM design and a comprehensive BIOS. It also comes with built-in Wi-Fi 7, USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps), 5 GbE LAN, and BIOS flashback capability for next-gen AMD processors.

For RAM, we chose the Patriot Viper Elite DDR5-6400 kit, as it’s one of the least expensive 32GB kits at the time of publication and falls within AMD's ‘sweet spot’ for memory speed and cost. You don’t need more than 32GB for gaming, so within this budget, there is little need to step up and pay more.

For the SSD, we're running with the 2TB Patriot Viper VP4300 Lite PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 drive. You really can't do much better without spending a lot more money on a PCIe 5 drive or a larger capacity.

Best $4,000+ PC Build for Gaming

Two updates ago (late 2025), our $4,000 build cost $4,845. With the price increase in RAM (plus storage and video cards), that total has now jumped to a wallet-emptying $6,918, as configured. That’s an increase of ~43% total, a sad state of affairs for PC builders.

That said, our top-of-the-line build features Nvidia's top-of-the-line GPU, the RTX 5090. With the steep price increases over the last several months (thanks, AI!), the cheapest RTX 5090 available now is $3,800. When we last updated this article, the least expensive was $2,600. Oof. If you want the best, you're stuck with paying outlandish prices these days. In our tests, the RTX 5090 was fully capable of playing games at 4K with ultra settings and ray tracing enabled. On our 6-game test, it averaged 90.2 FPS, a full 20 FPS more than its predecessor, the RTX 4090.

Our CPU is AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D2, which offers increased cache on BOTH CCDs. It didn’t perform any better in our game tests, matching the 9800X3D in games, but did show an overall 4% increase in multi-threaded performance compared to the 9950X3D. In some select workloads, it did see double-digit increases. Speaking of cache, the CPU has a whopping 208MB of it, and it boasts 16 full-power cores and 32 threads, which is more regular cores than the 14900K's eight (to go with 16 E-Cores). In our tests, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 beat Intel's flagship, the Core Ultra 270K, by a full 40 FPS in our 1080p gaming suite and even more (53 FPS) against the 285K.

We're using an Asus ROG Strix X870E-E Gaming Wifi, which comes with built-in Wi-Fi 7, four M.2 slots for storage, and USB4. You can go higher, but there isn’t much more to offer hardware-wise. To cool the CPU, we're using a Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux, which is relatively affordable at $157 and should do a solid job.

Because we're fattening our budget for this build, we're going with some DRAM that’s towards the end of the memory sweetspot of speed, price, and performance. Here we used Patriots’ 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5-6400 CL32 Viper Venom. We haven't reviewed this kit, but Patriot is typically a solid brand, and there’s typically plenty of headroom if you want to push the limits.

We're going with a 4TB Samsung 990 Pro for storage, which has plenty of capacity and is the fastest PCIe 4.0 drive you can buy. Sure, we can go with a PCIe 5.0 drive, but we don't see enough performance gains to justify it, even in this high-end build right now.

We decided to go with a case that offers a unique, premium look: the Fractal Design North XL. With its wood-paneled front, this chassis looks more like a mid-century modern piece of furniture than a gaming PC, which is a nice touch. However, it also has a tempered glass side panel, which you can use to show off all of your RGB components (or you can buy it with a solid panel and no window). It also offers excellent thermal performance and plenty of room for additional drives and fans. The XL model can accommodate up to an E-ATX motherboard, giving you plenty of room for future upgrades.

With these high-end components, we don't want to skimp on the power supply, and it makes sense to invest in something that will work with future GPU upgrades. We're going with a full 1,000 watts of power and the choosing the Superflow Leadex XP Pro for it’s stable output, reasonable price, and ATX 3.1/PCIe 5.1 support. This power supply is Cybenetics Platinum certified and fully modular.

Building a PC: What to Look For in Each Component

• CPU: This is the brain of your computer and heavily affects 1080p gaming. Look for one with strong gaming benchmarks and, at the higher end, with lots of L3 cache.
• GPU: This is the most important component for gaming, but it's also the most expensive component. Get the best GPU available in your price band that's actually for sale. We’re finally seeing the market stabilize, so you should be able to find most GPUs around or even below their MSRP, and just as critical, in stock.
• RAM: We generally look for the best value in RAM as performance differences are slight. Ideally, you want at least 32GB of RAM. You can save money by going with DDR4 over DDR5 RAM. But you need to make sure your CPU and motherboard support the kind of RAM you're considering.
• Motherboard: Most importantly, ensure the board supports your CPU. If your CPU is newer than the motherboard's chipset, ensure you select a motherboard that supports firmware upgrades without requiring a processor on board (often referred to as BIOS Flashback). Built-in Wi-Fi is a big plus.
• SSD: You need at least 1TB for a solid experience, with 2TB preferable. Shoot for an M.2 PCIe 4.0 drive. PCIe 5 drives are a little faster, but not worth the extra money.
• Cooling: We save on cooling costs by purchasing CPUs with stock coolers included. Otherwise, a 360 or 240mm AIO (all-in-one) is good, but there's no need to spend a lot of money on one.
• Power Supply: On lower-end builds, wattage is more important than anything else. For higher-end builds, you not only need at least 750 or 850 watts, but you want one that includes all the modern connections, such as a native GPU 12V-2x6 connector.
• Case: First and foremost, you need a case that fits your motherboard. If you are buying an ATX motherboard, avoid cases that only support micro ATX motherboards. After that, look for multiple case fan placements, room for a 360mm AIO cooler, a tempered glass side panel, and both USB-C and USB Type-A ports on the front panel.

Finding Discounts on the Best PC Components

To find savings on components of all types, check out our lists of the best PC hardware deals, along with the latest Newegg promo codes, Corsair coupon codes, and Best Buy promo codes.

Rode is no stranger to streaming and podcasting, with its high-quality microphones, mixers, and boom arms appearing in videos and VoDs all across the internet. But the Rode Streamer X is the first dedicated piece of equipment aimed at — and named for — the streaming market. The Streamer X combines Rode's audio mixing with a video capture card for the ultimate all-in-one streaming solution.

Design

The Streamer X's design is compact, cute, and rich with color when powered on. Shine-through rubberized buttons let programmable colors illuminate the Streamer X as well as indicate a range of functions. The chassis is constructed of a thick black plastic that feels very sturdy and reassuringly well put together with a surprisingly heavy (0.83 lbs/380 grams) weight for such a small object.

Measuring 122mm (4.8 inches) wide,  144 mm (5.6 inches) long, and 51mm (2 inches) tall, the Streamer X doesn’t take up much space on your desk and is easily transportable if you want to take this audio-video platform on the move. The Streamer X won’t slide about either because of having 4 grippy rubber feet, plus if you want to take the Streamer X off of your desk, you can, thanks to a mountable (¼” 20) screw on the underside of the Streamer X chassis that can conveniently connect to a monitor arm or mic stand.

The face and controls of the Streamer X consist of 2 control knobs and 8 large rubber buttons, with circular LED rings around the control knobs that indicate volume levels. There are also some tiny LED lights for indicating the connection of mic, headphone, wireless connection, and phantom power giving a surprising amount of information for having no display.

Specs

Features and Software

The primary purpose of the Streamer X is to combine a high-quality audio solution — with macro pad functionality — with an external video capture card. The Streamer X's video capture card can capture video at 4K/30fps, 1440p/60fps, 1080p/120fps, and 1080p/60fps with HDR enabled. It can also capture video at 4K/60fps, 1440p/144fps, 1080p/240fps with HDR passthrough. This is more than enough to connect the latest PCs, laptops, and gaming consoles, plus older retro consoles if you have a suitable adapter and converter. 

A 4-button macro pad with multiple pages (2 pages as default) for adding sound/voice effects, or Midi functions adds to the Streamer X and lets you assign up to 64 different commands. To assign the commands to the smart pads you will need to use either Rodes Unify or Central software and a 3rd party Midi software to integrate the smart pads with a broadcasting application like OBS/Streamlabs or similar. 

For the audio side of the Streamer X, you have plenty of connectivity with 1 x XLR combo jack, 1 x 1/4-inch headphone output, 1 x 3.5 TRRS headset jack, 2 x USB-C ports, 2 x HDMI 2.0 (Input & Passthrough)ports, and a 48 volt phantom power button for condenser mics. Inside the unit is Rode’s ultra-low-noise, high-gain Revolution Preamp tech, and their Aphex digital processing effects, the same tech used in the Rodecaster Pro 2 and Duo and other Rode products - so there’s no skimping on audio quality for this device. 

With no screen, the Streamer X is predominantly controlled by the Rode Central and Rode Unify software on a PC or Mac. It’s beneficial to have a secondary monitor or more to get the most out of the Streamer X unless you want to do a lot of Alt-tabbing. I found this to be the biggest downside of the experience because if you’re using a passthrough screen to play the game live, you'll need (or, at least, want) another screen to check your streaming software/chat and sound level settings on the Rode software. 

The Rode Central and Rode Unify software offer very similar user experiences and features, with Rode’s Unify software being encouraged as the software of choice for the Streamer X. You’re able to tweak the DSP audio, assign functions to the smart pads, control volumes, and route audio from the Streamer X itself, plus the USB-C connected device.

Bottom Line

At $399/£299 the Streamer X is a decent investment. But you're getting a premium audio experience and a highly portable external video capture card, plus a macro/smart pad for that money, and it's likely cheaper than buying all of those things separately. Also, having everything on one device is much more convenient for setup (and for saving desk space). For the best experience, I found it was nice to connect the second USB-C to the PC and set a separate audio channel for extra mixing — unfortunately, the Streamer X lacks a second USB-C cable in the box which is a little disappointing but not too difficult to remedy. 

The Streamer X does what it sets out to do very well, and I can’t fault its performance while streaming console play and routing a separate microphone and Discord audio into a Twitch stream. I would have liked to see a small display that showed more information about the macro pad assignments, as you'll need to memorize the colors you've assigned to macro pad functions — and with 64 possible functions, that's just too much to commit to memory. A screen would also be helpful for audio mixing — right now you can only see the headphone and mic levels clearly, and any other audio sources are visible only via the Rode software.

While adding a screen would certainly change the price and scope of the Streamer X, bringing it closer to the level of the pricier Rodecaster Duo, perhaps there's room for a combination of the two. The Rodecaster Duo is for audio mixing and doesn't have a built-in video capture card, so it's not aimed at streamers the way the Streamer X is.  

German police confiscated over $2 billion worth of Bitcoins (BTC) during investigations into the movie2k.to pirate movie streaming site, according to a report from Der Speigel. This is the largest-ever currency seizure by German law enforcement according to Germany’s State Criminal Police Office (LKA).

According to the Der Speigel report, 50,000 Bitcoins were secured by police in Saxony during the investigation of two men (aged 40 and 37) suspected of running a German portal for movie2k.to through May 2013 and squirreling away their profits as cryptocurrency. Remember — at that time, 50,000 BTC wasn’t worth anywhere near the $2 billion+ it is now. In 2013 BTC started the year valued at $13 and ended at about $750. If we say the funds were converted to BTC at a value of around $500, the 50,000 Bitcoins would have represented about $25 million in hidden loot.

The two men currently under investigation seem to have been quizzed about “commercially unauthorized exploitation of copyrighted works under the copyright law and subsequent commercial money laundering,” reports Der Speigel. That’s legalese for 'making money from stolen movies and then hiding it.' Since the accused individuals seem to have ended their movie2k.to work in May 2013, it's possible they thought they'd gotten away with it.

Pirate movie streaming portal movie2k.to is said to have hosted more than 880,000 illegally copied movies and TV shows between the fall of 2008 and May 2013. According to the source report, this isn’t the first large sum of money discovered as a result of investigations into the site. A programmer who worked on movie2k.to hand over $27 million in BTC to police while in pre-trial detention in 2020. Those funds were classified by police as “damage compensation.” But $2 billion is nearly 75 times that amount.

A surprisingly broad range of governmental and legal organizations have worked together to progress the movie2k.to investigations and prosecutions. According to Der Speigel, the General Prosecutor's Office in Dresden, the state criminal office of Saxony, and the tax investigators from the tax office in Leipzig were supported by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), as well as the FBI — yes, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Also probably playing an important role has been an “IT expert” company based in Munich.

Investigation into movie2k.to is ongoing, and the prosecutor’s office says it is still looking for additional suspects.

Deep Render is a startup aiming AI smarts at the decades-old computer problem of compression. It has developed AI-only video compression technology that is already claimed to offer 5x smaller video file sizes, with sights set on up to 50x improvements. The firm has recently been embraced by the Intel Ignite startup acceleration program, which precipitated the video presentation below.

As an older computer enthusiast, I have experience with file and disk compression dating back to the 8- and 16-bit eras. Nowadays, the most useful compression algorithms make video files smaller while maintaining high-quality imagery and audio. As the Intel Ignite participant clip above notes, transferring video data is a huge problem for the internet's infrastructure. Moreover, data-hungry, high-quality, fast frame rate, high-resolution videos and streams are increasingly popular.

Chri Besenbruch and Asralan Zafar co-founded Deep Render while they were computer science students at London's Imperial College. The pair asserts that today's advanced video requirements push up data volumes while traditional compression techniques and the internet buckle under pressure. Thus, people expecting great online video experiences often have to cope with lower frame rates, dropped frames, stuttering, artifacts, and other undesirable side effects of bandwidth constraints.

The Deep Render duo confidently reckons they "can fix this problem." Their AI compression technology is said to eschew the old guard and hit the source video data with a solely AI-driven compression pipeline. Zafar explains that "compression is all about exploiting redundancies" in the data and asserts the Deep Render AI compression "exploits redundancies in a far more fine-grained manner, tracing every single pixel, its movements, and destination in the frame sequence. Currently, it is boasted that Deep Render is "at 5x smaller file sizes now," with estimates that this AI compression tech could deliver 50x smaller files than technologies like H.264.

You can read more about the company on their website. Sadly, a technology demo linked on the home page is restricted to commercial partners and investors. On the topic of investors, Deep Render raised $9 million in a Series A funding round back in March. That funding valued the startup at $30 million. Deep Render also netted a $2.7 million grant from the European Innovation Council.

Big Green Competitor

Other tech companies interested in leveraging AI to video compression include some big hitters like Alphabet's DeepMind, Disney, and Nvidia.

In February, Tom's Hardware GPU editor Jarred Walton pondered over Nvidia's newly launched Video Super Resolution - Nvidia VSR. Naturally, this video technology, which can upscale lower-res videos to 4K, leans on similar technology to the firm's better-known DLSS.

Capture card manufacturer Magewell has unveiled two new highly-capable 4K capture cards sporting a highly unusual M.2 form factor. The new card's are known as the Eco Capture HDMI 4K Plus M.2 and Eco Capture 12G SDI 4K Plus M.2. As the names suggest, one model is designed to work with HDMI connectors while the other is designed to work with SDI ports, which is a video connector used by the professional video production industry.

M.2 capture cards are not something you often hear about, but the ultra-compact form factor has many advantages. One of the biggest advantages is integration with newer motherboards that sacrifice most of their smaller PCie x8, x4, and x1 slots for M.2 slots. In these cases, having an M.2 capture card instead of a traditional half-height or full-height PCIe card can be really effective, especially if a system is already using the remaining one or two standard PCIe slots for graphics cards, audio cards, and/or ethernet cards.

Another use is with Mini-ITX motherboards which have even fewer PCIe slots than ATX and micro-ATX motherboards. In cases where the primary and only PCIe x16 slot is being used, M.2 is the only way to add additional PCIe devices to the system. Lots of Mini-ITX boards have more than one M.2 slot as well, which will allow users to build a full Mini-ITX system without sacrificing M.2 storage.

With these capture cards, streamers, video enthusiasts, and professionals can re-route all their video encoding and video processing to the capture card. This offloads work from the CPU and GPU, freeing up resources and improving image quality in some cases (depending on how slow or old the CPU or GPU is). Most people will find the built-in encoders found in the best GPUs and best CPUs to be more than adequate. But, a dedicated capture card can still be beneficial for highly-demanding setups that require more processing power than what a built-in CPU/GPU encoder can provide.

The M.2 card's themselves come in a 22 x 80 mm form factor, similar to that of 2280-sized M.2 SSDs. Both cards come with a green PCB and feature a large black cooling solution on top, with a very tiny fan actively cooling the encoding chip underneath. Since the M.2 standard does not feature any external ports, the cards need to be used with a special adapter that connects the card to a full-sized HDMI or SDI connector.

According to Magewell, these two new cards offer double the frame rate of their previous versions, featuring 60FPS playback at resolutions of up to 4096x2160 (ie. 4K resolution). Both cards are compatible with Windows and Linux operating systems and support native video APIs like DirectShow, DirectKS, V4L2, and ALSA. Plus, they also support high-quality upscaling, downscaling, cross-scaling, and color space conversion.

Pricing has not been unveiled just yet, but the Eco Capture HDMI 4K Plus M.2 is reportedly now shipping, and the Eco Capture 12G SDI 4K Plus M.2 will be available in the next two months.

OBS (Open Broadcaster System) is a remarkably powerful tool. With OBS we can record videos, using various scenes and sources to create broadcast quality shows, for free! OBS can also be used to livestream via many different services, and using a few plugins you can also interact with your community.

• Grab a great deal on a 4K video capture card from Amazon

Recently I had a need to record video from a 4K USB video capture device. The video source was the latest LattePanda Sigma SBC, which I was testing using Steam for a review. Steam’s built-in FPS counter was a little small (yes I could install another FPS counter, but that would incur a performance hit), so I duplicated the video source, laid one on top of the other, then cropped the FPS counter area, followed by a zoom in. 

Here is how I did it.

• OBS (Open Broadcaster System) is a powerful tool for live streaming and recording video.
• OBS is commonly used to create video made from multiple sources, including cameras, capture devices and applications.
• OBS has tools to merge audio and video sources with ease.
• Using zoom functionality, OBS can draw the viewers eye to a particular area.

To Crop a Source

We don’t always need all of the image to tell a story. Sometimes, just a part is helpful. By cropping out the parts that we don’t want during the recording process, we save ourselves precious time in the edit suite. Sure we could duplicate the effect in an editor such as DaVinci Resolve, but with this quick OBS hack we save time, and it can be used during a livestream.

1. Open OBS and select the scene to edit.

2. Select the source that you wish to use.

3. Right click on the source and select Copy.

4. Right click in the sources and select Paste Reference. This will duplicate the source in the list.

5. Right click on the duplicated source and select Transform >> Edit Transform.

6. Tweak the crop settings, targeting the area to zoom in to or crop from the shot. Click Close to set. Here from our 1080p video source we have cropped in from the right by 200 pixels and from the bottom by 80 pixels. Sources can be moved by changing their position in this dialog, or they can be directly grabbed in the preview window. This makes it easy to layout your scene.

Alter the Zoom of a Source

Sometimes a source can be a little too large, inversely it can also be too small. OBS has an easy means of altering the zoom for any video source. Once a source has been altered, it can also be moved around the screen to produce the layout of your choosing.

1. Open OBS and select the scene to edit.

2. Select the source that you wish to use.

3. Click on the source in the preview window and using the red frame, move the source so that it shrinks / grows. Hold SHIFT to shrink / grow the source and retain the aspect ratio.

4. To reset the size and position, right click on the source and select one of the five options to fit / stretch / center the screen.

Last week Sony took the wraps off its Project Q handheld. A lot of questions about the device were answered during the showcase event, however, a vital handheld specification wasn't provided — battery life. Now Tom Henderson, a games industry tipster with a long track record, has gone public to assert that the Sony Project Q will only last for three to four hours between charges.

Sony's latest handheld could be described as a 'dumb' device, in that it doesn't have onboard processors for tackling PlayStation gaming content. All the onboard processing power needs to do is handle games streaming and user inputs without detrimental lag. It is possible to enjoy PS Remote Play streaming on gadgets like mobiles, tablets, and so on as the PlayStation game processing is done in the cloud, but Sony thought a dedicated device like the Project Q is the best way to do justice to its games catalog.

