How to privately stream gaming without any intermediate servers while voice-chatting with viewers

streaming

I had a look at this question and another one, which offer good answers on streaming in general. However, I'd like to stream gaming to few (say, one or two) persons, so I'd like to omit using a public server.

The second thing is, I'd like to stream audio while voice-chatting, which poses the additional difficulty of echo-suppression.

In brief, is there any (preferably free) streaming software that

  • is a local server (so no intermediate service like ustream is needed), or at least
  • allows sound streaming while voice-chatting (e.g. via mumble or skype)?

Best Answer

Hoo. Oh boy. Well, since you're only streaming audio, it won't be too difficult...

Here's some info on what you'll need. I haven't tested this specifically, but it should work. (If it doesn't, feel free to ask and I'll try to set it up myself as well)

  1. Virtual Audio Cable. Note that you'll suffer a bit of lag in the sound from whichever you choose to delay, though you can get away with setting it to 150ms. This costs $30, but is pretty well worth it if you plan on streaming often.

  2. IceCast. This is a stream server. It's free and supports all sorts of Fun Stuff.

  3. ScannerCast. Mostly to stream sound input. I guess it's supposed to be used for radios of some sort, but it works really nicely for simple audio.

Once you have those, here are some instructions...

  1. Set up a virtual audio cable and change your default audio device to that cable. This is where all of your sounds will be playing, so don't be surprised when things are quiet.

  2. Open a VAC repeater and feed your virtual cable to your usual output device. Set the buffer as low as you are comfortable (150ms works for me, you may have to use more if you're running intensive programs; this is your sound lag from when it plays to when you actually hear it).

  3. Set your favorite VoIP program to use your normal sound card, too, since you don't want it being looped through VAC.

  4. Set up IceCast and other fun stuff. I won't go into detail here because every setup is different; here's the manual.

  5. Start ScannerCast and set it up for your IceCast server. You can disable most/all of the radioreference control stuff since you aren't using it.

  6. Make sure you have port forwarding for where your IceCast stream is and then give your friends a link to make sure everything's working. If it is, congratulations, everything is just dandy and hopefully you'll have a long, joyous life of streaming games to the interweb.

Most of these are interchangable. You can substitute VAC for two sound card outputs (and duct-tape a solution together); IceCast can be swapped for plenty of other streaming solutions (VLC, perhaps) and ScannerCast is just the first Icecast-capable stream source I found after a few minutes of looking.

If something really breaks, though, feel free to comment and I can try to help.

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