New Procaster beta available (UPDATED 6/7/2011)

[coryfrans]

New Procaster PC Beta - JUNE 2011

Today we are releasing Procaster BETA version 20.1.242 for PC (An OSX Mac beta is now available at http://www.livestream.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6991). We have been working over the last 4 months to make Procaster the highest quality video encoder in the market with HD multi-bitrate support. This means that we have re-engineered the architecture of the video engine to ensure full audio and video frame accuracy on live streams and recorded files. This is a very important foundation for the product to now move forward quickly with new features.

Version 20.1.242
Fixes
-Games 0kbps bug
-You can now close procaster when you are running a game, it will no longer crash a game
-Reconnection improved
-Local recording now always stays recording
-CPU not powerfull enough when using a webcam
-Installer issue
-Small GUI fixes (in text)

Known bugs
-When running a game under administrator rights, but not procaster, procaster will not detect the game, not really a bug, it's due to rights
-When closing the game fast after closing procaster, it could crash the game on crash, you won't loose any data.

Tested Games on Windows 7 64 bit
-Aliens vs Predator (DX9 and DX11)
-Assassin's Creed II
-Battlefield: Bad Company 2
-Bulletsorm Demo
-Call of Duty: Black Ops (Single Player)
-Dead Space 2
-Dragon Age II Demo
-Fallout 3
-Fallout: New Vegas
-Half-Life: Deathmatch: Source
-Half-Life: Source
-Medal of Honor(TM) Single Player
-Metro 2033 (DX9, DX10 and DX11)
-Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter Demo
-The Witcher 2 You need to start the game and close Launcher.exe to have it detect the game, will be fixed in the next release


If you have any other bug than in the list above, PLEASE let us know in this forum post.

You can download this beta version here: http://cdn.livestream.com/mds/Livest...r-20.1.242.exe

We are looking forward to your feedback.


Previous Beta Bug Fixes:
Version 20.1.232
Bug Fixes:
General fixes
-Audio now preserves the correct volume setting
-In audio, you can now click an volume channel (or main volume) and press left right to change it in small amounts.
-Removed audio channels, stay removed now
-Target framerate is preserved per quality
-GUI fixes and updates
-Improved crop preview

Gaming fixes
-Gaming hud is now placable in any game
-Interactive chat works now on most game
-When switching to game mode, and you have custom quality selected, you will keep your custom settings
-Applying settings when switching to game mode, when having multi quality selected

Common Known Bugs (effecting all users):
-Game crashing when you close procaster when in game mode
-Small memory leak - This is due to flash
-Lag feature sometimes makes it worse - Disable anti-lag feature if you experience lag problems

Version 20.1.225

Bug Fixes:
General fixes
-Better support for adding and removing USB Audio devices when procaster is running
-Small audio fixes (volume preserving)
-GUI fixes and updates
-Longer recordings can now be played back in WMP (new recordings made with this version) and windows detects this information

Game fixes
-The hud can now be moved arround with the Move hud shortcut key
-Administrator mode is no longer required on some games to go live (Dead Space 2 for example), Just press your go live shortcut keys (ctrl+f1 by default) and it should always go live.
-Minor tweaks

Common Known Bugs (effecting all users):
-Game crashing when you close procaster when in game mode
-Small memory leak in the game mode
-Games that previously didn't go live, now don't have a moving HUD
-Long login time for some

Version 20.1.221

Bug Fixes:
-GUI fixes and updates
-The little preview window can be clicked, to have a big preview, right clicking the big preview will cause it to go full screen
-Better detection of Audio devices plugged in and out
-In games you now can press ctrl+5 to change the position of the HUD (or you can change the hotkey in the settings)
-Anti lag feature can be disabled in the settings

Version 20.1.217

Bug Fixes:
-Better support for OpenGL games
-GUI fixes and updates
-When deleting a recording after streaming, user is asked if they are sure they wish to delete

Version 20.1.215

Bug Fixes:
-Improved Audio Mixer selection behavior
-Minor sync issues with Blackmagic devices
-Improved stability with the UI

Version 20.1.211

Bug Fixes:
-Improved Multi streaming performance
-Mono audio is enabled with Multi stream
-Improved CPU load messaging
-Desktop audio capture is not enabled by default unless you are streaming in "No Camera" mode

Version 20.1.206

Bug Fixes:
-Using Mono audio does not switch to stereo audio.