With its light processing burden in mind, one might expect it would be relatively easy for the Sony Project Q to offer extended battery life, as the Logitech G Cloud can. However, if Henderson is right, users will get a desperately short unplugged experience here. Sony must have decided this was enough, and/or the decision was steered by the overall weight, size, or cost of the handheld.

To put the claimed Sony Project Q handheld battery life into some perspective, let us compare it with a mix of contemporary handheld gaming and smart devices:

• Logitech G Cloud: 'all day' 12+ hours claimed
• Apple iPad 10th Gen (2022): about 10 hours
• Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Plus (2023): about 9 hours
• Nintendo Switch OLED: between 4.5 and 9 hours
• Valve Steam Deck: usually 2 to 6 hours observed in our review
• Asus ROG Ally: PC gaming 1.43 hours, web activity 5.51 hours in our review testing

In the above examples, you can see devices like the ROG Ally really eat through their batteries when games are using the local CPU and GPU power (actually the AMD Ryzen A1 Extreme APU). However, it looks like it would be able to stream games for nearly six hours. This kind of local processing vs streaming battery life usage differential is a big reason why the touted Sony Project Q handheld battery life is so disappointing. The source takes a swipe at Sony, by adding that "at least Project Q is on brand with the DualSense having a short battery life." Hopefully, Henderson's information comes from a pre-release testing unit with a smaller battery, or there is another pre-release hardware issue at play stunting the battery life.

Another factor that will be important to the success or failure of the Sony Project Q will be pricing, which was also held back from the unveiling event. Henderson expects the product release to be sometime in November, and we should get pricing nearer that time.

TL;DR How to Download YouTube Videos to PC for Free (in Up to 4K)

• YouTube videos can be legally downloaded if you pay for YouTube Premium.
• These videos cannot be used with AI voice-to-text transcription services.
• Tools like youtube-dl can be used to download content from YouTube, which can be used with AI voice-to-text transcription services.
• GUI tools like ClipGrab make youtube-dl easier to use.
• Web-based tool cnvmp3.com provides a zero install method to download YouTube videos and audio.
• Downloading copyrighted work without permission is illegal and downloading files from YouTube violates its terms of service and may lead to termination of your account.

YouTube is, by far, the most popular video streaming service in the world, hosting everything from children's songs to live streaming tech shows. To use it though, you need a constant Internet connection. But you can download YouTube videos for offline viewing. The official way is to use YouTube Premium which costs $14 per month, but there are free tools to download any YouTube video as an MP4 file, which you can transfer to any device or modify or transcribe as necessary. Note that downloading copyrighted work without permission is illegal and downloading files from YouTube violates its terms of service and may lead to termination of your account.

Below, we'll show you three different methods of downloading YouTube videos to your PC. The first method involves using a free, open-source command-line tool called YouTube-DL.

The second method involves using a freeware app called ClipGrab, which has the advantage of allowing you to choose the download resolution -- grabbing 4K videos at 4K if you want -- and file format, but it can be sluggish. The third method of downloading YouTube videos to a PC is to use a free web tool called CnvMP3. Note that our previous recommended method, using VLC player, no longer works.

How to Download YouTube Videos with YouTube-DL

These instructions are for the Windows version of YouTube-DL, but you there are are also instructions for macoS and Linux here.

1. Download youtube-dl for your OS. In windows, it’s yt-dlp.exe.

2. Copy the file into a folder that’s in your file path. In Windows, you can view your path by entering:

echo %PATH%

at the command prompt.

You can also add new folders to the path by searching for "environment variables,” and clicking Edit Environment variables. Do not put the file in C:\Windows\system32.

3. Install ffmpeg in a path folder by entering winget install ffmpeg at the command prompt from within that folder.

4. Locate and copy the YouTube URL of the video you wish to download.

5. Open a command prompt on your computer and navigate to a folder where you wish the download to appear. You can get to the downloads folder by typing:

cd %UserProfile%\Downloads

6. Enter the following command to download the YouTube video at low resolution (640 x 360).

yt-dlp [YOUTUBE URL]

If you want to download the video at its highest possible resolution (4K if YouTube has it in 4K) use the following command:

yt-dlp --merge-output-format mp4 -f "bestvideo+bestaudio" [YOUTUBE URL]

How to Download YouTube Videos With ClipGrab

ClipGrab is a free YouTube downloading app that has the advantage of letting you choose which resolution you want. The reason why this is not our top choice method is that it asks you to install unwanted extra apps such as McAfee WebAdvisor and I find out that the app could be a bit sluggish.

1. Download and install ClipGrab. You can get it from ClipGrab's site. The installer tries to get you to install other apps you may not want such as McAfee WebAdvisor. Click the Skip All button to avoid this.

2. Launch ClipGrab. If it asks you for permission to download youtube-dlp, allow it.

3. Navigate to the Downloads tab.

4. Copy and paste the YouTube URL you want to download from into the top text field.

The program will take a couple of seconds to get the list of available resolutions from YouTube.

5. Choose the file format and resolution you want from the Format and Quality fields or leave them at the defaults. If you leave the format as "original," most videos should download as MP4s.

6. Click Grab this clip! and then select a file location.

Your clip will then be listed in the Current Downloads field, along with its status.

When the download is complete, you'll find the file in the location where you set it to go.

How to Download YouTube Videos or Audio Using CNVMP3

If you want a YouTube download process that doesn't involve installing anything at all, CNVMP3 is a good choice. It also allows you to download YouTube videos at MP3 files so you can just listen to them as audio files.

1. Navigate to cnvmp3.com.

2. Paste the YouTube URL you want into the video field.

3. Select MP4 if you want to download as a video or leave it as MP3 if you want audio.

4. Select the resolution you want to download.

5. Click Convert.

The YouTube video will now download directly to your PC.

Razer is all about streaming and content creation these days (who isn’t?), and it seems to be targeting Elgato directly with its latest streaming deck. In fact, when I first saw the new Razer Stream Controller X, I thought Razer had ditched its partnership with Loupedeck and turned to Elgato (but then I realized that wouldn’t really make sense, as Elgato is owned by semi-rival gaming company Corsair). But doesn’t the new Stream Controller X look an awful lot like the Elgato Stream Deck MK.2? 

This is Razer’s second collaboration with Finnish streaming deck maker Loupedeck — and while the first Razer Stream Controller (launched July 2022) was little more than a reskin of one of Loupedeck’s existing consoles, the new Stream Controller X looks like a brand-new product. (Well, brand-new-ish, since it looks a lot like Elgato’s MK.2.) The Stream Controller X is a small, chunky deck with 15 tactile LCD buttons. It’s powered by Loupedeck’s software and it comes with a detachable magnetic stand and a swappable magnetic faceplate, and is available now for $149.99.

Design of the Stream Controller X

The Stream Controller X looks a lot like the Elgato Stream Deck MK.2, from the 15 tactile LCD buttons to the swappable magnetic faceplate. It’s not an exact replica, however — the Stream Controller X is slightly smaller, measuring 4.37 inches (111 mm) wide by 3.17 inches (80.7 mm) deep. It’s 1.18 inches (30 mm) tall at its highest point without the stand and 3.1 inches (78.9 mm) tall with the stand. For comparison, the MK.2 measures 4.6 inches (118 mm) wide by 3.3 inches (84 mm) deep, and is 1 inch (25 mm) tall without the stand (3 inches / 76 mm with the stand). 

The Stream Controller X has a listed weight of 0.39 pounds (177 g), but I’m not sure where this number came from, as my review unit weighed 0.32 pounds (147 g) without the stand or cable, 0.02 pounds  (200 g) with the cable but without the stand, 0.7 pounds  (317 g) with the stand but without the cable, and 0.81 pounds (369 g) with the cable and the stand. The MK.2, for comparison, weighs 0.32 pounds (145 g) without its cable or stand, and weighs 0.6 pounds (270 g) with its stand (but without its cable).

The Stream Controller X is housed in a sturdy, matte black plastic chassis with raised rubber feet and a rectangular cutout on its back to accommodate the device’s USB-C cable. Its faceplate, which is magnetic and can be easily swapped out, features the Razer wordmark printed at center-bottom, and has glossy accents surrounding the device’s 15 clear, plastic tactile LCD buttons.

The Stream Controller X can be laid horizontally on your desk (it’s slightly angled), or you can place it in the included v-shaped magnetic stand, which places the device at a 50-degree angle. The stand has a cutout for the device’s USB-C cable — which works, but probably could have been better implemented, as it does seem to put some stress on the cable. The stand itself is very sturdy — much sturdier than the flimsy piece of plastic included with the recent Loupedeck Live S — and the decksnaps into place very easily. 

The stand is pretty hefty, so I don’t think you have to worry about it sliding across your desk when you press a button. Apparently Razer/Loupedeck had this concern, however, so the bottom of the stand is lined with anti-slip microsuction tape.

In the box, the Stream Controller X comes with the removable magnetic stand and a 6.5-foot (2 m) coated USB-C to USB-A cable, as well as an instruction booklet (and, of course, a Razer logo sticker).

Specs

Buttons on the Stream Controller X

The Stream Controller X has 15 “switchblade” buttons — that’s right, Razer has finally figured out how to upcycle the remnants of its ambitious switchblade concept. (Actually, I’m pretty sure the company called the buttons on the first Stream Controller switchblade buttons as well, but these are much closer to the original switchblade design.)

The buttons are arranged in a three-row, five-column grid (just like the MK.2’s buttons), and each button measures 0.63 inches (16 mm) square. They’re tactile, unlike the buttons on the first Stream Controller, which are touch-sensitive with haptic feedback. I’m a big fan of tactile buttons on streaming decks, and these offer good feedback (they feel pretty similar to Elgato’s tactile LCD buttons on the Elgato Stream Deck+, though they’re slightly smaller).

The Stream Controller X’s tactile buttons lack the combined touchscreen functionality of the first Stream Controller. The touch-sensitive buttons on the first Stream Controller were essentially one large touchscreen, and you could navigate through the Stream Controller’s pages using swipe gestures over said touchscreen. 

On the Stream Controller X, the lower left and right corner buttons are dedicated to navigation (lower right only on the first page; lower left only on the last page). These dedicated navigation buttons cannot be reprogrammed, though their icons can be changed. So you don’t really get 15 programmable buttons on the Stream Controller X — you get 13 or 14, depending on the page. Loupedeck’s software supports up to 14 pages — minus the navigation, that’s still 184 programmable buttons, which is probably enough for most streamers. However, it is a little annoying that you can’t get rid of or even relocate these navigation keys.

Software of the Stream Controller X

The Stream Controller X requires Loupedeck’s software to run. (It also shows up as a module in Razer Synapse 3, but all that module does is kick you over to Loupedeck.) 

Streaming decks are all about customization, but don’t worry: the Stream Controller X isn’t a totally blank slate out of the box. It comes pre-loaded with a handful of presets, including four pre-made screens (featuring icons in Razer’s signature green) set up for streaming, social media, Twitch chat, and sound effects. You’ll still want to spend some time customizing the Stream Controller X to fit your specific needs, eventually, of course, but the pre-loaded content means you can start using the device immediately. 

Loupedeck is all about its dynamic profiles and workspaces, which are collections of tools (buttons) tied to specific applications or games. In “dynamic mode,” Loupedeck’s software automatically switches to app-specific profiles when you’re using that app — so the console is essentially whatever you need it to be at any given moment. Loupedeck features native profile/plugin support for several apps, with pre-made profiles for streaming apps (such as OBS, Twitch, and Streamlabs) and creative apps (such as Ableton Live, Final Cut Pro, VMix, and Adobe’s creative suite). 

This is all just a jumping-off point, of course — you can tweak these pre-made profiles in Loupedeck’s software, or you can create your own profiles and assign them to open with specific apps.

At the end of the day, profiles are just collections of button actions. You can program buttons with predefined actions (found in native or third-party plugins), or you can create your own custom actions using Loupedeck’s software. You can chain multiple actions together on one button using either the macro feature (pressing the button once causes all actions to be performed in sequence) or the multi-toggle feature (pressing the button once causes the first action to be performed, pressing it again causes the second action to be performed, etc; up to five actions can be multi-toggled).

Loupedeck’s software also features the Loupedeck Marketplace, which has additional free and paid assets from both Loupedeck and third-party creators. These assets include plugins, profiles, stream overlays, emotes and badges, presets and styles, icon packs, and sound packs. At the moment there are just two Razer plugins in the Marketplace, for the Razer Key Light Chroma and the Razer Audio Mixer.

The Bottom Line

The first Razer Stream Controller was just a Razer-branded Loupedeck Live. The Razer Stream Controller X technically isn’t just a Razer-branded Elgato Stream Deck MK.2 — but only because it’s not made by Elgato. Otherwise, it kind of... is. It really comes down to whether you prefer Loupedeck’s software and plugin support to Elgato’s (and Elgato’s tactile LCD buttons to Loupedeck’s haptic touch buttons), because the Stream Controller X is ultimately just Loupedeck’s software in an Elgato Stream Deck MK.2 with a Razer logo on the front. 

Okay, it’s not exactly the same. The Stream Controller X has a well-designed, sturdy stand, even if the microsuction tape is probably overkill. But the design is very close — I assume Razer is going to come out with swappable faceplates in the near future, but maybe it should have launched with those. That’s not to say I don’t like it, because I do. The Stream Controller X is a nice, compact size (but still very sturdy), its buttons are bright, crisp, and tactile, and Loupedeck’s native support for Photoshop is my personal deal-maker over Elgato’s Stream Deck software.

In a recent video, YouTuber EposVox reports that YouTube is finally rolling out AV1 live-streaming support to the platform, with the tech currently in a beta. AV1 will provide YouTube live streams with a substantial increase in video quality, and allow users to stream at up to 4K 60FPS with Twitch-limited bitrates. EposVox was able to get early access to a development build of OBS 29.1 to check out YouTube's live streaming AV1 capabilities.

The newest addition to the AV1 rollout is YouTube live streaming support with AV1. YouTube just rolled out beta support for a new video live-streaming standard known as Enhanced RTMP, which will allow streamers to utilize several of the latest video codecs, including AV1, VP9, and HEVC (H.265) to live stream videos to YouTube.

EposVox was able to test drive Enhanced RTMP, with a development build of OBS 21.9 to stream AV1 gaming content to YouTube directly. According to EposVox, the quality difference is night and day compared to H.264. The quality jump with AV1, allowed him to drive higher quality video to his live stream, and remove pixelation altogether.

Just for perspective on how powerful AV1 is, EposVox was able to run an AV1 1440P 60FPS live stream of Halo Infinite at 500kbps - a bitrate 15x lower than the Twitch limit, and the stream was still perfectly watchable.

For normal use cases, EposVox found that 8mbps was the sweet spot for 1440P 60FPS, and around 15mbps for 1440P 60FPS. For a perfectly good-looking live stream with none or close to no pixelization. For users that still want to stream 1080P video, all you'll need is a 4MBps bitrate to achieve the same result. This is a night and day difference to H.264 where 8Mbps was about the minimum you want for a high-quality 1080P 60FPS video stream, and even in this situation, pixelation is still very likely to occur with a lot of streams.

AV1 represents the biggest jump in video quality and performance in a decade. AV1 is the latest-generation open-source codec, that has garnered massive support from many industry tech giants to supersede older standards such as H.264. The media codec is substantially more capable than H.264, and has the capability of running up to 4K 60FPS streams at similar bitrates to H.264 1080P video.

Development has been slow, with AV1 originally being founded in 2015. But after 5 years of development, AV1 is now in a functional state, with all major GPU manufacturers and several major video platforms already supporting AV1 video playback. YouTube is one of these platforms and already supports AV1 video playback and AV1 uploads. (In fact, Discord already supports limited AV1 live streaming.)

The only side-effect of YouTube's implementation is that videos will still get transcoded to VP9. This means AV1 live streams will be re-coded to YouTube's VP9 codec. VP9 is known to be of slightly lesser quality but it supports far more GPU hardware. Thankfully this isn't a big deal, since transcoding doesn't take away much from AV1's encoding capabilities, and video quality remains exceptionally good.

We don't know exactly when AV1 live streaming will roll out officially across the entire YouTube platform, but it will probably be soon since the roll-out is already in beta. OBS isn't far behind either, with a new version that is being developed right now that will support YouTube's new AV1 live stream standard (Enhanced RTMP).

If you want to get ready for AV1 live streaming support, all you need is either a capable multi-core CPU (for software-based AV1 encoding) or purchase a new RTX 40 series, RX 7000 series, or Intel A-series Arc Alchemist graphics card to live stream AV1 to YouTube in the future.

iFi-Audio has released the LAN iSilencer, an audiophile accessory which aims to “quiet your network.” According to the Ethernet dongle designers in Japan, this product removes digital signal interference, and thus protects your audio signals from noise. It recommends the thumbdrive-sized device be connected to your router, switch, or wall RJ45 socket to achieve audio bliss.

There is some background information about the problem of ‘noisy’ network audio and an explanation of how the iFi-Audio LAN iSilencer works shared on the product page. The key design features that are claimed to be of benefit to your digital audio’s 0s and 1s are “a zero jitter memory buffer and galvanically isolated inputs.”

The presence of buffers would suggest some built-in delay to your network signals, which doesn’t sound ideal for a number of PC use-cases. Meanwhile, the concept of galvanic isolation is used in mainstream electronic circuit design, but we can’t find any purported audio benefits for the technology. On the topic of galvanic isolation, iFi-Audio says that audio signals passing through won’t suffer due to the interference of ground potential differences and AC power transients. No before / after audio charts or similar details are shared to back up audio quality  / reduced noise claims.

iFi-Audio shares some tech specs for the LAN iSilencer, which is listed for sale in Japan for the equivalent of $109 including consumption tax (10%). The device supports 1000BASE-T /100BASE-T /10BASE-T transmission speeds, has a shielded case, weighs 17 grams, and measures 73.5 x 19 x 16mm. In the examples showing this dongle plugged into various devices, it looks like it would be prone to accidental damage, as it's a rigid device that sticks out nearly three inches from your Ethernet jack.

What we can say for sure, is that iFi-Audio’s claims seem to be significantly less wild than other recent audiophile computing gear we have reported upon. For example, the $1,250 AudioQuest Diamond RJ/E Ethernet cable mixed “Solid Perfect-Surface Silver Conductors” and carbon-loaded synthetics to shield and protect your wiring from RFI. Even more outlandish are the claims about  the $500 SATA SSD cable with Superstar Crystals, which would apparently work its magic even if you didn’t plug it into an SSD. In recent months we have also reported on an audiophile SSD, and the similarly targeted Ethernet Switch UEF.

Given the above products, the iFi-Audio LAN iSilencer is at least relatively cheap for the audiophile useless accessory market. Priced at around $100 before tax in Japan, it seems to be a bargain if you believe the spiel. If you don’t, you can save your $100 and spend it on better quality headphones, speakers, or other audio gear.

MSI today issued a warning to its global fans and followers. In a news bulletin the major PCs and components maker flagged as an “Important Notice,” it relayed a tale of fraudsters targeting tech YouTubers with bogus product partnership offers.

MSI reproduced an email from the fraudster to a person who we assume must be an upcoming YouTuber with a focus on tech. “Are you aware of MSI, the top electronic maker?” quizzed the opening line of the suspicious email. Which was followed up quickly with a promise of a partnership which would result in a conveyor belt of pre-release MSI tech “at no charge so you can make a review.”

This initially engaging email came from a user calling himself Martinio, using an email address hosted by voiny.cz. Thankfully, the ‘prey’ probably looked up this Czech web portal, and saw that it was a popular place for fraudsters and scammers to set up an email address. With this in mind, they likely didn't take the bait and contacted MSI, who have now issued this news alert.

