Using two PCs for streaming/transcoding?

[mkdr]

Hello,

I have a problem and wanted to ask if this can be solved:

I want to stream a live screen capture in realative good quallity and resolution of a videogame session to one of my friends. The problem is, I don't have the needed CPU power to play the game, capture video over directshow, encode the video and stream it at the same time on the same PC. So I thought, why not use one of my other PCs just for the transcoding job.

So I tried severel hours to stream the live capture to my other PC, get the stream there and restream it on the 2nd PC with transcoding options. I never could find a good setting for this job. I tried all the streaming protocols like HTTP, MMSH, RTP/RTSP/UDP did not work. I tried disabling transcoding completely on PC1, but that resulted in just the stream could not be opened on PC2, or there was just audio but no video. I also tried trancsoding on PC1 with much higher kbit/s settings, so there would not be a quallity loss from PC1 to PC1, but changing the kbit/s does not change the CPU power VLC needs to encode, so that does not change anything.

My question is now, first, is there a table somewhere to look into, which setting, like which protocol+which codec(video and audio)+which ecnoder settings result in the lowest CPU power needed? I am always at like 95-100% CPU throttle when I just stream with PC1, and when it is 100% the stream breaks.

And my 2nd question is, is it possible to do that job, capture on PC1, stream it in lossless quallity to a 2nd PC, transcode it there, and stream it then over the internet.

Thanks for helping Bye!

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

You need to encode before you can send. The bandwidth required for raw video exceeds what almost any local area network can do. And even if your network could substain the bandwidth, TCP/IP requires a lot of CPU at high speed.

So you can't do what you're trying to do.

[rogerdpack]

Hello,
I tried disabling transcoding completely on PC1, but that resulted in just the stream could not be opened on PC2, or there was just audio but no video.

Seems like a popular topic:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=82291

Maybe you can use gigabit ethernet? Maybe you can use some encoding that doesn't eat up much cpu for the first phase? If not then you might be able to transmit a lower-res version of the same image (encoded) over the wire. What are you using to screen grab?

I guess another option would be to save it straight to disk. Then at least your friend can watch it later