Ustream, Vimeo, Capture cards, Camera sharing, Capture software... HELP!!!

[adessmith]

Ok, I'm really good with figuring these things out, but I cant seem to find a winning combination. I cant record and stream video from our celeron 2.2ghz with 768MB RAM without the CPU maxing out at 100%

I just typed up a crazy long post, detailing every combination of software and hardware I had tried and the issues I ran into. I then picked up my mouse and accidently hit the back button which erased the entire post.

Trying to get a video feed from a camcorder and an audio feed from our soundcard to stream to ustream and record locally to a format other than flash. (Something I can upload to vimeo without re-encoding every week)
I have to use vimeo because sometimes editing has to be done and I cant re-upload an edited file to ustream. Also, sometimes our dsl connection drops and chops up the recording if we do it through ustream. I really need local recording.

I have 2 video capture devices which I have borrowed, I have to return one, and they are going to let me keep the other:
1) Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250
2) Plextor PX-AV100U

I have tried various programs for capturing the video including:
1) Windows Media Encoder (WME)
2) Windows Movie Maker
3) WinTV2000 (Included with the WinTV card)

I have tried various "virtual webcam" programs for two puproses (getting the stream from the WinTV card seen by ustream, and allowing 2 applications to capture the same video feed) These programs include:
1) ManyCam (worthless, slow and clunky)
2) WebCamMax (trial, didnt see the WinTV card, etc...)
3) Super Webcam (Worked the best out of the 3, but still used a lot of the CPU clock cycles, and didnt work with the WinTV card)

I cant seem to get anything to recognize the WinTV card except for manycam and its native WTV2k app. manycam is slow and clunky (at least on our computer). WTV2k works great, and puts almost no load on the CPU when it comes to video. Audio is another story. It will not allow us to record from the line-in on our sound card, you can only record from the audio inputs on the capture card. Also that software doesnt have any sort of audio meter to see how hot the signal is, and there is no way to adjust the audio level at the input in the software.

The closest thing I have come up with to a winning combination, is the Plextor capture card -> Super Webcam -> Ustream and WME.
The problem is, it pushes the CPU to 100% when all this is running and the video turns into a slideshow. I have tried at various audio and video quality settings, and cant find anything that gives good results.

This morning I had to resort to recording through ustream's console, downloading the recording from ustream, converting the FLV to MP4 format, editing it and uploading the MP4 to vimeo. And for some reason, even the ustream video was really really choppy this morning (this is usually not a problem)


Any advice?
I just want to record a decent quality MP4 to upload to vimeo, while streaming live to ustream from the same source, using the hardware we already have (I am doing all of this out of my own pocket). I need some streamlined software thats not gonna take a screaming fast system to run. I dont care about any extra features. Just something that will capture video from one of these capture cards, get the audio from the sound card, and display an audio level meter. I also need a way to share this card with ustream while this other program records from it.

Any thoughts on this?

[fiadmimedia]

it you pushing to ustream have you tried using the flash live media encoder it also records the program to your machine also. always remember this when broadcasting based on your specs it will always max your cpu out, i would recommend upgrading your memory and change your cpu too if your pc can handle such an upgrade. if not, if you can get a higher end pc to test it to see if it works any better.

Also the capture card you using is ok but i have always being told the to get an osprey capture card from viewcast, which i did get after a while i never regreted getting it.

The machine i have a quad core with 4 gb of ram and the drive is raid 0 and 95% of the time it's maxed out at least 80% to 85% of the the time

[tedanderson]

Are you running your encoding software on a separate drive or partition?

[fiadmimedia]

everything is running on the same drive. the machine i am using is only being used for streaming only nothing else

[dmerchen]

@fiadmimedia: That's surprising that that Osprey is causing such a high load on the CPU, we usually only see 65-75% load on the processor.

@tedanderson: I agree with fiadmimedia, seems to me like you might be stretching the boundaries of your hardware on this one. Quadcore processors can be had on the cheap anymore, but judging by the fact your running a Celeron, it's unlikely you'll have an LGA 775 socket or newer motherboard. While it's not impossible, it appears some of the faster Celeron's do infact use the LGA 775 socket.

I tend to be Bias towards Intel, so I'd suggest something like the Intel Core 2 Q8200 @ 2.33GHz. It's a rather cost effective processor and would run you about $150. Personally I'd try starting from scratch if you can get the budget for it.

As far as your program concerns go, check out Wirecast, it will do exactly what you want it to, and record in different formats and bit-rates from the same source. Only catch is that it's not exactly a cheap program.

[randyvogl]

Sounds like a processor issue. I would try and find a computer with a faster processor, we run this same thing on a Macbook pro core 2 duo 1 or 2 gigs of RAM (not sure) and it has worked flawlessly with live firewire connections to cameras, USB cameras, many variations of mics, and directly connecting to the sound board.

[dmerchen]

What do you use for streaming on the Macbook Pro? Flash Streaming Media Encoder is a windows only app, or do you just use the flash based app?