MSI says that the above example email is just the tip of the iceberg and “the recent occurrence of unauthorized emails to content creators and valued followers has caught our attention.” MSI note in the bulletin, that multiple YouTube creators have contacted MSI to check the veracity of the email offer.

The key thing to watch out for in such emails, according to the PCs and components maker, is that MSI would make any genuine offers via an authentic someone@msi.com email address. It urges anyone who receives emails similar to the above, low res but readable sample, to delete it straight away, and not reply or click any links within.

We don’t know if the emails contained any nefarious links, and MSI has scrubbed them from the sample screenshot, or whether the scammer would weave a web of deceit for some time longer before trying to extract some banking details or similar from the targeted YouTubers - in a long con approach. Whatever the case, be careful out there folks, and be sure to apply some cynicism, and closely investigate, unsolicited offers.

In other recent MSI and scammer news, it was found that there were a host of websites with similar sounding / looking domains that were serving up downloads of the MSI Afterburner utility laced with malware. This was a rinse and repeat of a 2021 scam.

Google has released an ‘Early Stable Update for Desktop’ which heralds the arrival of Nvidia’s RTX Video Super Resolution to the Chrome browser. This new video stream upscaling feature, using the same kind of AI that has made Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) such a success in the games sphere, now only needs a new GeForce driver to hit the PC mainstream. However, before you read further, we think it is important to point out that Nvidia is only supporting this new AI video scaling tech on its GeForce RTX 30 and RTX 40 GPUs.

Nvidia RTX Video Super Resolution was announced at the CES 2023 last month. In brief, it takes in video at resolutions between 360p and 1440p (inclusive) and uses AI derived from deep learning and neural networks to upscale the video up to 4K. Of course, the special sauce delivered by Nvidia’s AI is a more impressive upscaling quality than what could previously be achieved by your hardware / software combo.

Above you can check out Nvidia’s infomercial for RTX Video Super Resolution, which was shared during CES 2023. In the video you see some game footage from Apex Legends captured at 1080p using H.264 at the 8mbps bitrate. Nvidia shows some illuminating split screen, and zoomed in detail comparisons - contrasting the gaming footage at 1080p and AI-upscaled to 4K. Gamers may appreciate that the RTX Video Super Resolution feature will support up to 144Hz video, too.

The results look good in the video, and there is no reason why they shouldn’t look impressive, with the similar DLSS having progressed through several major versions and refinement steps over the years. Applying the RTX Video Super Resolution to game footage might even show the tech at its best, and makes one wonder how well it would work in the wide range of online video genres to which it might be applied; nature documentaries or sports videos would present the Ai with very different upscaling challenges to something like Apex Legends.

VideoCardz spotted that Google’s latest stable version of Chrome (110.0.5481.77), now has the ‘NvidiaVpSuperResolution’ feature turned on by default – something that was previously a beta-only feature. The general release of the new stable Chrome 110 is expected tomorrow, February 7. As mentioned in the intro, Nvidia has yet to release a GeForce game ready or studio driver with support, but with any luck it should also arrive tomorrow, too. It would be fortunate to see Microsoft Edge updated for support simultaneously to give users a choice from day one.

With any upscaling technology, the proof of the pudding is in the watching, as all the major graphics chip vendor firms have been boastful about their various upscaling technologies previously – even when they weren’t anywhere as good as they have become recently. Fingers crossed we will be able to test Nvidia RTX Video Super Resolution, with the wide variety of streaming video content out there, very shortly.

The best part about streaming is talking to your viewers. You can talk to them via game chat, Discord, or text chat, but text chat is the most common way to connect with viewers. This is where inside jokes are born, nicknames, and bonds. You can’t build those bonds if you’re not looking at the chat and responding to viewers.

Once your Twitch account is linked you’ll be able to view chat in OBS. There is a way to add chat into your overlay on OBS. This is what all the pros do, i.e. me! I love having a chat on my stream. It helps me when I go back and watch the VODs to see what the chat was like, how active it was, and if I missed anything. This can be done for Twitch, Facebook, and YouTube.

• Connecting with your viewers is easy via OBS. Popular streamers link their chats to their live shows.
• Linking Facebook, Discord and Twitch chat to OBS is a simple and effective means to interact with viewers.
• Text, emoji's and memes can be shared live via the chat.

Before tackling this project it would be prudent to take a look at our How To Record in OBS and How to Stream on Twitch guides. Those two guides will act as a foundation for building the best stream for your viewers.

Here is how to add chat to your stream using Facebook, Twitch (using StreamLabs and StreamElements and YouTube.

• Grab a great webcam from Amazon.

How To Add Facebook Chat to Your Stream

1. Open your Facebook Like Page.

2. Click on the Meta Business Suite on the left hand side of the page.

3. From the More menu, select Go Live.

4. Toggle the test broadcast button and then click Select to start a live broadcast.The test broadcast button enables you to check your configuration before going live.

5. From the Settings menu select Comments.

6. Pop out the comments module.

7. From the new Comments tab, copy the URL.

8. Open OBS.

9. For your chosen scene, go Sources and add a Browser source called Facebook Chat.

10. Replace the URL with the Chat URL.

11. Login to your Facebook account from the Browser window in OBS. Use the Interact button located above Sources and enter your login.

12. The chat window is now ready for use. Every time you start a live, refresh your URL comments Browser source. And you’re all set.

How To Add Twitch Chat To Your Stream

To add chat overlay to your Twitch stream you’re going to need to login into Streamlabs or StreamElements.

Using Streamlabs:

1. Go to the StreamLabs website.

2. Click on Widgets >> Chat Box.

3. Log in to your account.

4. Search for chatbox via the search bar and select Chat Box Widget Settings.

5. Copy the Widget URL. Remember, do not share this URL with anyone. It is linked to your account.

6. Open OBS and select the scene for use with the chat box. Here we are using the Browser scene for the chat box.

7. Under Sources, add a Browser source.

8. Rename the source to Twitch Chat Box and click OK.

9. Replace the URL with the Chat URL and click OK to save. The width and height of the chat box can also be tweaked to provide the best possible layout.

10. Click on Start Streaming to stream your show with an embedded chat window.

Using StreamElements

StreamElements Chat Box is a bit more involved because you need to select an overlay. Then you’ll have a separate customizable chat feature.

1. Open a browser to the StreamElements website and login.

2. Select Streaming Tools >> Overlays from the StreamElements page Menu.

3. Create a new overlay.

4. Set the overlay resolution to match that of your stream and click Start. In our case we chose 1080p.

5. Name the overlay “Chat Window” and click Save.

6. Click on Add Widget.

7. Go to Stream tools and select “Your Stream’s Chat”. This will place a black chat window on the screen. We can move the window around for the best layout.

8. Copy the URL link via the icon in the top right corner.

9. Open OBS and select the scene for use with the chat box. Here we are using the Browser scene for the chat box.

10. Under Sources, add a Browser source.

11. Rename the source to Twitch Chat Box and click OK.

12. Replace the URL with the Chat URL and click OK to save. The width and height of the chat box can also be tweaked to provide the best possible layout.

13. Click on Start Streaming to stream your show with an embedded chat window.

Using YouTube

YouTube’s chat integration with OBS is the easiest of them all.

1. Open a browser to YouTube.

2. Go to your YouTube channel, the icon is in the top right corner.

3. Select Go Live via the Camera icon’s dropdown menu.

4. Select Popout Chat in the three dots menu in the top right.

5. Copy the URL of the popup chat window.

6. Open OBS and select the scene for use with the chat box. Here we are using the Browser scene for the chat box.

7. Under Sources, add a Browser source.

8. Rename the source to YouTube Chat Box and click OK.

9. Replace the URL with the Chat URL and click OK to save. The width and height of the the chat box can also be tweaked to provide the best possible layout.

10. Click on Start Streaming to stream your show with an embedded chat window.

The Raspberry Pi Pico W disrupted the status quo in mid 2022. For a time we were happy with the Raspberry Pi Pico. For $4 it brought a lot of computing power but it lacked something that ESP32 and ESP8266 owners had, Wi-Fi. The Raspberry Pi Pico W’s higher price, $6 versus $4 saw that extra $2 bring Wi-Fi and a lot more opportunities to the tiny microcontroller.

Pimoroni capitalized on the Pico W and released a range of Pico W Aboard products, from tiny sensor platforms to an Inventor’s inspiration. The Pimoroni team also teased a new “Unicorn” board. Pimoroni has a history of releasing Unicorn themed products. The original Unicorn HAT being the first, but the latest is the $50 Galactic Unicorn which sees the Raspberry Pi Pico W powering an incredible 538 RGB LEDs.

But is this Unicorn a one-trick-pony or do we have a thoroughbred on our hands? To learn this we need to saddle up and take it for a test ride.

Galactic Unicorn Hardware Specifications

Using Galactic Unicorn

As ever, Pimoroni really delivers on both the hardware and software experience. Before we delve into the review, let's take a moment to admit the silkscreen printing on the PCB. The illustration is superb, and the print is crisp. It ties the product together and gives us much more than a bare PCB to admire. On the print side we can see the Raspberry Pi Pico W surface mount soldered to the main PCB, with buttons for user input (A to D), volume, brightness and a handy reset button (which we have to admit that we forgot about on a few occasions). Around the perimeter are a series of M2 sized mounting holes. These can be used to secure the included metal legs, for use on a desk. Pimoroni also provides a DXF file which has the exact position of these holes. The DXF file can be used to laser cut an enclosure for Galactic Unicorn. The same file could easily be used as a template for a 3D printed holder. For the daring amongst you, there is even a lanyard attachment, to maximize your impact at the next social gathering / conference.

Flashing the bespoke Pimoroni UF2 Pico firmware provides us with a wealth of options to interact with the Galactic Unicorn, and many other accessories. From there it was just a matter of tinkering with the provided examples to get a feel for how it works. The best example of how it all works is in the features.py project code. Here we get a demo of all the RGB pixels, inputs and a surprisingly competent speaker that managed to belt out a great 8-bit tune.

The stars of the show, all 538 of them, are the RGB LEDs. Running at 300 fps, these 14-bit RGB LEDs are driven by the Raspberry Pi Pico W’s Programmable IO (PIO) and apply gamma correction on the fly. 

So what does this mean? If you have ever tried to record a video or take a photograph of an RGB LED, you will know how difficult it is to workaround the flicker generated by them. With Galactic Unicorn we don’t have that issue. With no shutter speed tinkering, we had rock solid scrolling text.

For our review, we created a script that would read the Tom’s Hardware RSS feed and scroll the headlines across the rather luxurious LED matrix. We modified the scrolling text example, adding in network access and using the urequests module to parse a JSON object (we used an online tool to parse the RSS into JSON) and from there we extracted the values from the JSON object.

The next test involved a BME688 temperature sensor, connected to the Galactic Unicorn’s QW/ST connectors. Within a few minutes, we had live temperature, humidity and air pressure readings in our home with only one connector easily hidden from sight. The QW/ST connectors are Stemma QT / Qwiic compatible and provide access to the I2C interface. Apart from the buttons, the QW/ST connectors are the only means to interface with Galactic Unicorn. 

That does restrict what we can connect to largely products that follow the QW/ST, StemmaQT, Qwiic form factor, of which there are plenty from Pimoroni, Adafruit and SparkFun. You can get StemmaQT to male jumper wire adapters for use with I2C devices or for basic GPIO access. We would’ve liked to have a few more GPIO pins. We can get by with I2C, but just a few more pins broken out for use would be nice.

Galactic Unicorn is not just about sound and the 20mm 1W speaker may not provide a THX certified experience, but the noises it makes are wholesome and hark back to a simpler era. The MAX98357 I2S mono amplifier does a great job of boosting the sound to audible levels. The speaker’s position on the PCB sees a series of holes cut into it, to provide the best possible volume. The Galactic Unicorn is capable of good sound quality, somewhat akin to a high quality musical greetings card.

Galactic Unicorn Projects

If you need a YouTube subscriber counter, scrolling news ticker, 8-bit retro wall art then Galactic Unicorn is for you. Heck, even a novelty sized conference badge would be a great build with Galactic Unicorn. The alternatives to Galactic Unicorn are building our own using a HUB75 LED matrix and a Raspberry Pi / Raspberry Pi Pico W.

If gaming is more your thing, then perhaps the ultimate flex would be a pixel version of Mario across the expansive matrix. With individual control of the pixels and buttons on the perimeter of the board we could make our own pixel homages to the classics. Widescreen Pacman would especially be fun.

No matter your ambitions, Galactic Unicorn wraps it all up into a thin and very stylish package with none of the wiring issues. Laser cutting our 3D printing your own case should be a breeze thanks to the downloadable DXf files.

Bottom Line

The Pimoroni Galactic Unicorn is more expensive than a true DIY option, but the extra dollars provide convenience and a truly slick experience. We don’t have to worry about the wiring and pulling together our own code. It is ready to go with the minimum of effort. This is much more than a text scroller.

It can be your information radiator, GitHub commit streak reporter, or even play a really large version of Flappy Birds. The hardware is solid and the software backs it up beautifully. Because it uses MicroPython, we have access to many more modules of code, but Pimoroni’s initial choices are solid and provide us with enough to get on with making a cool project.

Twitch is the second most-watched streaming platform, and it’s not just for gamers. In the third quarter of 2022 Twitch averaged 5.71 billion watched hours. So it’s natural to wonder, “How do I stream to Twitch?”

The good news is that it’s not hard to learn how to stream on Twitch, and there are many tools to simplify this process. One of the best tools is OBS, the Open Broadcaster System software that enables you to stream to any site that uses RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol). Using RTMP is how you connect your gameplay to Twitch, Facebook, YouTube, etc. Cosmetic tools, such as Streamlabs, Stream Elements, and Lightstream are all tools that help you make your stream look nice and have the basic functions of OBS.  

In this how-to, we will learn how to use OBS to stream our gaming sessions directly to Twitch. Before following this how-to, check out our getting started with OBS guide where we go through the basics of setting up this powerful streaming tool. That guide will show you how to download and install OBS, as well as how to work with audio and video sources.

1. Click on Settings.

2. Select Stream and then select Twitch from the Service dropdown menu.

3. Click Connect Account.

4. Log in to your Twitch account.

5. Authorize OBS to connect to Twitch. This will enable OBS to stream directly to Twitch.

6. Select None and then click Apply and OK. After going through the authentication process, a few extra features will pop up. BetterTTV and FrankerFaceZ are the emotes used on Twitch to enhance your stream. BetterTTV is a subscription service that gives you access to all the emotes, while FrankerZ is an extension that lets you save your favorite emotes and see other people’s emotes. The Enable Bandwidth Test Mode enables users to test a stream before going live. This isn’t essential and it can be used at your leisure.

7. Drag the Twitch Chat and Stream Information windows into place. The stream information is where streamers change the stream title, add tags, and edit the Go Live Notification message. The notification populates mobile phones and desktop notifications with personalized messages anytime you go live. This is a preference move. If you like floating windows, leave them out. For the rest of us who were told to clean our room and actually enjoyed it, we’ll be popping our windows into place.

8. Click on the Scene. Scenes are sets of sources grouped together. An example would be one scene for a main camera, another scene for an alternative camera angle, and a further scene with an application window open.

9. Click on + to add a source. There are a few different sources that can be added. The main ones we’re concerned with are Video Capture Card and Window Capture. Video Capture card refers to a webcam, DSLR, or any type of camera input. It can also be used to add a capture card if you’re streaming games from your console to OBS. Window Capture is to capture the game that you are playing on the same PC as OBS. For example, if you open Rainbow Six Siege, it’ll open in its own window. Then you’d add that window via Window Capture to OBS so your stream can see the gameplay.

10. Select Video Capture Source and in the new dialog box click set then name to “cam” and click OK.

11. Under the Devices dropdown, Select the camera you’d like to use and Click OK. On my Mac I have the default FaceTime cam. If your setup consists of more than one camera, such as a webcam and a DSLR, you’ll see those options populate under devices and you can select the one you’d like to use.

12. Grab the corners of the source to expand or shrink to position your camera. We can tweak the size and position of the camera source. This is useful for positioning our camera feed on top of the game footage, and vice versa.

13. Start your game on your PC or turn on your console. Games on the same PC as OBS will use Window Capture, while consoles will need to be connected via a video capture card and a Video Capture device in OBS. 

Extra step for macOS users: Don’t forget to change the preference to allow OBS to record your screen. You’ll see a prompt that takes you right to the System Preferences. 

14. PC Gamers, from Sources click on Add Window Capture source.

15. Name the source Gameplay and click OK.

16. Right Click on the Source, select Edit Transform. This menu will enable us to have precise control of the position and size of the source.

17. Under Size, set the resolution to 1280 x 720 and click close. If you require a different resolution, change this to suit your requirements.

You’re now ready to stream your gaming session directly to Twitch. Now you have the basics to get you started. OBS is a powerful tool, and with it you have the power of a broadcast studio on your desktop. You can mix live video, audio, and images along with custom graphics to really make your stream stand out from the crowd.

Learning how to use OBS (Open Broadcaster System) isn't only for streamers. OBS can do a lot more than stream live content. It is a virtual broadcast studio capable of mixing audio and video elements together. It's easy to use and with it we can create an instructional video,  talk, or the next viral sensation. Best of all, it's free software. With OBS you can record or stream your gaming sessions, your screen, or yourself.

At first OBS can be a bit confusing to use. Even with its recent updates the user interface still has a learning curve. But underneath this interface is a user-friendly application that, unlike the Etch A Sketch I never got for Christmas, has a ton of features beyond streaming. I’ve created YouTube videos with OBS, MP3 recordings, and I’ve even made voice over tracks for my demo reel.

The first set of instructions is for recording video.

In this how-to we will learn the basics of the OBS user interface with the end goal being to create our own video that mixes audio and video elements into one recording.

Setting Up OBS

OBS is a free download and it has clients for Windows macOS and Linux. Our goal here is to download the application and prepare our work environment before we record any content.

1. Download and install OBS for your operating system.

2. From the Start menu, open OBS.

The OBS user interface is broken down into sections, each has a specific role.

1. The output. Here is where the video output is displayed. It can be a mixture of webcam, game footage, text overlays etc. All of these elements are visible in the final video.

2. Scenes. Scenes are sets of sources grouped together. An example would be one scene for a piece to camera, another scene for an alternative camera angle and a further scene with an application window open.

3. Sources. Sources are the individual elements that make up a scene. We can mix different audio and video sources such as external game capture devices, application windows, microphones and instruments. Sources can be placed on top of one another by moving the order in the Sources list. This enables us to add graphics and video on top of our camera feed.

4. Audio Mixer. The audio mixer shows a live reading of each enabled audio device. We can monitor the levels of each device, tweaking them with the slider to ensure that the audio is clear.

5. Scene Transitions. When moving between scenes, a short fade is applied to ease the viewer. The duration can be changed, or completely replaced with a quick cut.

6. Controls. Here we can start / stop a recording / streaming session, tweak our settings and in advanced use we can create a virtual camera that mixes the OBS output for use in livestreams.

Setting the Output Folder

It is good practice to save your output to a certain location. In OBS we can do this via the Settings menu.

1. Under Controls, click on Settings. Alternatively, you can go to File > Settings.

2. Under Recording Path, click on Browse and set the folder to save your output.

3. In the Output menu, click on the Recording Format menu to change the Recording Format. This will change the format of the video file. Changing the Recording Format will bring up a warning — if you know how to navigate and convert different formats, you can play around with test recordings to determine the best one for your situation. Otherwise, go with MP4, which is the standard format for video and audio.  Click OK to close the Settings dialog.

Setting Up to Record

With the configuration complete, we can now start adding sources to our scene. Sources are a mix of audio and video inputs. We will start by adding a video source and then add an audio source.