Version 20.1.205

New features:
-There is now the option to stream HD + Medium + Mobile
-There is a new Game profile, this profile gets automaticly selected when you go into game mode
-Improved the game detection

Bug Fixes:
-Camera settings are preserved when you exit Procaster
-Fixed an DV Camera issue when switching between frame rates
-Fixed a bug that the game didn't receive focus after going out of interactive mode
-The save recording dialog only shows now when you record to the livestream servers
-The desktop capture bracket settings are preserved (no more 1 pixel increasements) and aspect ratio is ignored with desktop streaming between going live and unlive
-Filtering out illegal characters in chat and recording names
-In the save dialog, you can now press escape to delete the recording from the livestream servers, or enter to save them
-In the aero message, you can now click No
-Selection lists that drop down (like camera and quality suggestions) don't close when you go outside of them



Version 20.1.202

New features :
- Video quality improvement
- Audio quality improvement
- HD Multi Bitrate - You can now select qualities to stream at two, three or four bitrates at the same time (If you have enough resources - CPU/Memory/Bandwidth etc…). The new Livestream Player now offers the ability for the user to select any of the streams you are publishing from Procaster. This only works with live streams, the recorded stream will be the main default stream (typically a 400-600Kbps stream)
- Anti-Lag feature - Procaster does not build delay if you have a connection issue. It warns you in the control bar and continues encoding. When the connection recovers, it resumes 2-6 seconds behind realtime (in the past it would have resumed where it had issue, thus creating lag). The local record file in the My Videos folder however has the all the content.
- Continue to record while loosing your internet connection
- If you lose the internet connection Procaster will tell you so, but continue to record to a local file and encode (simply remove the ethernet plug to test)
- You can then replug the internet and it will reconnect automatically to Livestream and go live while the recording locally will have everything.
- Perfect audio synchronization on the live stream at all frame rates
- Perfect audio sync on the recorded file. Recorded MP4 file can be edited in Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro with full audio sync
- Live Color corrector (enable in preference/video to enable it)
- Blackmagic Decklink 720p input frame conversion improvement resulting in improved video and audio quality
- New CPU% Indicator on the the control bar
- Bit rate control improvement (other version spiked too much)
- Recording of all bitrates to My Videos by default

[Ragowit]

I have been trying out this version with my Hauppauge HD PVR Capture Device, but the program freezes at "Stopping Audio Capturing" after I hit the "GO LIVE"-button. A Ctrl+Shift+ESC and End Process is the only way out.

[Lafryill]

Only problems I'm really having:

Crashing. With this build my computer has been crashing after several minutes of streaming. Besides this beta build I use 20.0.95 which I haven't had these issues with.

Also, when streaming HD, High, Mobile, I can only output at 4:3 or 16:9, it would be nice if I could change that and/or just have an HD option only.

Thirdly, even without HD procaster still seems to make me lag so much more than using FMLE 2.5, VHScrCap, and a small script to stream to Justin.tv.

[coryfrans]

Originally Posted by Lafryill

Only problems I'm really having:

Crashing. With this build my computer has been crashing after several minutes of streaming. Besides this beta build I use 20.0.95 which I haven't had these issues with.

Also, when streaming HD, High, Mobile, I can only output at 4:3 or 16:9, it would be nice if I could change that and/or just have an HD option only.

Thirdly, even without HD procaster still seems to make me lag so much more than using FMLE 2.5, VHScrCap, and a small script to stream to Justin.tv.

Hello,

The HD, High, Medium, Mobile setting is designed for Users that have High end machines, and upload speeds. This is a setting that sends 4 streams at once. At minimum you should have about a 5 mbps upload speed. Please let me know the specs of the machine you are streaming from, the type of capture device you are using, and the results you receive from www.speedtest.net

[theqat]

Thanks for continuing to improve Procaster I really think Livestream has something special going in terms of ease of use.