1. In the sources section, click on “+” to see a drop-down menu of source types. Alternatively, right-click in the sources section and select “Add”. OBS has many different sources. We can show images, slideshows, embedded videos (via VLC), add basic text and show application windows directly in a scene. Any video / image sources can be resized to show multiple sources in one scene, which is useful for video tutorials.

2. From the list select Video Capture Device. 

3. Create a new video capture device and rename it accordingly. Click OK to save.

4. In the new dialog, under Devices, select the camera and Click OK. Your setup may consist of more than one camera. They will appear as options in the dropdown list. OBS allows you to add more than one video capture device to a scene. Camera settings (such as focus, exposure, white balance) can be changed by clicking on Configure Video, but modern day webcams are able to auto-adjust for the best image quality.

5. In the output window, grab the corners of the source to resize and reposition your camera. We can tweak the layout and size to exactly how we would like it to look. 

6. For a video source with specific dimensions, right Click on the Source and select Transform >> Edit Transform.

7. Change the size to 1280x720, or to a resolution that suits your requirements. Click Close to save. This menu gives us precise control of the position, size and alignment of the video source.

We have a video source and now we need to add an audio source to our recording. 

1. In the sources section, click on “+” to see a drop-down menu of source types. Alternatively right click in the sources section and select “Add”. Multiple audio sources can be added to a scene, for example a microphone and electric guitar can be mixed. Just pay careful attention to their volume levels in the mixer. Vocals should be clear against any background instruments.

2. From the list, select Audio Input Capture.

3. Create a new audio input capture device and rename it accordingly. Click OK to save.

4. In the new dialog, under Devices, select the audio input and Click OK.

5. Tweak the volume settings for the audio input device. Keep the levels out of the red as clipping (distortion) will occur. Aim for a value in the low yellow range. This will ensure consistent audio levels for the listener.

Recording a Video

Now it’s time to hit record!

1. Click on Record, found in the Controls section. If you need to pause, click on the pause button to the right of Stop Recording.

2. Record 30 seconds of video and then click Stop Recording.

3. Go to the folder containing the video and play it using your preferred media player. Check the video for correct framing and sound levels. Ideally, the presenter should be in the center of the frame, and audio levels should be comfortable for viewers listening at half volume. If that is not the case, go back into OBS and reframe the shot, and tweak the audio levels until you find the right mix.

Wrapping Up

OBS is a great tool to experiment with. We can use it to add “lower thirds” (graphics to add extra information, such as news tickers) or design elements such as logos and animated graphics. Adding a background to a video is as simple as adding an image source and using the sources list to place it behind you.

Now that you know how to record in OBS, go forth and make great content! May the bandwidth be with you.

Considering how much gamers love extra, programmable keys and buttons on keyboards and mice, it’s surprising how few standalone macro/control pads exist — especially for streamers and gamers. The market is almost entirely dominated by two companies: Elgato and Loupedeck, but the competition is fierce. 

Elgato just came out with its new Stream Deck+, and now Loupedeck has officially launched its Live S console (which was first announced as an Indiegogo campaign in June 2022). With an MSRP of $179, the Live S enters Loupedeck’s lineup as its smallest and most affordable console from the company to date.

Design of the Live S

The Loupedeck Live S is the smallest macro pad in Loupedeck’s product stack, with a layout that’s (unsurprisingly) similar to the Loupedeck Live. The Live S isn’t much larger than my iPhone 13 Pro, measuring 5.91 inches (150mm) wide by 3.39 inches (86mm) deep, and 1.18 inches (30mm) thick.

It’s housed in a lightweight but sturdy-feeling matte black plastic chassis, and it weighs 5.92 ounces (168g). It comes with a detachable stand, which makes it very portable and easy to travel with (unlike the Stream Deck+, which has a fixed stand).

The detachable stand snaps along the back of the Live S, setting the device at a 35-degree angle. With the stand attached, the Live S is approximately 2.25 inches (57mm) tall. The stand is easy enough to attach and remove, but it’s made of very thin plastic — it feels easily breakable, especially if you are attaching and removing it frequently.

The Live S has a touchscreen divided into 15 touch-sensitive buttons, which are flanked on either side by analog dials (two, on the left side) and four tactile RGB buttons (one on the left, three on the right). The analog dials are covered in soft-touch, rubbery material with raised tactile ridges. The tactile buttons are small, round, and plastic, and are somewhat stiff when pressed.

The Live S comes with a 6.5-foot (2m) braided USB-C to USB-C cable, a USB-C to USB-A adapter, and a detachable stand in the box. 

Specs

Buttons and Dials on the Live S

The Live S has 15 touch buttons and four tactile buttons. The touch buttons are dynamic, responsive, and, while they do not offer tactile feedback like the LED keys on Elgato’s Stream Decks, they do offer haptic feedback when pressed — albeit, very mild haptic feedback. 

Because the touch buttons are actually just one touchscreen divided into 15 sections, the panel also accepts touch gesture input: you can swipe your finger horizontally across the screen to scroll through pages of buttons  (up to 14), and you can swipe your finger vertically to scroll through pages (also up to 14) of dials.

The Live S also has four tactile buttons — one in the lower left corner and three on the right side of the touch panel. The buttons are small and circular and have built-in RGB lighting that can be customized (from a menu of 24 preset color options) using Loupedeck’s software. 

Each button, except for the button in the lower left corner, has one layer of functionality (press). The button in the lower left corner has two layers of functionality (press and hold-down) — but only the first is customizable. Holding down this button switches to the Live S’s main profile; this cannot be changed. Loupedeck said in an email that programmable hold-down functionality in the other three buttons “might be available in future updates as we have it in the pipeline.”

The Live S has two notched tactile dials with push functionality. Although the Live S doesn’t have the same “dial stack” feature that the Stream Deck+ has, you can program up to 14 “dial pages,” which is basically the same thing (you’ll just have to swipe vertically to change dial functions). Loupedeck does natively support MIDI dial mapping, which lets you use it with MIDI-enabled instruments and digital audio workstations (DAWs). The Stream Deck+ doesn’t have native support for MIDI mapping (though there is a third-party Stream Deck plugin). 

The Live S doesn’t have a dial strip, like the Live does, to display the dials’ functions. There is an option to turn on “dial display” in the Live S’s settings menu. This option turns the touch buttons next to each dial into a display. However, it also disables these buttons’ touch functionality on all pages — even if it’s a page with no dial functions assigned.

Software of the Live S

The Loupedeck Live S requires Loupedeck’s software to run. The software is also where you can customize the device, either by creating your own custom actions and macros from scratch, or by using pre-made profiles, plugins, and other assets from both Loupedeck and third-party content creators.

Like other macro pads and stream decks, the Loupedeck Live S is extremely customizable. What’s nice is that it ships with pre-installed plugins and profiles, meaning it’s pretty usable out of the box (and you have some templates to work off of, if you’re brand-new to this type of device). Using the software, you can set up your own profiles and workspaces — profiles are for different scenarios or apps, while workspaces are toolboxes within each profile. Each workspace can have up to 14 pages of buttons and 14 pages of dials.

The Live S comes with several profiles and plugins pre-installed, including OBS, Twitch, Streamlabs, Spotify, Philips Hue, Ableton Live, VMix, Final Cut Pro, and several Adobe creative apps (Photoshop, After Effects Pro, Lightroom Classic, Illustrator, Audition, and Premiere Pro). Native support for Adobe apps is one of the big advantages Loupedeck still has over Elgato — while Stream Decks can be configured to work with Adobe products, Loupedeck’s premade profiles are significantly more convenient.

You can also access the Loupedeck Marketplace from within the Loupedeck software. The Marketplace has additional assets, including plugins, profiles, stream overlays, emotes and badges, presets and styles, and icon and sound packs from both Loupedeck and third-party creators. The Marketplace lets creators post both free and paid assets — functional assets (profiles, plugins, icons, etc) are mostly free, while assets like stream overlays and emotes are mostly paid.

The Bottom Line

The Loupedeck Live S is a good entry-level addition to Loupedeck’s lineup — it offers an impressive amount of functionality considering it’s nearly $100 cheaper than the Loupedeck Live. It’s also extremely portable, which makes it an ideal option for creators who frequently travel or move between workspaces.

That said, it’s also priced very close to Elgato’s new Stream Deck+ ($199), which has similar functionality, with touch, tactile, and dial input options. And Elgato’s device has a sturdier and more premium-feeling build. There used to be a larger gap between Loupedeck’s consoles and Elgato’s decks, but these two recent launches are surprisingly similar.

Loupedeck started out with a focus on photo editing; the first Loupedeck was designed for Lightroom. To that point, the Live S still offers a slight advantage for traditional creators, such as photographers, video editors, and music producers, thanks to Loupedeck’s native support for creative apps, like Adobe products and MIDI mapping. 

Elgato, on the other hand, has been gaming- and streaming-focused for years, and has an entire streaming ecosystem of capture cards, webcams, mics, lights, and more — all of which work seamlessly with its Stream Decks. Until the Stream Deck+, Stream Decks only had one type of input — buttons — but the Stream Deck+ adds both touch and dial input (and has four dials, versus the Live S’s two). Creators who are entirely streaming-focused may therefore find the Stream Deck+ easier to integrate into their workflow, especially if they have other Elgato (or Corsair) products. 

In short,the Loupedeck Live S is an excellent control pad, but it’s not a clear winner (or loser) against Elgato’s Stream Deck+.

According to a report by Vice, Redditor PoisonWaffle3 shared a new post detailing how he managed to snag one of Netflix's 10-year-old caching servers for free. Even though it is a decade old, it packs some serious hardware even by today's standards and features an impressive 262TB of storage. This post represents one of the very few times we've seen Netflix's server infrastructure up close and personal.

The Redditor says he received the Netflix server courtesy of the company he works for, an internet service provider. Apparently, the ISP has used these Netflix servers for years but is now upgrading its infrastructure with newer hardware, which is how PoisonWaffle3 managed to get this server for free.

According to Vice, this server is known as a Netflix caching server and was part of Netflix's open connect content delivery network (CDN). This system is still in use today and is designed to reduce overall bandwidth demands on the Netflix platform by giving ISPs their own Netflix caching server. This allows popular Netflix content to play directly from the ISP's servers instead of traveling from Netflix's server farms.

The server is painted in bright red and comes in the form factor of a 4U rack-mounted server chassis. An LCD for monitoring server health is on the front, along with a pair of VGA ports and a pair of USB ports. To the left is a pair of thin power supplies that are likely hot-swappable.

Specs feature a Supermicro motherboard packing a single Intel 10-core hyperthreaded Xeon E5 2650L v2 chip, 64GB of DDR3 memory and a 10 GbE card. For storage, the system utilizes six 500GB Micron SSDs and 36 7.2TB 7200RPM drives. We don't know what protocol the drives are running on, but we can presume them to all be SAS drives (including the SSDs).

Even by today's standards, these core specifications aren't bad and were incredibly good back in the early 2010s when this server was first deployed. 64 GB of memory and 262TB of storage is nothing to sneeze at, especially for home use as a network attached storage (NAS).

Putting aside the beefy specifications, the unit is apparently pretty simple on the software side of things. According to Vice, Dave Temkin, Netflix's former VP of NSI says these Netflix servers are just Intel FreeBSD boxes, while some run on Linux. This makes sense, considering the servers were only designed to cache video files coming from Netflix servers and nothing more.

According to the Redditor, his Netflix caching server did need some repairs, including replacing a few noisy fans and one failed drive, but that's about it. He says the server will get a second life operating as a NAS at home.

A Netflix VP has confirmed that the firm has ambitions to offer a cloud gaming service to subscribers. At the TechCrunch Disrupt event on Tuesday, vice president of gaming, Mike Verdu, said that Netflix is "seriously exploring a cloud gaming offering." In related news, further signalling Netflix’s serious intent regarding the gaming industry, the firm opened its fifth games studio, led by former Blizzard Entertainment (Overwatch) executive producer, Chacko Sonny.

There has been talk about Netflix entering the gaming industry before, but its initial venture targeted the mobile games space. It must have gained confidence from the mobile gaming venture, as it sounds like it will follow a similar modus operandi into cloud gaming. “We'll approach this the same way as we did with mobile - start small, be humble, be thoughtful,” explained Verdu, at Disrupt. “The extension into the cloud is really about reaching the other devices where people experience Netflix.” Moreover, the service is hinted to move beyond casual gaming titles.

You may be wondering about the viability of another cloud gaming entrant, with Google Stadia so recently deceased.  Thankfully, the question of the struggles faced by Stadia, and Amazon Luna, were raised at the Disrupt event. Verdu’s response to the failings seen by rivals was that Stadia, for example, was “a technical success,” but that Google’s business model didn’t work out.

Netflix has released 35 mobile games since the service went live, and it let investors know that there are 55 more in the pipeline. The streaming media giant says that 14 of the new titles have come from its four games studios. To bolster its gaming output, and perhaps range, it announced that a fifth studio would be opened in Southern California shortly. The unnamed new studio is to be led by Chacko Sonny, an executive producer who worked on the very popular Overwatch franchise. As for partners, Ubisoft recently announced that it was producing three mobile games for Netflix, based on popular IPs such as Assassin’s Creed and Valiant Hearts.

Peripheral giant Logitech has dipped a toe into the teeming handheld streaming console waters with the G Cloud, a Steam Deck/Nintendo Switch lookalike with seemingly unimpressive specs but a nice range of apps from Xbox, Stadia, GeForce Now, Steam Link, and presumably any other streaming service with an Android app.

Inside the machine, which takes the Switch form factor that’s so hot right now, there's a Snapdragon 720G from 2020, as seen in the Samsung Galaxy A52 and Realme 8 Pro smartphones. It’s hardly a top-end chip despite having eight cores (two Cortex-A76 and six Cortex-A55) and is wired up to 4GB of RAM and an Adreno 618 GPU. There's 64GB of internal flash storage too, augmented by a Micro SD slot.

The internal storage matters less when you consider that the G Cloud isn’t made for playing games locally, although it should be able to play many games available on the Play Store. Logitech's G Cloud runs Android 11, and uses streaming apps and its Wi-Fi 5 connection to bring the action to its 1080p IPS screen, which measures seven inches across its diagonal and has 10 finger multi-touch.

Around the back, you’ll find a single USB Type-C port, but there's no video output specified, so it looks like being a purely handheld device with no capacity for docking with a larger display. Controls come in the form of two analog sticks, a D-pad and face buttons, along with gyroscope-measured motion controls and haptic feedback from two motors.

Dimensions are 10.11 x 4.61 x 1.30 inch (257 x 117 mm x 33 mm) making it smaller than the Steam Deck but larger than a Switch, and weighs in at 16.33 oz (463g). Being an Android device, we’d be surprised if it couldn’t manage media streaming apps alongside the gaming ones. A ‘tablet mode’ alluded to in Logitech’s FAQ also suggests a gaming launcher that can be removed to reveal a classic Android home page underneath. Battery life can be up to 12 hours depending on usage.

While nice looking - Chinese company Tencent Games had a hand in the design, as revealed in a leak last month -  the device doesn’t do anything you can’t do with an Android phone/tablet and a Bluetooth controller, and even a Raspberry Pi can be charmed into streaming most of these services. And at $349.99 (a preorder discount is in effect that brings this down to $299.99 or possibly less with a Logitech G promo code) you might be better off with one of the best tablets and a controller, or one of the Steam Deck rivals.

Loupedeck has kicked off a crowdfunding campaign for its latest creator control pad, the Loupedeck Live S. The Loupedeck Live S directly competes with the popular Elgato Stream Deck in size, functionality, and pricing, and also has some additional attractive features.

The Elgato Stream Deck MK.2, which currently costs $150 on Amazon, has 15 customizable keys...and that's it.

Straight off the bat you can see the new Loupedeck Live S offers the same array of 15 customizable touch zones, but it has flanked them with tactile buttons and dials. On the left, there are two tactile dials and a tactile button, and on the right there's a trio of tactile buttons. And those tactile buttons aren't just plastic blanks, they're color-codable with built-in RGB lighting.

In its Indiegogo blurb, Loupedeck describes its new offering as perfect for streamers who need to "control the entirety" of their streams from "one easy-to-use interface." Loupedeck highlights the ease and intuit of using dials to control volume levels alongside fast, configurable touch controls.

Software support is important for getting the best out of any control deck: According to Loupedeck, the Live S is ready to work with many popular streaming apps, including Twitch, OBS Studio, Streamlabs, Ecamm, Spotify, Philips Hue, and Voicemod. For content creators, the Live S also includes plugins for apps like Adobe Lightroom Classic, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Audition, and Final Cut Pro. In our Stream Deck review we noted that Adobe app integration was a winning feature for the Loupedeck lineup.

Loupedeck's PC and Mac software claims to offer users "unlimited customization," and there are indeed lots of options. You can customize the display with static or animated icons, and have up to 14 pages of these ready to swipe through. Moreover, screens can be context dependent and switch when you use different apps. You can easily download more plugins, profiles, and icon packs from the Loupedesk marketplace.

The Loupedeck Live S went live on Indiegogo today, and the developers are already one-third of the way funded. As always, it's important to note that Indiegogo is a crowdfunding platform, and no product is actually guaranteed; treat any money toward crowdfunding campaigns like investments, not purchases. That said, the developers say the Live S will start shipping in October.

At the time of writing there are still Early Bird options listed at €119 / £101, which is about $127 (the first 100 units at a better price have sold out). Loupedesk says that the retail price of the Live S will be $179 if you want to wait until it's officially released.

There are larger, more varied, and more expensive control panels available if something like the Loupedeck Live S or the Stream Deck don't offer enough features for your needs. And, of course, Raspberry Pi aficionados can ignore these pre-made controllers and build an alternative.

Nvidia’s popular GeForce Now streaming service is now a bit more accessible for gamers with tighter budgets. Today, the company announced that its RTX 3080 tier, which previously required subscribers to pay $99.99 for six months, is also now available for $19.99 per month.

The six-month plan is still technically a better deal (at roughly $16.66 per month), but for those that want to dip their toes in the water to test the service without forking over a hundred bucks, it’s a cheaper alternative. In addition, GeForce Now remains a compelling solution for gamers that still can’t purchase RTX 30 Series graphics cards at a reasonable price. Due to the chip shortage, compounded by demand from Ethereum miners, desktop graphics are currently selling for as much as twice their MSRP.

With GeForce Now, you can stream games from your Steam or Epic Games library at up to 1440p native resolution at up to 120 fps on a PC or up to 1600p at up to 120 fps on a Mac. Game streaming is also accessible from smartphones, tablets, Android TV, select LG TVs, or Nvidia’s Shield TV streaming device. With the Shield TV, you can stream games at up to 4K at 60 fps. 

To take advantage of the performance afforded by the RTX 3080 tier, Nvidia recommends a broadband connection of at least 15 Mbps for 720p at 60 fps or 25 Mbps for 1080p resolution at 60 fps. If you want to tap into the higher 1440p or 1600p resolutions at 120 fps, you’ll need a 35 Mbps connection, which shouldn’t be too much of an issue for typical gamers. It should be noted that the subscribers to the RTX 3080 tier are entitled to the highest session length: 8 hours.

In addition to the aforementioned RTX 3080 tier, the Priority membership costs $49.99 for six months (or $9.99/month) with access to GTX 1080 or RTX 2080 GPU servers. Additionally, you can stream at up to 1080p resolutions at 60 fps and are limited to a 6-hour session length. Finally, the free tier provides non-exclusive access to “basic” GTX 1060 GPU servers and a one-hour session length.

Elgato has released the Stream Deck Pedal. This new tactile foot controller, with three hit zones, expands the Stream Deck range in an unexpected but welcome direction. Elgato demonstrates the Stream Deck Pedal in gaming, streaming, productivity, and hobby activities. As you might imagine, there are many foot control possibilities, and the software facilitates the use of a wide range of the usual Stream Deck functions, plus Multi Actions and Smart Profiles.

Sometimes a touch or button interface at hand level isn't the quickest and most intuitive thing for computer users. This is especially the case for those whose hands can already be very busy with a mouse, keyboard, etc., which makes using a foot controller very attractive.

Elgato's Stream Deck Pedal is pretty unadventurous, hardware-wise. The product maker says all the right things about the controller's heavy-duty construction, anti-skid feet, interchangeable pedal pressure springs, and grippy top surface, but in summary, it is just a trio of pedals in a line. The pedals aren't even analog (like a wah or volume pedal); they are simple switches.

However, simplicity is not a bad quality for something that you might operate with a big boot while out of sight. Furthermore, Elgato's experience and foundational work on button interfaces means that it has many smart features that make the Stream Deck Pedal useful in a wide range of situations.

Elgato highlights the usefulness of its new pedal in streaming content creation, gaming actions/shortcuts, presentation making, video editing, and working with the new Stream Deck Discord plugin for mute/talk/deafen and more. In addition, there are over 100 Stream Deck plugins available online to make your new foot controller very flexible.

Multi Actions can be used to string button press actions together and assign them to one pedal. You can stomp down to grab a screenshot, open a destination folder, and share it on Twitter, for example. Other tasks might be to smooth your audio or video production workflow.

Smart Profiles help alleviate the three-button limit here. Using the setup software, you can easily create, save and recall pedal layouts mixing single and Multi Actions. You might create Smart Profiles and Multi Action sets for different tasks you do on your computer – one for live streaming, and another for video conferencing, for example.

It is recommended you watch the intro and overview video for the new Elgato Stream Deck Pedal above to get a good feel for its capabilities.

The device measures 244 x 175 x 49 mm / 9.6 x 6.9 x 1.9 inches, weighs 930 g / 2.1 lbs, comes with four pedal spring tension sets, and connects to your computer via a USB Type-C port (with a USB Type-C to USB Type-A connector cable in the box).

Elgato is selling the Steam Deck Pedal today via the official product page linked in the intro for $89.99.

Andorra Telecom, the only ISP in the principality of Andorra, suffered repeated distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks during a multi-day Twitch gaming tournament. The DDoS attacks occurred during the scheduled SquidCraft Games tournament in Minecraft, one of the most successful Twitch Rivals tournaments ever broadcast. Eight or more Andorran streamers were eliminated from the Twitch tournament after the second day of attacks due to their repeated disconnects. There is some suspicion that perpetrators planned the DDoS attacks on Andorra Telecom to cheat the Andorran's of their chance to win the $100,000 pot.

The SquidCraft Games was a highly anticipated Twitch streaming event designed to emulate the hit Netflix series called The Squid Game in Minecraft. As noted, it has been a viral game streaming event with a peak viewership of over a million on day two of the event. As per the TV series, this is an elimination game, and in this Twitch event, there is a healthy prize pot of $100,000 to ensure participants would be highly competitive. The event will end on Tuesday.

Ordinary Andorran Internet Users Become Collateral Damage in the SquidCraft Games

A significant portion of the 150 SquidCraft games participants lives in Andorra. Spanish language reports of the event confirm that day one went without a hitch for all players, in terms of fairness. The games "green light, red light," and "hide and seek" ran smoothly to their conclusions. 

The "cookie game" had to be suspended on day two due to a programming glitch. After that, however, the DDoS attack on Andorra Telecom began, and eight or more remaining participants from the principality all had their connections and Twitch streaming cut simultaneously. Unfortunately, the whole of Andorra had little or no internet connectivity for over half an hour after the start of the DDoS attacks.

About an hour after the DDoS had caused the above Twitch tournament calamity for the streamers, Andorra Telecom Tweeted to admit that it was getting back to normal after a DDoS attack. Until that time, the disgruntled SquidCraft Games participants could only postulate on the reasons for their disconnects. The Andorran contingent returned on the following day of the tournament, but another DDoS on Andorra Telecom inspired an exasperated sounding Tweet from the ISP.

All the Andorran participants in the SquidCraft Games got eliminated from the Twitch tournament. It is sad and unfair to go out this way, but the organizers didn't have a lot of choices. 

Highly Suspicious DDoS

Some suspect that DDoS attacks targeted Andorra Telecom due to this tournament and the large prize at stake. For example, on Twitter, Internet observers NetBlocks asserted that the Saturday evening attack was confirmed to be targeted at Team Andorra. Hopefully, some follow-up investigations and reports will point the finger more accurately, and the perpetrator disclosed.

Meanwhile, The SquidCraft Games continues into day four of six later today (from 2 pm ET), with 42 Twitch streamers left. 

Streaming is a bit of an odd beast, in that you both need to control a lot of technical processes on your end while also maintaining eye contact with your audience. If you're constantly turning away to check a second monitor or look at your keyboard, your viewers might feel ignored. That's where gear like the Elgato Stream Deck comes in handy (not to be mistaken with the Steam Deck), since it lets you set up hotkeys to control different aspects of your stream with the push of a button. Plus, each key has an individual LCD that lets you set a custom image to represent whatever's currently mapped to it.

Right now, Elgato's got three different sizes of the Stream Deck on sale for Cyber Monday, so you can get exactly the amount of buttons you need.

All of these Stream Decks work with Elgato's Stream Deck software, which more easily lets you map custom actions and images for each key. While you can technically mimic the function of a Stream Deck using a Raspberry Pi and a touchscreen, or even a USB numpad if you're crafty, little else comes close to the satisfaction and convenience of an official Stream Deck's "keys with screens" combo.

You can find even more savings at our best Cyber Monday PC gaming deals page. We're also tracking the best Cyber Monday monitor deals, best Cyber Monday CPU deals, best Cyber Monday SSD deals, best Cyber Monday gaming laptop deals, best Cyber Monday keyboard deals, best Cyber Monday gaming mouse deals and the best Cyber Monday PC hardware deals overall.

Makers and hobbyists will find sales by checking out the best Cyber Monday 3D printer deals, best Cyber Monday Raspberry Pi deals and best Cyber Monday robot deals. If you're shopping for a graphics card, we even have advice on how to find the best RTX 3080 deals, best RTX 3070 deals and best RTX 3060 deals you can find in this challenging market.

Streaming takes a lot of brainpower, which doesn’t leave room for many other tasks. When I decided to stream, although I have a schedule, I’m never that organized. I’m either running late or haven’t tweaked all my settings for that stream. Sometimes, I get so excited about starting a new indie game or beating a boss that I forget to Tweet out that I’m going live. However, all the tasks involved with streaming -- changing settings, going live, chatting with an audience and even promoting your stream on social media -- can be done faster and easier with a dedicated macro keypad like the Elgato Stream Deck MK.2.

An update to the popular Stream Deck, the MK.2 features 15 customizable keys, each of which doubles as a tiny color LED screen that shows you its function. You can configure each key to do just about anything, but some of the built-in features the software supports include sending automated Twitch chat messages, playing audio from soundboards, creating clips, voice modding, or posting tweets. The Stream Deck MK.2’s app has native support for OBS, Twitch and Twitter.

Released in July 2021 for $149, the MK.2 has a few helpful improvements over the original model, but these probably won’t be enough to push those who already own one to upgrade. The new model brings us an interchangeable faceplate, a USB-C port with detachable cable and sturdier, 45-degree fixed-angle stand. Otherwise, it’s the same device and has the same functionality and software as the 6-button Stream Deck Mini ($69) or the 32-key Stream Deck XL ($245).

Stream Deck MK.2 Specs

Design of Stream Deck MK.2

The Stream Deck has three rows of five buttons. The buttons are raised, pushable, and separated by black bars — giving each an individualized feel. The buttons don’t have haptic feedback when pressed but they are tactile. It’s really helpful during my streams of PC games to have a hotkey to toggle in between the game and the other apps I’m using such as Opera GX, Chrome and OBS. I know most people love having more buttons on a macro keypad, but I found that even 15 was a lot and I felt like I could have gotten by with the six buttons on the Stream Deck Mini, especially because you can always create folders to store different functions.

The Stream Deck MK.2 has the same 15 keys as the original but looks different than its predecessor. Standing at 4.6 x 3.3 x 3 inches, it’s smaller and sleeker, and the stand feels studier and fits inconspicuously on your desk. The original Deck weighed 6.4 ounces, which has now been whittled down to 5.1 ounces. 

The interchangeable faceplate snaps off into your hand. This feature makes it easier to customize your faceplate. Before you had to try to cover the 4.6 x 3.3 face of the 15 button layout with another customized case. Another option is placing a vinyl sticker atop the face of the Deck. Seven custom plates are now available for purchase on Elgato’s website for $10 each. 

The stand on the Stream Deck MK.2 looks totally different. The prior model had an adjustable stand, which seemed a little flimsy, but this is a weighted one-piece detachable that’s fixed at a 45-degree angle. The weight helps the MK.2 feel sturdy along with the anti-slip base.

The detachable USB-C plug is a big convenience. On the prior model, the short, 23-inch (59cm) cord was built into the device, but the MK.2 comes with a removable cable that’s a full meter long. 

Putting together the MK.2 is an easy, three-step process. The stand comes attached to the console in the box. After removing the stand, I simply plugged in the USB-C cable, which fits through a hole in the stand for easy cable management. Once that was done all that was left was plugging the cable into my computer and configuring the software.

Elgato Stream Deck MK.2 Software 

The Stream Deck app, which is the same for all models of Stream Deck, is the place where you configure all of the buttons. Navigating the software isn’t hard as there is a list of actions and supported software on the right with a picture of all the keys on Stream Deck on the right. To configure each button, drag and drop the action you’d like to assign on the appropriate spot on the button map.  

The built-in actions are organized by app / function and include categories for Elgato Game Capture, OBS Studio, Soundboard, Stream Deck functions (create a folder, set brightness,etc), Streamlabs OBS, Twitter and Twitch. If you want to create more than 15 buttons, you can add folders buttons which take you down a level where you can add a whole new set of buttons. 

You can also create custom actions that will hit a keyboard combination, launch a website or enter text for you. There’s a multi-action button that will do any combination of these together too. And you can even create your own custom icons to go on the buttons.

If building actions yourself isn’t enough, there are a lot of plugins like one that provides Spotify integration, although I don’t recommend using music during your streams (you could use it in your private time, though. You can also find plugins for other, non-streaming workloads such as programming in Visual Studio.

The Stream Deck MK.2 isn’t just for simplifying streaming, it helps with sound, not just monitoring volumes, but voice modding as well. When you see streamers making their voice echo, or sound like they just inhaled helium, they’re using Voicemod, a plugin that’s available for the Stream Deck that has some limited free content but charges a subscription fee for use of most of its effects. 

Where I would like to see more functionality is in the sound monitoring department. With Loupedeck, there are six knobs dedicated to handling a different program’s sound. 

Creating functions like running ads on your Twitch, emote-only chat, and creating clips are vital to having a seamless stream. The Stream Deck MK.2 also has the capability to create multiple profiles for running different Twitch accounts or for different occasions. You can connect to Twitch, YouTube, Streamlabs, and Twitter by signing in via the Stream Deck software. 

Connecting your Twitch account allows you to create buttons that integrate with your stream. I set a button to open OBS to have quicker access. Inside the OBS functions, you can switch scenes, start and stop your stream as well as move around sources.

Streaming With the Stream Deck MK.2

To see how the Stream Deck MK.2 works in practice, I tried it for one of my streaming sessions and found it changed my workflow significantly. From the time I decided I wanted to stream until the end of my stream, the only time I touched my keyboard was to update my title, change my game, and turn on my closed captioning feature.

I mostly used it for sound effects, scene transitions, and to mute my mic. It makes streaming more seamless and it makes things seem more fun. It’s like having your own in-house studio producer. If something crazy happens, I can click the scene transition button to a scene with just my camera so my viewers can see a full screen of my reaction. My favorite sound effect to use is the censor sound so if I want to have an impromptu “cursing” session I just continually press the button as I yell about being killed by the Imposter who I said was the Imposter two meetings ago!

Non-Streaming Uses of Stream Deck MK.2

Let’s talk about use cases outside of Twitch. The Stream Deck MK.2 has a Zoom plugin that allows you to turn on/off your camera and mute yourself. There’s also a Speed Test plugin, which is helpful when troubleshooting.

The Loupedeck has also spoiled me in this area because it has multiple functions built-in for Adobe Photoshop and other non-streaming apps. The Stream Deck software either doesn’t have these natively and there are plug-ins for some, but I didn’t see any for Adobe apps. You can always create your own Photoshop actions, though.

Sometimes I need a mental break in the middle of me staring at my computer all day. I start getting fidgety and not wanting to do actual work. The Deck provides some mental relief with its mini-games like Memory Game, Dice, and Reaction Deck. I’ve tested out the Memory Game and it’s not super competitive or invigorating — it’s really relaxing.

This macro keypad really has some range. The icons can be personalized with photos of you, your emotes, or funny photos that match the sound by using the Elgato key creator page. There are preloaded icon packs inspired by Assassin’s Creed Viking lore, Apex Legends, and a superhero pack.

Bottom Line

If you do any kind of streaming, the Stream Deck MK.2 will make your life easier and allow you to focus on the tasks that matter most: creating content and interacting with your audience. Just being able to hit a single button to do something like Tweet, instead of navigating through menus with my mouse and keyboard, is a game-changer for me.

I think this piece of technology is aimed at mid-level streamers. The software and plugins are easy to use and setup. However, if a person is new to streaming, this device could be overkill, as you may not need to activate that many functions.I also found myself wishing I had a dial to control the volume, a feature which the Loupedeck has, rather than pushing a button

The Stream Deck is helpful in everyday use outside of streaming. Providing shortcuts to various programs that I use has a really nice efficient feel to it. I honestly cannot go back to not having a macro keypad.

The Stream Deck MK.2 is a visual improvement over the original, with the key difference being the customizable plate sans vinyl stickers. The USB-C cable and new stand are helpful too. But if you already own a Stream Deck, there’s no need to rush out and get the MK.2 version just for cosmetics.

If you want to save money, consider the Stream Deck Mini, which is basically the same device but with six buttons. And, if you want a more robust solution for professional audio or video editing, one of the Loupedeck models, which start at $269 and go up to $549, may be a better choice thanks to their built-in jog dials. However, if you want a highly functional macro pad at a reasonable price, the Stream Deck MK.2 could be your best choice.

The official Raspberry Pi camera comes in many forms. From the original v1.3 all the way to the latest Raspberry Pi HQ camera, all use the same software. Using the raspistill and raspivid commands we can take still images and videos right from the terminal.

More advanced uses included manually controlling the white balance, color, saturation and brightness of an image and video. We can also create a simple video streaming service with just one line of code.

In this tutorial we will learn how to set up the camera, take a few test pics and then create a test stream to ensure that everything works before we launch into a project which creates video art using live video image effects that we can record on our desktop computer with very little effort.

Setting up a Raspberry Pi Camera 

If you're already familiar with how to set up a Pi camera module, you can skip ahead. These steps will work for all Raspberry Pi camera modules (including third-party ones). 

With the Raspberry Pi powered off. 

1. Open the camera port by gently lifting the plastic lock upwards. 

2. Insert the ribbon connector with the blue tab facing the USB / Ethernet ports. 

3. Close the lock on the connector and give it a very gentle pull to make sure it is in place.

4. Power up your Raspberry Pi and then go to Preferences >> Raspberry Pi Configuration. 

5. Click on the Enable button for the Camera found in the Interfaces tab.

6. Click Ok and reboot the Pi.

7. Open a Terminal and type the following command to take a quick picture to test the camera. 

$ raspistill -o test.jpg

After five seconds has elapsed, an image will be taken and saved as test.jpg. Using the file manager check that the image is correct before moving on.

Testing a Stream 

To start a stream we need to open a terminal and enter a rather long command. Ensure that your Raspberry Pi is connected to the network. For the best performance use an Ethernet cable, Wi-Fi will work, but you may see dropouts.

1. Get the hostname of your Raspberry Pi. Open a terminal and type in this command for your hostname. Make a note of the hostname. You may need to add “.local” to the end, depending on your network. 

$ hostname

2. Run the streaming command. The one line command to run a video stream live from the camera is rather long, so let's go through the command before we run it.

-o is our output, in this case set to none.

-t is the length of the video clip, using zero will set this to infinite.

-w and -h are the width and height of the video, in this case 800 x 600.

-fps are the frames per second for the video stream, a lower value should minimize dropouts.

| cvlc is a pipe which takes the output from the raspivid command, our video stream and streams the video using an h264 codec via real time streaming protocol (rtsp) over our network.

Run this command in a terminal on your Raspberry Pi.

raspivid -o - -t 0 -w 800 -h 600 -fps 12  | cvlc -vvv stream:///dev/stdin --sout '#rtp{sdp=rtsp://:8080/}' :demux=h264

3. On your Windows / Mac / Linux computer install VLC and then open VLC.

4. Go to Media >> Open Network Stream, or press CTRL + N.

5. Enter the rtsp address and port of your Raspberry Pi. The rtsp address is your Raspberry Pi’s hostname, prefixed with rtsp://, and the port was set to 8080. Click Play to start the stream. Here is our example rtsp address.

rtsp://raspberrypi:8080/

It will take VLC a few seconds to catch up with the stream, be patient. Soon you will see video streamed from your Raspberry Pi, with a delay of around 5 to 10 seconds.

6. To record a stream, click on Playback >> Record and then specify a filename. The recording will end when the stop button is pressed.

Getting Arty: Streaming With Filters 

The final part of this project is where we get creative. We will be creating a script that will first create an array (a list) of all the possible image effects. Then we create a variable to store the length of the array, before randomly choosing a number in the array that will control which effect is used when our stream goes live. We shall be writing the code on the Raspberry Pi using a GUI text editor.

1. Launch Geany (from the menu) and create a new file called random_stream.sh and remember to save often.

2. Enter the first line of code, which will tell the code where to find the Bash interpreter.

#!/bin/bash

3. Create an array to store all of the possible image effects in this project. There are 20 effects in total, and each has its own place inside the array, enabling our code to pick a specific effect based on a random number.

array[0]="none"array[1]="negative"array[2]="solarise"array[3]="sketch"array[4]="denoise"array[5]="emboss"array[6]="oilpant"array[7]="hatch"array[8]="gpen"array[9]="pastel"array[10]="watercolour"array[11]="film"array[12]="blur"array[13]="saturation"array[14]="colourswap"array[15]="washedout"array[16]="posterise"array[17]="colourpoint"array[18]="colourbalance"array[19]="cartoon"

4. Create a variable called size to store the number of effects in the array. This variable will store the output of a command (via {})  which checks the length of the array. 

size=${#array[@]}

5. Create another variable, index, which will store a random number between zero and the length of the array, in this case 20. 

index=$(($RANDOM % $size))

6. Print the chosen filter to the terminal, then wait for one second. 

echo ${array[$index]}sleep 1

7. Use raspivid to create an infinite stream at a resolution of 800 x 600 at 15 fps. The -ifx switch will be populated by a randomly chosen effect from the array To stream live video, this time we use a standard tcp stream. It works a little faster than rstp but your stream may have artefacts. The Pi listens (-l) for connections from any local IP address. 

raspivid -t 0 -w 800 -h 600 -ifx ${array[$index]} -fps 15 -l -o tcp://0.0.0.0:5000

8. Save the code to the /home/pi/ directory and exit from the editor.

9. Open a terminal and use this command to make the code executable.

$ chmod +x random_stream.sh

10. Run the code.

$ ./random_stream.sh

11. On your Windows / Mac / Linux computer open VLC. 

12. Go to Media >> Open Network Stream, or press CTRL + N. 

13. Enter the tcp address and port of your Raspberry Pi. The tcp address is the Raspberry Pi’s hostname, prefixed with tcp/h264://, and the port set to 5000. Click Play to start the stream. Here is our example tcp address. 

tcp/h264://raspberrypi.local:5000

14. To record a stream, click on Playback >> Record and then specify a filename. The recording will end when the stop button is pressed. 