I'm experiencing something that might be a problem in Procaster or might be something to do with my computer. I've been testing the beta by running through a Starcraft 2 replay at 1920x1080 with Procaster game mode set to 1280x720/30 keyframe interval/1000kbps bitrate.

Regardless of what framerate I choose in Procaster, the framerate that it encodes gradually declines throughout the recording--it will start out near the desired framerate and then decrease slowly for the rest of the video. I'm wondering whether this is something the Livestream team can fix, if i'm just not giving the program enough bandwidth to work with, or whether it's just my aging hardware (pertinent parts listed below in case it helps figure anything out)

c2d e8400
6gb RAM
radeon 5750
~4000kbps comcast upstream

naturally, the test videos are available on my channel if you need to see the behavior first-hand. hopefully i've given them self-explanatory titles

it also seems reluctant to use all the bandwidth i'm allocating in the procaster settings--in the latest video i had it set to 1200 but it rarely strayed above 850 or 900

[foray]

i checked it out and this beta version of procaster still does not remember the user's choice to stream with the source "no camera".

it also does not send username data to the livestream studio like it used to in previous versions; this makes it impossible to manage multi-user channels since everyone is now anonymous.

please consider these features in the next version.

[coryfrans]

Originally Posted by theqat

Thanks for continuing to improve Procaster I really think Livestream has something special going in terms of ease of use.

I'm experiencing something that might be a problem in Procaster or might be something to do with my computer. I've been testing the beta by running through a Starcraft 2 replay at 1920x1080 with Procaster game mode set to 1280x720/30 keyframe interval/1000kbps bitrate.

Regardless of what framerate I choose in Procaster, the framerate that it encodes gradually declines throughout the recording--it will start out near the desired framerate and then decrease slowly for the rest of the video. I'm wondering whether this is something the Livestream team can fix, if i'm just not giving the program enough bandwidth to work with, or whether it's just my aging hardware (pertinent parts listed below in case it helps figure anything out)

c2d e8400
6gb RAM
radeon 5750
~4000kbps comcast upstream

naturally, the test videos are available on my channel if you need to see the behavior first-hand. hopefully i've given them self-explanatory titles

it also seems reluctant to use all the bandwidth i'm allocating in the procaster settings--in the latest video i had it set to 1200 but it rarely strayed above 850 or 900

Thank you for the complement. We as a team try our best in improving procaster in every way possible.

In responce to your concerns, we suggest having a quad core machine for streaming gameplay with. Procaster like Starcraft 2 tend to be CPU intensive programs, and they are both fighting over the 2 cores you have in your computer. Also I suggest to change your output resolution to something a bit smaller.

If there is not a lot of movement or action on the screen, procaster will dial back your bitrate for your video. If you have anymore questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us.

[coryfrans]

Originally Posted by foray

i checked it out and this beta version of procaster still does not remember the user's choice to stream with the source "no camera".

it also does not send username data to the livestream studio like it used to in previous versions; this makes it impossible to manage multi-user channels since everyone is now anonymous.

please consider these features in the next version.

Hello,

Thank you for the feedback. I will forward these request to the Dev team.

[theqat]

Originally Posted by coryfrans

Thank you for the complement. We as a team try our best in improving procaster in every way possible.

In responce to your concerns, we suggest having a quad core machine for streaming gameplay with. Procaster like Starcraft 2 tend to be CPU intensive programs, and they are both fighting over the 2 cores you have in your computer. Also I suggest to change your output resolution to something a bit smaller.

If there is not a lot of movement or action on the screen, procaster will dial back your bitrate for your video. If you have anymore questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Thanks for the response. I will be upgrading to an i5-2500k soon and, if the new version is still in beta testing, i'll let you know if I find any more issues at that time!

[Ragowit]

Can we have another new setting? "High + Mobile"? I don't care about Medium on my stream and would easily drop it for only High and Mobile.

EDIT: And a "HD + Mobile" setting. Dropping High and Medium.