15. To change effect, press CTRL + C in the Raspberry Pi terminal, then press the UP key and enter to run the command again, with hopefully a different filter. 

Complete Code Listing 

#!/bin/basharray[0]="none"array[1]="negative"array[2]="solarise"array[3]="sketch"array[4]="denoise"array[5]="emboss"array[6]="oilpant"array[7]="hatch"array[8]="gpen"array[9]="pastel"array[10]="watercolour"array[11]="film"array[12]="blur"array[13]="saturation"array[14]="colourswap"array[15]="washedout"array[16]="posterise"array[17]="colourpoint"array[18]="colourbalance"array[19]="cartoon"size=${#array[@]}index=$(($RANDOM % $size))echo ${array[$index]}sleep 1raspivid -t 0 -w 800 -h 600 -ifx ${array[$index]} -fps 15 -l -o tcp://0.0.0.0:5000

NZXT, a company well known for its PC components and peripherals, entered the pre-built PC scene not so long ago. NZXT has decided to expand its pre-built line-up  of Streamer and Mini PC families with Base, Plus and Pro options.

Starting with the Streamer PC family, NZXT has decided to create a PC that would represent a perfect fit for every content creator out there, or as its name suggests, a perfect fit for streamers. As the company itself notes: "The Streaming PC is built for quality, entry-level streams. It's an excellent build for multi-tasking, editing, and video rendering."

The Streamer PC is powered by AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X processor with 6 cores and 12 threads, that can boost up to 4.6 GHz. To pair with the CPU choice, each Streaming PC version includes 16 GB of DDR4 memory running in dual channel configuration with 3000 MHz speed. For storage, there is a 1TB NVMe PCIe Gen 3 M.2 SSD. All of these components are housed on a B550 ATX motherboard. The difference between the Streaming base model, Plus, and Pro SKUs is the graphics card it ships with.

In the base model, you get Nvidia's GeForce RTX 2060 GPU, while the Plus model ships with RTX 3070. The Pro model is offering the strongest solution in form of an RTX 3090 graphics card. Pricing for the base, Plus, and Pro models is $1,599, $1,999, and $2,999, respectively.

Next up is the H1 Mini PC series of NZXT pre-built desktops powered by Intel's Comet Lake or Rocket Lake processors, depending on the SKU. Each of the three (base model, Plus model, and Pro model) SKUs are designed around a 13-liter enclosure that offers a small form factor gaming solution.

In the H1 Mini PC, there is also a dual-channel 16 GB DDR4-3000 MHz memory, complemented by 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD. The only difference between the three models is the choice of CPU and GPU. In the base model, you get Intel's Comet Lake design in form of a Core i5-10400F processor. That is paired with Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1660 Super GPU and all housed on a Z590I ITX motherboard. In the Plus SKU, you are getting an Intel Core i7-10700K Tray processor with GeForce RTX 3060 graphics, while the Pro SKU offers Intel Core i9-11900K CPU and GeForce RTX 3070 GPU. For pricing, NZXT offers base, Plus, and Pro models for $1,399, $1,799, and $2,499, respectively.

Highlighting is a cool feature that lets you show off the best parts of your six-hour Twitch streams. If you highlight one stream multiple times, you can then string those together later for a highlight reel that could go up on YouTube. This allows you to immortalize your stream, especially because, if you aren’t a partner, Twitch deletes streams after 14 days. Once your stream is done, you are able to go back and create multiple highlights of one stream or publish the entire stream to YouTube as one video.

You can view recent highlights made by scrolling down to Most Recent Videos.

 What You Need to Highlight Your Stream

• Twitch Account
• Access to the desktop version of Twitch
• Archived Stream

Find and Pick an Archived Stream on Twitch

1. Click Creator Dashboard under your account photo in Twitch.

2. Select Video Producer under Content in the menu on the left

3. From Past Broadcast or All Videos, pick a stream you’d like to highlight

4. Click Highlight in the top menu

Toward the bottom of the screen, you’ll see a timeline with edit buttons.

Editing Your Archived Stream in Twitch

On the timeline we have a few different buttons that are easy to use:

From left to right the buttons are

• Undo Timeline Action
• Redo Timeline Action
• Remove Selected Segment - your selected segments will be highlighted in yellow box
• Split Segment at Playhead -the playhead is the cursor that you move back and forth on the timeline
• Add New Segment at Playhead

• Preview All Segments - plays the segments on the timeline
• Preview Current Segment - plays the selected segment only

• Input Start Segment Timestamp - this allows you to manually input the exact time for the segment to start
• Start Segment at Playhead
• Input End Segment Timestamp - manually input the exact time for the segment to end
• End Segment at Playhead

• Zoom Controls - These control the time-frame shown on the timeline. Clicking >|< centers the timelineon the playhead location
• Zoom Range can be changed from Full Length to 1 minute

• Display - This allows you to filter any Stream Markers that you may have made during stream. *Stream Markers are quick actions done while streaming to mark the place of an interesting event*

• Clips Menu - this allows you to view clips made by you or people watching your stream

• 3 Dots - this allows you to down clips data, and see keyboard shortcuts

1. Zoom into 30-minute increments. I’m starting at 00:22:23. The numbers are written in the format of hours:minutes:seconds. So my starting place is 22 minutes and 23 seconds into my livestream. I scrubbed through the video using my playhead to select a good starting place.

2. Zoom out to Full Length to view the whole segment to choose a place to end the segment

3. Highlight the end of the segment and drag it to a place where you  want to end. In my example, right now it ends at 02:32:01. After dragging it, it ends at 01:23:35.

The Highlight Queue on top of the timeline tells you the length of the segment, in my case 1 hour, 1 minute and 15 seconds long.

Creating Multiple Highlights in Twitch

The Highlight Queue will tell you to create multiple highlights, rename your highlight and change the category.

2. Name the highlight by clicking the first box

3. Change the category by clicking the second box

4. Repeat the steps on how to create a highlight

This sample highlight is 4 minutes and 46 seconds, which is longer than a clip which can only be 60 secs. You can make your highlights as long as you’d like.

5. Once you have all the highlights you’d like click Publish Highlights

Your highlights will start rendering and you’ll see this page. On the right side menu, you can edit your title, add a description, change the language, modify the category, add tags or set permissions of who can see it. On the left side you can preview the video, upload a thumbnail or view the link for the highlight

Once the video is doing processing you can download, export, share, unpublish or add it to a list.

You can now see your highlights in your Video Producer

How to Export Your Twitch Highlights to YouTube

1. Turn on Store Past Broadcasts

2. Click Stream in the Settings on the Creator Dashboard Menu

3. Select Settings in Twitch. It’s located in the right corner under your avatar.

4. Click Connections

5. Connect YouTube Account

6. Click Video Producer in Creator Dashboard.

7. Choose the highlight you’d like to export.

8. Click Export on your highlight to export it to YouTube.

9. Click Start Export.

How to View and Publish Your Twitch Video on YouTube

Select YouTube Studio under your profile photo on YouTube.com

Select Content from the menu on the left side

Select the video you uploaded from Twitch. The video will be private if you set the export to private or public if you set the export to public

You’ll then see the video in full detail. From here you can add more tags, tweak the description, and set the video to public if you haven’t done so already.

Filing taxes can be daunting, especially if you’re a professional streamer. Every penny that you make via Twitch, YouTube, or any other content creation platform needs to be reported. I’ve spoken to various CPAs, Tax Auditors, and tax filing companies to find some best practices when filing taxes as content creators. 

Editor’s Note: We contacted a number of tax professionals and researched several sources for this story. But it is meant to be general guidance, not professional legal advice. Please speak to a tax professional about these and other filing concerns before submitting your tax return.

You’ll notice that, when you level up to Affiliate status with Twitch, the company asks you to fill out a tax form. Once you do so from any business you are responsible for reporting that income. At the end of the year, these companies will send you a 1099/ W9 if you’ve made $600 or more. 

Twitch Yearly Payout Less Than $600

If you have not made at least $600 on their platform, Twitch is not obligated to send you a 1099 form, but you are still obligated to keep track of your earnings and report them to the IRS on a Schedule C.

If you agree to Twitch’s Affiliate/Partnership program but do not fill out a W9 to specify how much taxes should be withheld, the company automatically withholds up to 30%, as stated on Twitch.tv.

Non-U.S. residents are also subject to U.S. income taxes. “In most cases, a foreign person is subject to U.S. tax on its U.S. source income. Most types of U.S. source income received by a foreign person are subject to U.S. tax of 30%”, the IRS website states.

Hobbyist vs Self Employed

If you are planning to make money as a content creator, freelancer, or streamer you are self-employed and run your own business as a freelancer. According to IRS.gov, if you earn more than $400 in a year, you are subject to self-employment taxes of 15.3%, which go into retirement and medicare and must file 1040 or 1040-SR forms.

Also, you must determine if your streaming income is classified as a business or a hobby. If it’s a business, you can deduct expenses. The IRS lists nine criteria for determining whether something classifies as a business, including:

• "Whether you were successful in making a profit in similar activities in the past.
• Whether the activity makes a profit in some years and how much profit it makes.
• Whether you can expect to make a future profit from the appreciation of the assets used in the activity.”

Kari Brummond, Tax Preparer with TaxCure said, “When you have self-employment income, the IRS considers you to be a small business owner and lets you write off your business expenses. This includes everything you purchase to support your streaming business — microphones, PCs, cameras, and streaming software are all deductible…” 

If you constantly are losing money year after year as a content creator, the IRS will automatically determine you to be a hobbyist instead of a business. If you are spending more money on equipment than you are earning, it is a sign that you are losing money as a creator. 

Turbo Tax suggests keeping copies of receipts throughout the year and, if possible, using a business credit card to differentiate between content creator purchases and everyday purchases. Get oil changes at the beginning of the year so you can have proof of your mileage. These bookkeeping tips will help you determine if you are losing money and your yearly expenses.

Deductible Expenses for Streamers  

Ms. ZaCorra Bronson, a Tax Professional with W.E.B.S. Tax Preparation & Bookkeeping Services states, “[Since passage of] the Tax Cuts and Job Act, it is harder to deduct expenses because it  increased the standard deduction by almost half but eliminated many previous eligible deductions as well. Fees for tax preparation or investment management are no longer eligible deductibles.”

According to the IRS, deductible expenses for any business include rent, travel and assets (which could include equipment).

CPA Travis Guterman said that, as a content creator, your expenses can include internet services, Xbox subscriptions, games bought, computer equipment, gaming hardware and video equipment. Guterman offered a few tips to help you calculate how much of your internet and computer equipment you use for business.

“Claiming you use your home internet or telephone for 100% business use is not accurate,” Guterman said. “You're going to use it for personal matters such as streaming Netflix, communicating with friends and family, and etc."

If you’re trying to calculate how much is used for personal or business, think about how long you stream or edit videos. If you’re streaming 70 hours a week, there are 168 hours in a week, you use about 40% of your internet for business a week. If you only stream two hours for income, you use less than 10% of your internet for a business in a week. Calculating how much you use an Xbox subscription requires the same calculations.

Writing Off Purchases

If you're using a car for streaming purposes, you can keep track of the miles and deduct them on your taxes. Your business expenses can be write-offs up to a certain amount.

“As a general rule of thumb, you write off the entire cost of small purchases and routine expenses (office rent, electricity software subscription fees) in the year of purchase, and you deduct large expenses such as computers incrementally over time,” Brummond said. “However, the Section 179 deduction lets you claim the full cost of many equipment expenses in the year of purchase.”

Using an EIN Instead of an SSN

If you are in the early stages of creating content you don’t have to file for an LLC just yet, suggests Guterman. If you’d like to acquire a free EIN, you can do so via the IRS.gov website.

Having an EIN doesn’t mean you have to file separate taxes for your business; it just means that you don’t want to give out your social security number to every company you work with. Everything made is added or subtracted from your overall annual income.

Tips and Donations Count as Income

You have to count donations sent to your PayPal, CashApp, or Venmo because those aren’t just gifts; they are part of your income. Ms. Bronson and TurboTax both suggest you subtract the service fees from platforms like PayPal. If someone gives you $30, Paypal charges you three cents per donation, which leaves you with $29.97.

What if You Spent More Than You Made?

I spoke with Guterman about losses and how to calculate them into your income. He gave me this formula. If you buy a new camera that costs $300 but only made $400 from Twitch, your income from that platform would be $100. Or, if you buy a $300 camera, but only make $200 on the platform you’ve lost money and can subtract $100 from your overall income, but you need to itemize those expenses on your Schedule C.

Finding and speaking with an accountant is going to be in your best interest. Using tax preparation software can help you prepare your taxes as well.

Annie M. Yang, Accountant Manager suggests using FreeTaxUSA.com as the cheapest option to file your taxes.

“If you use any other tax software company, they charge around $100 to file a tax return with Schedule C, which is way too much money for someone who earned less than $600 last year from their business,” she said.

The IRS site is a great resource that will also help you file your taxes. You can call 1-800-829-1040 to get answers to your federal tax questions 24 hours a day. The deadline for filing federal taxes this year has been extended to May 17th. Some, but not all, states have extended their deadlines to May 17th as well (here's a list of current state deadlines but check with your state to be sure). If you need an extension beyond that for your federal taxes, visit IRS.gov.

Many Raspberry Pis are pressed into service as home media devices. They are a natural fit given their price, power and size. But one facet of media consumption where the Raspberry Pi needed a little help was streaming content from services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu which use Widevine DRM to deliver protected streaming media. In a recent update, Ventz at vpetkov.net has announced that an official Widevine package is now available for the Raspberry Pi 4 and 400.

Ventz is well known in the community for Chromium Media Edition, essentially the same Chromium executable but using a custom launcher and user agent that tricked sites such as Netflix, Hulu and Spotify to work with the Raspberry Pi. With the release of an official package for the Raspberry Pi we can now install the Widevine support for the provided Chromium browser.

Installation is a breeze, using just three lines of code, the first two to ensure our Pi is up to date before finally running the Widevine package installation.

sudo apt updatesudo apt full-upgradesudo apt install libwidevinecdm0

We tested the installation on a spare Raspberry Pi 4GB connected via Ethernet. Initially Netflix playback was a little choppy, but after a few seconds everything was in sync and playback was certainly comfortable.

Adding Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ to your home media center just got a little easier thanks to Ventz and the Raspberry Pi.

Facebook Gaming is steadily growing with no evidence of slowing down. Ever since the social network embraced the Mixer partners, its audience has gotten bigger. The unique thing about Facebook is that many more people view it on their phones than on their browsers. 

So when it comes to streaming, you can output in portrait or landscape and still grow your following. Streaming vertically is great for games like Diablo, Magic The Gathering, or even Among Us.

What You Need 

• OBS software
• A Facebook Account, personal or video game creator page
• A PC Capture card if you’re playing on console

1. Download OBS if you don’t already have it installed and launch it.  

After OBS launches it will automatically set the canvas to landscape with a resolution of 1920x1080 or 1280 x 720.

2. Click Settings on the bottom left to change the canvas to portrait mode

3. Change the Rescale Output to 720x1280 in the Output tab

4. Click the Video tab

5.  Select 720x1280 as the Base Canvas Resolution. The aspect ratio should say 9:16 

6. Select 720x1280 as  Output Scaled Resolution. 

7. Connect your Facebook Account in the Stream tab 

8. Click yes to continue when you get a message saying the resolution isn’t supported but it will correct the output.  

9. Check the option to Ignore the Streaming Service Setting Recommendations. This means it’ll output in the 720x1280 resolution.  

10. Add your Stream Key, which can be found on your Facebook page after clicking the Live button. After adding your stream key, click apply. 

The canvas will change to Portrait

How to Add your Game to Vertical layout - Customize Scene for Vertical Gameplay

1. Add your capture card to the scene. If you’re playing a PC game, add the game by clicking Game Capture 

2. Right-click on the Game Capture window to transform to the Center to Screen 

3. Edit Transform by right-clicking on the Game Capture window to  

4. Set Scene Item Transform to get the gameplay to fit this resolution

These settings are a starting place. Depending on the game you’re playing you can resize and move the window around to have your character be center. For example, for Diablo III my settings are Position -424.0000 x 0.0000. Rotation - 0. Size 1559 x 877. 

Aligning Your Gameplay and the On-Screen Elements 

Duplicate pieces of your Game Capture Screen and place them below the Gameplay. Duplicated Game Capture will allow you to rearrange elements of your game to fit the vertical size.  

1. Right-click to Copy and Paste the Game Capture source in the same scene. The drawback to duplicating the source is you can’t rename it to organize them.  

2. Press and hold the ALT key and drag in the sides to alter the game window 

3. Continue to do this with all the elements on the canvas 

Adding Facebook Alerts

Go to FB.gg/streamer to get the URLs for all your Facebook alerts.

1. Click the three dots to Open the Alerts List in a new tab and copy the URL

2. Add the URL as a Browser Source 

a. Right click to Interact with the Browser and log into your Facebook to receive alerts in real time. 

3. Resize the window to 1042x782. You can’t see your Alert Box until you get an alert. You can also send yourself a test alert in the same menu you found the Alert Box URL. 

You can also add your FB chat to your stream by clicking the three dots, copying the URL and adding it as a Browser Source. But if the viewer is watching on mobile, the comments are displayed on screen. 

4. Add your camera and you’re ready to stream 

When you’re done your Scenes and Sources should look like this:

This is how your broadcast looks on Facebook desktop

XSplit is a broadcast application like OBS (Open Broadcast Software). There are a few differences in the features because there are paid and free versions of XSplit. XSplit Broadcaster has a professional feel and is not hard to set up because it easily integrates with all the major platforms, including Twitch.

What You Need to Stream on XSplit

• XSplit Account
• Livestream platform account on Twitch, Facebook, YouTube or Restream
• A PC that can handle at least 720p, 30 fps
• A capture card if you are streaming from a console.
•  Mic / webcam / headset: For recording yourself. Check out our lists of best webcams, best gaming headsets and best gaming microphones.

How to Set Up XSplit

1. Sign up for an XSplit account at www.XSplit.com.

2. Download the Broadcaster software after you sign up for your account. 

3. When the software downloads it will ask if it can make changes to your computer, click Yes to continue. It will ask you this every time you open Broadcaster.

4. Click Broadcast in the left  corner the select Set Up a New Output. To set up a new output means to connect your streaming platform like Twitch or YouTube. You can set up multiple accounts for multiple streaming platforms.

5. Each platform will request authorization for XSplit to use it . Click Authorize XSplit to use Twitch (or whatever platform(s) you have). 

6. After you verify your Twitch account it will show up under Choose a Twitch Account. Once you see the account you want to stream to click on it. You can also have multiple Twitch accounts logged in on XSplit. But you can only stream to one account at a time. 

7. This is what authorizing XSplit to use your Twitch will look like. Click Next.

XSplit will automatically determine your server and tell you what your recommended settings are for Twitch and the other platforms available. Just because there are recommended settings doesn’t mean that’s the highest setting you can stream on. 

XSplit Settings for 1920 x 1080 running 60 FPS on Twitch 

Twitch Properties are for technical stream settings like your Bitrate and Codec. You don’t usually have to pay attention to these settings. The only thing I would change for a smooth stream with great graphics is the Video Encoding.  

Codec encodes or decodes a digital data stream or signal. Currently, it’s on H.264 and is using my graphics card the GTX 1060. I change my Codec to x264 because it has better quality, meaning it gives my stream a more polished look.  

Bitrate: The lower the Bitrate the choppier the stream can be. I recommend 5000 for 1080p streams. Running at a lower setting like 1280 x 720 at 30FPS the bitrate should be raised to 4000 maximum and 1500 minimum. And the Codec can still change x264. 

That’s recommended bitrate for Twitch. Recommended setting for YouTube & Facebook are 4000 to 6000.

How to Change the Resolution and Framerate on XSplit

1. Click on the resolution and framerate in the upper right corner. 

2. Scroll down to Resolution and select the resolution works for your stream. The two most common Resolution options are 1280 x720 (16:9) & 1920 x 1080 (16:9). 

3. Click on Resolution scroll down to Framerate to change your framerate. While streaming at 1920 x 1080 the framerate is usually 60 frames per second. Streaming at 1280 x 720 the framerate is 30 fps.  

How to Import OBS Scenes into XSplit 

If you have scenes on OBS that you don’t want to recreate in XSplit, there’s a very easy way to port them over. Before importing your OBS scenes to XSplit you must save your scenes.

1. Open OBS, click Profile in the upper left corner & select Export and choose a place to save them. 

2. Switch to XSplit. 

3. Click Tools located in the upper left  menu. 

4. Select Permissions. 

5. Check the box for OBS Scene Importer and click apply. 

6. Click Import from OBS Studio. 

7. Select the scenes you’d like to import and click open. 

8. Click Import. Now your scenes and sources are available in XSplit. 

How to Create New Scenes & Sources in XSplit 

If you are starting from scratch and want to build your scenes in XSplit, whether you’re using StreamElements, StreamLabs, or importing an overlay you made yourself, it’s very easy to use.

1. Click the + button to add more scenes.You can rename the Scene by clicking on the white bar toward the bottom.

2. To add an overlay as an image, video, or GIF click Add Source at the bottom of the screen. Your File Explorer will open up and you can choose your overlay from there.

How to add an Overlay from StreamElements to XSplit

Adding an overlay from StreamElements and StreamLabs is easy. These are free websites in which to create overlays.

1.  Sign up for an account on StreamElements using a streaming platform or your email.

2. Create your overlay. 

3. Click the link button to copy the URL to your clipboard.

4.  Switch back to the XSplit software and  select paste. 

5. Grab the edges of your overlay to adjust it to the size you want.

Using VCam with XSplit

VCam is an additional free program under the XSplit brand that allows any user to remove background without a green screen and create different effects without any additional software. 

1.  Download install and run VCam. You can get it on XSplit’s site.  

2. Click continue after Vcam launches and starts its calibration. 

You can blur your background by moving the slider up & down.

You can remove your background.

You can add a background from their collection of images or upload your own image, gif, video, or webpage by clicking Add Background.

You can also change the brightness, contrast or move the image to the right or left by clicking the edit button near the blur bar.

If you have multiple cameras you can select them from the list.

Click 3 dots “...” to adjust your webcam settings.

How to add your webcam or VCam to your Scene

1. Select Add Source ->Devices -> Video and then XSplit VCam or your Webcam. 

How to Use Your Phone or Tablet Instead of a Webcam 

If you don’t have a webcam you can use XSplit Connect Webcam which allows you to use your smartphone camera as a webcam.

2.  Open XSplit VCam & select the ^ button. 

3. Click Connect your mobile phone camera. 

It is supposed to connect because it’s on the same IP address. However, in my tests, it didn’t yet work because it’s in beta. You may have better luck. 

How to add your Mic to your Scene in XSplit

1. Select Add Source ->Devices-> Audio, and then select the mic you want to use.  

Additional mic & audio settings are located in the bottom right corner.

2. Click Settings underneath the mic button for advanced options like using Noise Gate. 

3. Use Noise Gate Threshold if you have a fan that your mic is picking up. Sliding the bar down lowers the gate and lets in more noise. Sliding the bar up raises the gate and let’s less noise in. Checking the Noise Suppression box helps lower all background noise.  

4. Clicking the settings button will open general and advance settings. 

5. In the Audio tab, you can adjust your system sound/headphones, microphone, and control if you’d like your audio to have a delay.

6. Use the Audio Preview section to monitor the final audio output from your stream. It may sound like an echo but the echo won’t show up in recordings or livestream.

7. Click the drop-down menu under System Sound allows to choose what audio your stream picks up, like audio from your entire PC, which might include, Discord notifications or YouTube audio. Or you can set it to just pick up your voice and the gameplay.

Due to latency, there may be a delay between the live feed of the game and when it reaches XSplit (particularly if you are using a capture card). The delay checkbox allows you to create a delay on video and audio sources, like your System sound, Webcam, and microphone.

8. The white bars next to the microphone and speakerphone icon control the volumes of your mic and the PC sound. Click and hold the left button on your mouse to make the volumes go up or down.  

How to Set a Delay for a Source in XSplit

1. Find out how much the delay is by measuring it in seconds. 

2. Convert that time it into milliseconds. For example, 2 seconds is 2,000 milliseconds.

3. Input that into the delay section and tes it. There will be a lot of fine-tuning to get the delays the sync up. 

How to Set Up a Console and Capture Card in XSplit 

If you are streaming with a console, you need a capture card to connect it with XSplit

1. Hook up your capture card to your console.

2. Turn on your console.

3. Click Add Source at the bottom of the screen, select devices -> video and select your capture card. You can resize the window by grabbing the edges of the box and pulling them outward or inward. 

How to Set Up PC Game Streaming in XSPlit 

If you are streaming PC Games you don’t need a capture card. 

1. Open the game you’d like to play.

2. Select Add Source at the bottom of the screen then select Game Capture and the game will appear in the list under Auto-Detect. 

3. Resize the game display  by grabbing the edges of the window and pulling them outward if you want to make it bigger or inward to make it smaller.

How to Start a Livestream in XSplit

After your platform of choice, overlay and gameplay are added and your mic and camera settings are configured, you can start livestreaming. 

1. Select the button on the top right above your preview window. If you only have one platform click the Stream button and your stream will startup. 

2. Select the platform where you’d like to go live if you have multiple platforms. 

3. Click the stream button and your stream is now live. The red button and the message in the bottom right corner confirm your stream is live. 

Extra XSplit Streaming Settings

Saving Scenes

You can have multiple scenes for different platforms or games. Multiple scenes saved into one file is a Presentation.

1.  To save these scenes select File in the upper left corner, Save Presentation, and choose where to save it.  

2. Select File, New Presentation to create another set of scenes You can even save, load, or add individual scenes by selecting File.

Adding Transitions in XSplit

Transitions are for moving from scene to scene. And XSplit comes with preloaded transitions, which you will find on the bottom right corner of the screen.  

You are able to favorite them with the star button.

And if you have a custom transition that you’ve made, feel free to upload it by selecting the transitions, scrolling to the bottom, and selecting Stinger or Luma.

Express Video Editor

XSplit has its own video editor which is another program you can download from its website.  

Adding a poll to your Twitch stream is a great way to engage with your viewers. It allows you to learn more about your community and have them engage with your gaming decisions in real-time. 

For example, you might ask, "do I play the campaign or multiplayer mode?" or "should we make friends with the mercenary or hand him over to the law?" or perhaps "What should we play today?" Whatever question you choose, here's how to create a poll in Twitch.

What You Need to Create Twitch Polls 

• Twitch Affiliate or Partner account - Twitch Polls are only accessible to Affiliates and Partners only. Affiliates is a Twitch recognized status for streamers who have consistently streamed and built a community on Twitch. Partners are people who are sponsored and branded streamers on Twitch.
• A computer.
• Broadcasting software to go live on Twitch. For example, Xsplit or Open Broadcast Software, OBS.

Once your Twitch account is Affiliate status, you’ll have access to your Polls located in your dashboard.  

Where to Find Poll Manager on Twitch 

1.  Click on your profile picture in the top right corner of the Twitch interface. 

2. Scroll down to Creator Dashboard and click on it. 

In your Creator Dashboard, you’ll see panels on your right-hand side. 

3. Hover over the panels with your mouse and scroll down to the bottom to where you see a blank panel with a plus sign.

4. Click the empty panel with a plus sign to see more Quick Action panels. 

Panels are call-to-action items that can be activated during livestreams. Quick Action panels allow you to use panels during a livestream without fumbling through menus.

5. The Quick Action panel we’re looking for is Manage Poll. If you don’t have it added yet, click the ADD button on the panel.  

Once it’s added, you can see it in your list of panels. You can create a Poll before and during your livestream. 

How to Create a Poll in Twitch 

1. Click the Manage Poll panel to create a new poll. Here, I’ve already set up a previous poll, so I will click New Poll to start another. Use View Poll Results to look at the results of the previous poll to see which option is the winner.  

2. Fill out the form to set up your poll. Start by typing a question you want to ask. Then add options for viewers to choose from. 

Twitch polls currently allow you to fill out two answers minimum and five answers max

3. The last thing to do before starting your poll is set the timeframe for how long viewers will be able to vote on it. Voting can last from one minute to 10 minutes.  

How to Manage Poll Settings in Twitch 

Below the form where you set up your poll are options to adjust voting settings. Here, you can allow Additional Votes, meaning one person can vote for more than one option or vote for a single option multiple times. 

If you choose to allow viewers to cast multiple votes for a single option, their first vote will always be free. After that, they can spend Bits or Channel Points to cast additional votes. Bits are the currency used on Twitch and can be purchased through the site. Channel Points are unique to each streamer and earned by watching their livestreams. You can set how much each additional vote costs in the Settings, but note that additional votes using Bits or Channel Points can’t be cast on mobile. 

How to View Poll Results on Twitch 

1. After selecting the timeframe for your poll, select start poll. You’ll see an overlay for the poll countdown. 

This overlay allows you to view votes in real time, end the poll early, or delete the poll altogether.  

2. After the poll has ended you can review the results in a new tab. The winning answer will have the highest percentage by it as well as the most votes. 

3. Click Vote Breakdown to see how many viewers voted with Bits or Channel Points for each option, as well as the top contributor.

4. Click the Copy Button to review the results in a different tab. This URL allows you to post the results of yourpoll in your stream.

Polls are a fun way to engage with your viewers and find out what they’re interested in. They’re also great for creating unity among viewers. 

There are now only days until Cyberpunk 2077 is finally released, but it seems that some lucky buyers have received their copies early courtesy of US retailer Best Buy. But in a recent tweet CD Projekt Red have asked people not to stream before December 9 3 AM PST.

Streamer Cohh Carnage posted to Twitter that they had received their PS4 copy of Cyberpunk 2077 collectors edition from Best Buy. It is not uncommon for physical copies of games to ship early, largely due to the logistics of postal services. A Reddit thread has started where fans are showing off their physical media.

The wait for Cyberpunk 2077 has been long, and there have been numerous delays, but with mere days to wait, it would be a shame to spoil the surprise on December 10, hence why CD Projekt Red has taken the opportunity to ask streamers not to post videos or stream. In a fun, yet serious tweet the team behind Cyberpunk 2077 advise that anyone caught releasing videos before the deadline will receive a visit from MAX-TAC, an in-game group who hunt down lawbreakers. In reality, any videos will receive a takedown notice.

Cyberpunk 2077 is due for release on December 10 and we are excited to explore the world of Night City. The best way is via a gaming PC, and we have collated the best specs to play Cyberpunk 2077 on a range of PCs. 

Google has added "limited" 8K resolution (7680 x 4320) support to its YouTube app for Android TV, its operating system targeting smart TVs, set-top boxes and the like. Previously, playing 8K YouTube videos required a properly specced PC or console, but this recent addition is a key development in the industry's adoption of 8K.

The Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 are already helping to set the stage for wider adoption of 8K in general. Some of the new best graphics cards also support 8K. 

The latest update for the YouTube app for Android TV (version 2.12.08) came out last week, bringing support for playback of 8K videos if you have an TV screen that's using the Android 10 OS or newer, reports PCWatch. 

The announcement may seem odd to those who follow YouTube, since the service added support for 8K videos back in 2015 (only for PCs). However, this is still key because it brings 8K content to the living room without a console or PC. But how big of a breakthrough is it? 

Monitors and televisions featuring 8K resolution are still expensive. Many are just getting into 4K, and it'll be a while before the industry has convinced shoppers that an 8K screen is necessary. 

Also making 8K hardware seem less beneficial is the lack of 8K content actually available to enjoy. 8K content, be it broadcast, streaming videos or discs, are still rare. This is partially due to complexities with cost and 8K content distribution. 

8K Production Costs

From a production point of view, everything is relatively straightforward. There are broadcast, cinema and even consumer-grade 8K digital cameras (and even smartphones with 8K capabilities) available from more than a dozen companies. Movies shot on film can also be scanned in 8K. There are 8K post-production hardware/software solutions and processes. Several major existing, as well as upcoming, projects were at least partly shot in 8K (Bloodshot, The New Mutants, Black Widow, Morbius), and there are already a bunch of movies shot in the ARRIRAW 6.5K format (Mulan, The Revenant, The Call of the Wild). 

Note that the ongoing 8K rollout coincides with the rollout of the Rec. 2020/BT.2020 color space both for cinemas and televisions, which adds certain challenges to 8K post-production. Due to higher requirements for processing power, storage and memory, 8K/Rec.2020 production equipment and post-production tools are more expensive when compared to 2K and 4K. Therefore, while beyond-4K hardware and software is available, decision-makers have to invest in 8K production in a bid to make 8K content widespread. 

8K Distribution Challenges

Shooting a movie using a high-end camera and post-processing it in a 6.5K or 8K resolution is a bit harder and more expensive compared to making 2K or 4K film, but that's only half of the story. The distribution of 8K content faces numerous roadblocks.  

Several 8K projectors are already available, but that doesn't mean they're flying off shelves. Cinemas that recently invested in 4K at 120 Hz Rec. 2020 projectors are having a particularly hard time making money off of them due to pandemic-related lockdowns and movie release delays. As a consequence, not a lot of cinemas are 8K-ready today. 

8K TVs are more widespread, but getting actual 8K content on them is somewhat tricky. The 8K Association says that it is highly unlikely that another optical disc format for 8K movies will be introduced anytime soon. That makes streaming the main option, since satellite broadcasting isn't exactly widespread. In contrast, local IPTV services are available in select territories. 

Distributing 8K content via the Internet is a bandwidth challenge for streaming services, ISPs and sometimes even end users. An 8K HEVC-encoded video stream can use 50-100 Mbps of bandwidth, which is expensive both from a bandwidth and storage point of view.  

YouTube and Vimeo already have hundreds of 8K videos encoded using various codecs (AV1 or HEVC), but many of them come from TV manufacturers wanting to demonstrate capabilities of their latest devices, travel bloggers, indie producer  or even end users. This kind of content isn't likely to become widely popular, but if more people get 8K TVs, and popular 8K content is released, bandwidth might become a problem. 

'Smart Streaming' Might Help 

On the codec side of matters, there are AV1, HEVC and LCEVC encoders available for 8K today. They use quite a lot of bandwidth for 8K videos. In the longer term, more advanced AVS3 (finalized in 2020), EVC (feature freeze as of August 2020) and VVC/H.266 (finalized in 2020) codecs will be used. These codecs significantly increase the complexity of decoders (about twice that of HEVC), so their adoption will take some time. Furthermore, new hardware, like SoCs and TVs, will be required to take advantage of the new compression formats. 

Currently, streaming services and hardware makers are trying to find a way to reduce bitrates. One such method is dubbed Smart Streaming. 

Smart Streaming is an umbrella term that describes proprietary approaches to reduce the bandwidth required for 8K streaming. Several hardware manufacturers — Samsung, Sharp and Fujitsu, just to name a few — are considering Smart Streaming in combination with existing codecs as the most practical option for near-term 8K streaming solution.

Samsung is looking to provide content creators with its AI upscaler algorithm to downscale their 8K master while capturing downscaling metadata and embedding it into the HEVC stream. According to Samsung, its approach reduces bandwidth requirements from 50 Mbps to 15 Mbps. This is a proprietary solution for Samsung TVs, but technically it could work with live TV. According to the 8K Association, Amazon is experimenting with the technology. 

Harmonic, a developer of video streaming and cable access solutions, proposes to use content-adaptive encoding (CAE), along with existing codecs. This solution might work on a broad range of hardware but will unlikely work for live TV. 

Since Smart Streaming is not a universal standard, it remains to be seen whether it'll take off. In any case, it always takes a while before such standards are finalized. 

Final Thoughts 

Google deserves some kudos for adding 8K playback to its YouTube for Android TV app. It's possible that Microsoft and Sony's latest game consoles nudged them in this direction, but it's still a big step for mainstream 8K. 

8K streaming support by Android TVs, the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 sets the stage for wider adoption of 8K in general and particularly 8K streaming. 

Major Hollywood studios have produced numerous 6.5K and 8K movies already with more to come. Without a new optical disc format, they are poised to distribute these movies using various streaming platforms. While we don't expect blockbuster 8K movies from the Big Five to debut on YouTube, the latter might develop original 8K content.

Now that Ubuntu Desktop is available for Raspberry Pi 4, users no longer need to fiddle with terminal commands to enjoy Plex Media Server on Raspberry Pi. In this article, we will set up Ubuntu Desktop and turn our Raspberry Pi into a streaming media server. We have chosen Plex Media Server since it is available in the Ubuntu Appliance portfolio. Check out our recent article on the Ubuntu Appliance portfolio for Raspberry Pi here. 

What is Plex Media Server? 

Plex Media Server turns your computer into a server for your content (music, photos, and videos) enabling access to your content anywhere in the world. Your content is streamed to your authenticated Plex app including Smart TVs, Chromecast, Roku, Amazon FireTV, and even Alexa and Google Home. A basic account on Plex is free and premium features are available via Plex Pass. Plex also offers ad supported movies and TV on their streaming platform. Users can share their libraries with friends and family and/or even watch content together.

This article provides step-by-step instructions to:

1. Install Ubuntu Desktop on Raspberry Pi.

2. Load your media on your Raspberry Pi.

3. Set up your Raspberry Pi as a Plex Media Server.

What You’ll Need for this Project 

• Raspberry Pi 4 4GB RAM or higher
• Raspberry Pi Imager installed on a computer running Windows, osX, Linux
• 32 GB (or larger) microSD card (see best Raspberry Pi microSD cards)
• Power supply/Keyboard/Mouse/Monitor/HDMI Cable (for your Raspberry Pi)
• Your media stored on a USB drive.

Before You Begin 

• Organize your media collection, name the files and group music in folders by artist. Movies should be named by movie title. More info on organizing your media collection from Plex. Organize your music, photos, and videos into respectively named folders. You can organize your music with the hierarchy, Music > Artist > Album, Videos by title, and Photos > Year > Month.
• Copy your media (photos, music, videos) onto a USB drive. There are of course other ways to transfer your media, but we have found the USB drive method to be the easiest.
• Please note that your Raspberry Pi must be powered ON and connected to the internet for your Plex Media Server to work. After you have completed the steps in this tutorial, you’ll access your content from this device via the Plex app. The Plex app is available for iPhone, Android, SmartTVs, Roku, Chromecast, AppleTV, and more. Review the Plex website for the most updated list of devices.

Part 1: Basic Ubuntu Desktop Install 

In this section, we will install Ubuntu desktop on our Raspberry Pi.

1. Insert the microSD card into the corresponding slot on your computer. The next steps in this project will erase all data on your microSD card.

2. Launch Raspberry Pi Imager app on your computer.

3. Click on CHOOSE OS under the Operating System heading.

4. Click the arrow > for Ubuntu. 

5. Select Ubuntu Desktop. 

6. Click CHOOSE SD CARD and select the microSD card you inserted in step 1.

7. Click WRITE. It will take at least 10 minutes to write and verify that Ubuntu has been written to your microSD card.

8. When the task is finished, remove your microSD card from your computer and insert into your Raspberry Pi.

9. Connect your USB drive, monitor, keyboard and mouse to your Raspberry Pi. Boot your Pi. The first time Ubuntu Desktop loads, it will take about 5 minutes.

10. Follow the setup wizard to configure your Raspberry Pi. 

Part 2: Install Plex Media Server and Transfer Your Media 

1. Using the Ubuntu Appliance library click on Plex Media Server. This will appear at the end of the setup wizard. 

2. Click the Install button for Plex Media Server. 

3. Wait for the install to finish, this should take around 10 minutes.  

4. Open the file manager and navigate to your USB drive. Copy the videos from your USB drive to the system default Videos folder on your Raspberry Pi. Repeat the same steps for your photos and music. 

5. Open the Plex Media Server by clicking on the grid of nine dots in the bottom left of the screen.  

6. Plex will open a window on your default browser. Create an account on Plex. 

7. Follow the Plex setup wizard. Type in the name for your Plex server, the default is your computer name. Click “Allow me to access my media outside my home” if you wish to access your media from outside of your network.  

8. To tell Plex where to find our media, movies for example, select Movies, then Next. 

9. Click Browse For Media Folder  

10. Navigate to /home/yourname/Videos and click ADD. “Yourname” is the name of the user which was created during the Ubuntu setup wizard. 

11. Click Add Library.  

12. Click the Add Library button. 

13. Repeat the process for Music, Photos and any additional media you would like to access from your Plex Media Server. 

14. Click Next and you will be prompted to Claim your server. Click Claim It Now. 

Part 3: Stream Your Media Content 

1. From your desktop/laptop computer, go to https://www.plex.tv/. Login and click the Launch button in the top right corner.  

2. Navigate to your content and test out your new media server. If you don’t immediately see your content, it will take a few minutes to Scan your Library files for the first time. 

3. There is a Plex app for many devices enabling you to enjoy your media from your laptops, cell phone and smart TV. View the full list here.

4. You can listen to the music on your Plex Media Server from Amazon Alexa by enabling the Plex Skill on Alexa. Say, “Alexa, ask Plex to play music.”  

The internet can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Today it’s easier than ever to hop on the web, make connections with the like-minded, learn something new or even launch a career, like game streaming. Streamers build a following by putting their skills and personality out there, and you can’t be a popular streamer without interacting with your viewers and the broader community on Twitch YouTube and the like. But what happens when that community is plagued with toxic behavior, from hate speech to harassment, that can seem louder than the kudos and positive emojis? As a technology business, can innovations like artificial intelligence serve as the elixir for an industry made unpleasant by its own customers?

Trolls Gone Wild

If you’re internet-savvy enough to have made it to this website, chances are you’ve seen or even experienced how nasty people can be online. With streamers, the insults can come in real-time and become more personal as your face and image are put on display. In fact, according to Intel research,10% of players who quit gaming cited toxicity as the reason.

In an op-ed, a Twitch streamer known as ZombaeKillz detailed her own experiences as black female streamer.

“In two decades of online gaming, I have been stalked offline, threatened with rape and murder and even saw users steal my kids' pictures from Facebook so they could mock them in online groups,” she wrote. “The feeling of helplessness and violation is something you never forget. But with gaming giants … embracing the Black Lives Matter movement in recent months, you might think that these companies would be more conscientious about stopping bigotry on their platforms.

However, based on my experiences and those of other streamers of color I speak to, it’s clear that the reality doesn’t live up to the rhetoric.”

It’s no secret that various minority groups, including the LGBTQIA community, feel “vulnerable” in these environments, as ZombaeKillz put it. And while you can block people on Twitch and other game streaming platforms, most grant enough leeway for multiple offenses, whether calling someone ugly or calling someone a racial slur, before getting banned -- if they are even disciplined at all.

Vague Policies Leave Streamers Vulnerable

To help police its community, Twitch relies heavily on a team of human moderators, but could an influx of tech help make the platform, which has an average of 1.5 million viewers at any moment, more user-friendly?

Twitch’s content moderation is built upon its Terms of Service and Community guidelines. Streamers also have the option to build additional layers of standards on top of that. For example, streamers can use volunteer moderators to help moderate content on their channel. These volunteer moderations “play a vital role in the Twitch community,” a Twitch spokesperson told Tom’s Hardware.

“We invest heavily in this area and support them with tools and resources to make their jobs easier, (such as Mod View), and improve the overall moderation structure on Twitch,” the spokesperson said.

Twitch’s Mod View feature is just one of the ways we see tech starting to make moderation of over 4 million unique streamers’ channels more plausible. Announced in March, Mod View is a home base of tools for Twitch moderators that replaces the need to type commands in chat.

When it comes to dealing with actual complaints, Twitch uses “a combination of human moderators and automation”the spokesperson told us. One of the platform’s biggest investments is in “trust & Safety,” they said. This spring, the company launched the Twitch Safety Advisory Council. It’s also hiring a VP of global trust and safety.

“We have doubled the size of our safety operations team this past year, enabling us to process reports much faster, and added new tools for moderators, [such as] moderator chat logs, and viewers to control their experience, [such as] chat filters,” Twitch’s spokesperson said.

“We also have work underway, including a review of our Hateful Conduct and Harassment policies, enhanced offensive username detection, improvements to AutoMod and our Banned Words list and other projects focused on reducing harassment and hateful conduct. According to Twtich’s policy, hateful conduct is anything that “promotes, encourages or facilitates discrimination, denigration, objectification, harassment or violence based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability or serious medical condition or veteran status and is prohibited.”

But when it comes to punishment for such “prohibited” activity, things get fuzzy. Prohibited typically means forbidden, but in Twitch’s case, doing something forbidden doesn’t seem to mean you’ll be prevented from doing it ever again. Twitch’s policy says hateful conduct is a “zero-tolerance violation” but then immediately points to a “range of enforcement actions,” which includes indefinite suspension, as well as warnings and temporary suspensions (1-30 days).

When we asked Twitch if it ever permanently bans users, the company would only point me to its Account Enforcements and Chat Bans page, which states: “Depending on the nature of the violation, we take a range of actions including a warning, a temporary suspension and, for more serious offenses, an indefinite suspension.” However, the guidelines don’t delineate which behaviors lead to this level of enforcement.

“For the most serious offenses, we will immediately and indefinitely suspend your account with no opportunity to appeal,” Twitch’s Account Enforcements and Chat Bans page adds. “If a banned user appears in a third-party channel while being suspended, this could cause the ban of the channel they appear in.”

Of course, the best streaming platforms of 2020 include more than just Twitch. There are also gamers on platforms like Facebook Gaming and YouTube. WIth YouTube, policies essentially allow for the occasional slip-up of slurs and other offenses.

YouTube lets you anonymously flag content for it to review if you think it violates their guidelines. And YouTube says it removes any content that violates its Community Guidelines. But the people who posted it may be back sooner than you’d expect.

YouTube explicitly states that “Hate speech, predatory behavior, graphic violence, malicious attacks, and content that promotes harmful or dangerous behavior isn't allowed on YouTube” and gets more specific by detailing hate speech against “age, caste, disability, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, nationality, race, immigration status, religion, sex/gender, sexual orientation, victims of a major violent event and their kin [and] veteran status”

The site dives even further when it comes to race, refuting those who “incite or promote hatred based on any of the attributes noted above. This can take the form of speech, text, or imagery promoting these stereotypes or treating them as factual.” The list goes on, putting the X on “claiming superiority of a group” or comparing people to “animals, insects, pests, disease or any other non-human entity.”

But when it comes to enforcement, YouTube gets way less specific, saying it may remove content, but only “in some rare cases.” Confusingly, further reading the policy follows up with a statement that seems to implicate that this content will automatically be removed:

“If your content violates this policy, we’ll remove the content and send you an email to let you know. If this is your first time violating our Community Guidelines, you’ll get a warning with no penalty to your channel. If it’s not, we’ll issue a strike against your channel. If you get three strikes, your channel will be terminated,” YouTube’s policy states.

YouTube’s so-called Strikes System grants users three strikes within a 90-day period. Theoretically, you could spread your harassment over a careful 91-day period and never rack up more than a couple strikes. It’s possible YouTube’s moderation squad is too savvy for this, but its policy doesn’t explicitly prevent it.

Streaming Platforms Are Already Moderating With Tech

Perhaps more black-and-white than streaming platforms’ open-ended language on fighting harassment, a layer (or two) of tech is also critical. Advancements like machine learning are common in streaming platforms’ moderation toolkits. But there’s also room for more advanced technologies to help fight hate speech and other harassment in real-time.

First, let’s start with some things gaming platforms are currently using.

Twitch’s AutoMod, for example, combines machine learning and natural language processing algorithms to identify “risky” chat messages. It puts these comments on hold until a moderator can view them and approve them for display. The tool can also read through misspellings and evasive language.

AutoMod also allows for five levels of moderation, including none, over four different categories: discrimination, hostility, profanity and sexual content. Twitch controls the dictionary of words used, but streamers can also make a list of words for their own channel.

YouTube builds community policies by working with YouTube creators, as well as machine learning “to detect problematic content at scale,” considering that hundreds of hours of content are reportedly loaded to the platform by the minute. Flagged content, meanwhile, gets viewed by “trained human reviewers.” YouTube also employs an Intelligence Desk that “monitors the news, social media and user reports to detect new trends surrounding inappropriate content.”

But with offenders having loopholes for keeping their accounts and, therefore, the harassment alive, what can be done so streamers don’t have to see hate speech and other offensive behavior in the first place?

Hope for Improvement: Real-Time Moderation Tools

One of the obvious challenges with streaming moderation is the sheer wealth of videos and comments that hits these platforms that are exploding with popularity. Streamers can have volunteer moderators on air with them, but automation has the potential to take things to the next level.

At 2019’s Game Developers Conference (GDC), Intel detailed a fascinating way for tech to play a role in moderating. Intel showed off a prototype tech made in collaboration with Spirit AI that used artificial intelligence to identify toxic chat. Spirit AI had been focusing on text chat, but with Intel’s help the technology is growing to moderate voice chat too.

“The tooling that we built, basically you point it at a directory on your on your system. It would go through that list of files and tell you which ones which ones flagged certain types of behaviors and why,” George Kennedy, Intel gaming solutions architect, told Tom’s hardware regarding the demo showed off last year.

Since then, Intel has worked with Discord to harvest opt-in data from its Destiny 2 channel and built a validated data set to prove that it has a “really high accuracy at detecting certain types of toxic content,” Kennedy said. Now, the company is experimenting with different features.

Currently the tech takes human speech (mostly in English), converts it to text and then uses behavior models that Spirit AI uses for its various customers in the gaming industry. The behavior models vary. Some look at an entire domain and tell you if something’s toxic. Other companies use individual behavior models for individual categories. Those types of models have the option to use deep learning or a random forest classifier.

Kennedy showed us a couple of demos that Intel has been using to test its machine learning pipelines. They’re able to take content from any video or audio file, including one playing off YouTube, or microphone and do transcripts in real-time, blocking out whatever type of audio is specified.

They’re also experimenting with a “temperature tracking mechanism” where gamers could track the temperature of a conversation with another user. If the conversation crosses the gamer’s threshold of comfort, the other user is muted.

In a demo, Kennedy played a YouTube video and had the AI replace the names of fruits with quacks. This sort of technology could help gamers with hands-free moderation during livestreams.

It also showed us customization options with different categories, putting the power in the user’s hands.

“After the algorithm converts it to text, then we have a set of behavior models that we use to do detection,” Kennedy explained.

This is all still in the research and development phase, and Intel hasn’t committed to building any products, but there’s clearly opportunity down the line -- especially considering the wide gaps stream platform’s community policies are leaving exposed.

Streamers Push for More

Tech can automate moderation, helping to better tackle large audiences and live content and giving streamers customization power with tools that are easier to understand and leverage than streaming platforms’ community policies. But ultimately, the industry is widely looking at streaming gaming platforms to use their power too.

“Once these different platforms have policies, they can use machine learning tools to enforce those policies, but at the end of the day, you may need to get to behavior change,” Intel’s Kennedy said. “The platforms have the option to ban people for things that violate their terms of service. … If you don't want to actually censor players, there is the option to give players user-facing tools that let them control the type of content that they encounter when they play games.”

“We see a future where in addition to delivering the best power performance, we can actually improve the gamer experience so that this issue is less of a problem for them,” the exec said.

In her op-ed, ZombaeKillz pushed for more enforcements from platforms like Twitch, such as “IP bans, so users cannot create multiple accounts for harassment” and a way to prevent hate speech-based usernames.

Some streamers have pushed for instant bans for certain offenses.

““Any time a racial slur [is used], whether they tried to explain that that was a one-time thing or they didn’t mean it like that, i feel like just one strike and they’re gone [would be a better policy,” YouTube streamer BrownSugarSaga told Tom’s Hardware. “Anything against the LGBT community, one strike and you’re completely gone. I feel like they should be a bit more strict and...take that into consideration because a lot of times people do report, but the [offenders] still stay there. They are not strict enough … they wait for multiple reports…”

Tech is only as powerful as the people and policies behind it. And it seems that players at the heart of the burgeoning streaming industry are looking to the platforms to step up their game.

Avermedia is no stranger to powering content creators, from recording gameplay footage for sharing on YouTube or for streaming, the company has several options. Now the company has discounted several of its capture devices, which is perfect if you want to get involved with content creation, or if you're looking to upgrade to something that can handle higher bit rates and frame rates. The company's deals will definitely make an appearance on our list of Best Prime Day Deals.

Avermedia Live Gamer Ultra

First up is the Avermedia Live Gamer Ultra (GC553), which normally retails for $249.99, but now sells on Amazon.com for just $189.66. Much like the Avermedia Live Gamer 4K, the Live Gamer Ultra can record 1080p at 60 fps, 1080p at 120 fps, 1440p at 60 fps, and 2160 (4K) at 30 fps. To the rear of the device, you'll find both an HDMI output for sending the signal to a computer and an HDMI input for connecting a gaming console, secondary PC, webcam, or camera video signal. 

Thanks to the Live Gamer Ultra's USB 3.0 connection, you'll experience zero latency when sending the signal from whatever you're capturing. It also supports up to 4K passthrough at 60 frames per second, making it perfect for capturing content from a second PC, or even a current or next-gen gaming console like the Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5. 

Avermedia Portable 2 Plus

Next up is the Avermedia Portable 2 Plus (GC513), which normally retails for $159.99, but now sells for $139.99 on Amazon. Unlike the Live Gamer Ultra, the Portable 2 Plus can capture and stream content up to 1080p at 60 fps and supports 4K passthrough. That means it will work with all existing and upcoming gaming consoles and PCs.

While it can't record 4K content, the Portable 2 Plus doubles down on convenience. The beauty of the Portable 2 Plus is that you can record content without a computer. Simply pop in a MicroSD card, set the device to the computer-less mode, and it's ready to record at a moment's notice. It also includes audio inputs for headsets and microphones and has a volume adjust control built into the front of the device. This makes this a fantastic choice if you attend gaming events, or if you just want to capture content at a friend's house (or just about anywhere else).  When you're ready to use it with a computer, it will function as a traditional capture device if you change it to computer mode.

Both Avermedia capture devices are fully compatible with popular streaming and recording applications such as OBS, Streamlabs OBS, XSplit, as well as Avermedia's own recording suite, ReCentral. 

Either one is a steal at this price, but don't wait too long or they might sell out. 

Whether you’re broadcasting your game streams every day or doing the occasional “just chatting” session on weekends, you want to grow your audience. One way to grow and also to avoid alienating your fans is to make sure that your content is as accessible as possible for those with hearing or vision challenges. Adding closed captioning is the best place to start.

I have recently had several hard of hearing or visually impaired people join my community and I didn’t actually realize how inaccessible my broadcasts were to people I called my friends. During my discussions with others on accessibility I realized that, not only did I need to make my streams more accessible for friends, but also I was missing out on entire audiences of potential viewers. According to the NIH, 15 percent of American adults have some kind of hearing issue. And that doesn’t even include everyone who just likes to watch video with the volume off. 

Accessibility is often overlooked in gaming. It’s seen as tedious to implement and a lack of ease of use can be intimidating. Hopefully this quick how to can help you on your journey to inclusion. Here’s how to add captions to your game streams.

What You’ll Need for Game Stream Captioning 

• A capable PC, ideally one of the best gaming PCs or best gaming laptops. But if you’re streaming now, you are probably ok. My PC is an MSI GE63 Raider 8SE laptop. Prebuilt and a great beginners streaming laptop.

• Google Chrome as a web browser as I have found other browsers do not support the web captioner software.

• More than one monitor for display. Game and window capturing in OBS are impossible on one window so if you are running on a one screen set up this captioning setup isn't possible. See our list of best gaming monitors if you’re shopping.

• A headset is not necessary but helps cut down on background noise that might interfere with the transcription. The best gaming headsets will keep the game sounds from getting into the mic.

• A microphone, ideally one of the best gaming microphones. : The better the microphone the better the captioning service will be able to accurately capture your audio. For this tutorial I used a Blue Yeti X. A webcam isn't necessary for this but I always use one for broadcasts and here I used the Logitech stream cam. Here’s a list of the best webcams.

• OBS Studio Software. This is a free download. I also used the Streamelements plug-in for OBS as this is my preferred streaming software.

How to Set Up Real-Time Captions for Game Streaming 

1. Launch OBS and move to whichever monitor you do not plan on launching your game from.

2. Navigate to https://webcaptioner.com/captioner  in your browser.

3. Sign in  by clicking on the three dots in the lower right corner of the window and then the sign-in button. You can use your Google, Facebook or Twitter account as a login.  This saves your information and configuration so you do not need to reconfigure every time you access the site 

4. Make sure the site is capturing the right audio device by navigating to chrome://settings/content/microphone and making sure your microphone is selected.  

5. Adjust profanity settings and capture size and color by navigating to the settings menu (accessible by clicking the three dots). . I left mine on default and allowed profanity since my broadcasts are 18 and up.

6. Click Start Captioning.  

If you are prompted for permission to use your microphone, Allow it. 

If you see that the microphone is blocked, click the camera icon and select “Always allow” 

7. Select new window from the menu. 

A second window appears, without any of the browser or bookmark bars in it.  This is the window we’ll be showing in our stream, because we don’t want our viewers to see all the extra buttons and widgets, just the captions. DO NOT MINIMIZE THIS NEW WINDOW. OBS won’t see the captions if it is minimized. 

8. Click the + button under Sources in OBS and select Window Capture. 

9. Click OK to create a new Window Capture source. 

10. Select the Captions window from the Window pulldown, select Window title must match from the Window Match Priority menu and click OK. 

11. Resize and position the box within OBS. Hold down the alt key and drag to crop the box so that it only shows the amount of text you want visible at once and doesn’t show the window title bar from the browser. I crop to a single line of text and place the box along the center bottom of my screen.  

After this is complete you are ready to go live with a stream that is accessible. There are other closed captioning options embedded with Twitch or available through plugins but from the members of the disabled community I have spoken with, this is the easiest set up and most reliable captioning service.

Webcaptioner.com also recently announced that it will be working with OBS studio to encode closed captions in a stream via adding the OBS Studio channel. Making broadcasting and gaming more accessible doesn’t just benefit the audience, it also broadens the amount of viewers you as the broadcaster can reach. This is a great and relatively simple way to begin turning your broadcasts into an accessible and inclusive space.

EVGA announced today the release of XR1, which it says is the first device ever to be certified by Open Broadcaster Software (OBS), the popular open-source streaming platform. 

Targetings streamers and gamers, EVGA threw in some ARGB lighting. The XR1 is also completely plug-and-play, so it doesn't require any drivers to operate. Once it's connected to your machine, you're ready to set up a new stream in OBS.

The card connects via USB 3.0 Type-C connection. For video input and capturing audio, the XR1 uses HDMI 2.0 and supports up HDR at up to 4K resolution at 60 frames per second (fps). 

The XR1 also has a feature called Advanced Pass Through. By pushing the button on the top of the box, you can switch to this mode, which outputs video to meet a 144 Hz refresh rate, while maintaining 60 fps 4K. 

According to OBS, certified devices are put through a series of tests to ensure complete compatibility with their platform. At the moment, the XR1 card is the only device certified by OBS.

EVGA XR1 capture card orders are limited to one per household, due to limited supply.