At CES 2024, Nvidia and Twitch announced a collaboration with OBS referred to as “Twitch Enhanced Broadcasting” — a whole overhaul of the standard streamer-to-Twitch pipeline and encoding expertise.

This new function goals to make streaming simpler, low-latency and buffer-free viewing extra accessible, and has the potential to revolutionize video high quality on Twitch alongside the way in which. And sure, AV1 is coming to Twitch, too — although perhaps not as instantly as many are hoping for.

What is Enhanced Broadcasting? 

Twitch Enhanced Broadcasting is a brand new course of for streaming from OBS Studio to Twitch that’s coming into beta this week. Enhanced Broadcasting permits the streamer to complement Twitch’s stream transcoding (changing the unique stay stream, despatched by the streamer, into decrease decision and decrease bitrate variations) on their very own {hardware} and ship a number of completely different high quality variations of their stream to Twitch on the similar time. The take a look at section includes a brand new beta construct of OBS Studio and could be signed up for through streamers’ Twitch dashboards.

Two main modifications will probably be included with this beta:

1. Multitrack streaming to Twitch
2. Automatic configuration of stream settings

Twitch

Multiple video tracks

The first main change comes with a brand new revision to the Enhanced RTMP streaming protocol (which was introduced in early 2023 to accommodate AV1 and HEVC stay streaming) that enables for a number of video tracks to be packaged in the identical stream. While FFMPEG and different video encoding instruments have been in a position to leverage a number of video tracks in sure file containers earlier than, that is the primary time conventional RTMP streaming has been able to such complexity. Previously, OBS customers have been in a position to leverage a second audio track for Twitch’s “VOD Track” function: This replace works equally, however for video as a substitute of audio.

Multitrack video will probably be used to complement Twitch’s transcoding pipeline, by having the streamer’s pc encode the stream at a number of completely different resolutions and body charges and ship all of these completely different video tracks to Twitch in a single RTMP stream, to be handed on to the viewer.

During the preliminary beta section, Twitch goals to focus on up to three simultaneous streams at a time (reminiscent of 1080p60 Source, 720p, and 360p) — however Nvidia said that the objective is to reach a total of five concurrent streams (the driver-enforced encoding session restrict for shopper GeForce GPUs) to cowl a wider gamut of codecs, and embrace greater decision codecs reminiscent of 1440p and 4K sooner or later.

Automatic settings configuration

Enabling Enhanced Broadcast on this new OBS beta can even take away the stress and complication of optimizing streaming and encoder settings for Twitch. This new service will ping Twitch’s servers, analyze the streamer’s system specs, accessible sources, web latency and bandwidth, then generate the perfect settings for his or her stream (together with adjusting what number of transcodes are generated by the streamer’s {hardware}).This each optimizes the encoding ladder for optimum outcomes from finish to finish, but in addition simply makes streaming a lot extra accessible. Once this function is rolled out, there will probably be no extra motive to tweak encoder flags or stress about settings.

Twitch

Why streamers ought to care

While it’s straightforward to invest {that a} vital motivator for this new function roll-out is value financial savings for Twitch, given the continuing discussions of Twitch’s prices on the subject of enhancing the income cut up with creators, Twitch’s exit from South Korea, and the next round of layoffs that hit this week — there are some instant advantages that streamers, and extra importantly viewers, will see from utilizing this function.

• Reduced latency: When streams are transcoded by Twitch’s servers, extra latency is added to the published due the processing time required. When streamers deal with the transcoding step themselves, all Twitch should do is relay that feed to the viewer, lowering the latency and serving to enhance the “real time” feeling and bolster chat interplay. Twitch streams have already got considerably decrease latency than YouTube streams, however this may enhance issues even additional.
• Quality accessibility: Stream high quality and the accessibility of top quality streams is normalized throughout all streamers by way of this replace, as streams will not be restricted by the streamer’s intimate data of encoder settings and optimization suggestions.
• Viewer accessibility: Additionally, the broader unfold of transcoding on streams that Enhanced Broadcasting will permit means extra streams than ever earlier than could be loved by cellular viewers or viewers with slower web connections!
• Quality enchancment: By encoding the decrease decision copies of the stream from the streamer’s uncooked OBS feed on their system, relatively than from the already-compressed 1080p copy of the stream, decrease decision codecs on Twitch have the potential to be considerably higher-quality than ever earlier than, with out requiring higher connections.
• Cost discount: Twitch won’t need to allocate as many sources to transcoding workloads for streamers, and won’t need to scale sources to attempt to present transcoding to everybody, thus lowering prices to Twitch.

Rodney

Twitch doesn’t have the sources to roll out transcoding to everybody. Partners are assured transcoding on their streams, and Affiliates get precedence over everybody else, however many Affiliates and most conventional streamers don’t obtain transcoding on their stay streams. This paradigm requires many streamers to determine between higher-quality streams or reaching as many individuals as potential, as 6- to 8mbps 1080p60 streams simply aren’t playable for a lot of viewers at residence. Enhanced Broadcasting will permit many extra streamers to each have a high-quality stream and be extra accessible to these viewers.

Into the long run

The preliminary beta testing of Enhanced Broadcasting will probably be centered on evaluating the multitrack video streaming and ensuring all this know-how works and stays steady at the beginning. But ultimately the function will result in some fairly cool new capabilities when streaming to Twitch.

To accommodate the a number of video tracks, the mixture bitrate cap (complete bitrate throughout all tracks) that streamers can ship to Twitch with this function will probably be elevated to 10mbps. This is already good, however it’s potential that because the testing commences and stability is established, the cap may proceed to extend and permit streamers to have even higher-quality streams for his or her authentic supply format.

Quality will increase can even come because the beta will embrace experimenting with enabling HEVC and AV1 video codecs for streaming. These are higher-efficiency video codecs that present considerably greater high quality streams for a similar bitrate in comparison with H264 (the present codec supported by Twitch), or permit for a similar high quality available at a a lot decrease bitrate, leaving room for extra tracks. During my initial AV1 stream testing to YouTube, stream high quality was spectacular even at bitrates round 1mbps.

These newer codecs can even be a should for the newer 1440p and 4K codecs that Nvidia teased throughout their announcement of Enhanced Broadcasting. Higher bitrates and extra environment friendly codecs can even assist make 120fps streaming a actuality, too.

The multitrack video performance additionally has potential to introduce different experiences like simultaneous panorama and portrait scene compositions, to accommodate cellular viewers much more — although Twitch has not introduced any plans for such a function simply but.

Requirements

Since this beta section is a collaboration with Nvidia, streamers with Nvidia RTX graphics playing cards are being prioritized for entry into the beta. However, long-term Enhanced Broadcasting will probably be accessible for everybody — with the one requirement being to have some kind of GPU-accelerated or hardware-accelerated encoding accessible in your system. 

Streamers can join the beta at https://dashboard.twitch.tv/broadcast. You do not have to be a Twitch Partner to use — actually, Partners aren’t a direct precedence since they’ll proceed to obtain assured transcoding by way of Twitch, anyway.

Twitch

No one will probably be left behind

It’s straightforward to get misplaced in all the massive discuss AV1 encoding (which is restricted to the most recent era of graphics playing cards), Nvidia sponsoring the beta, and a number of video tracks and fear that you just’ll be left behind. Let me guarantee you that this won’t be the case. The main operate of Enhanced Broadcasting is to extend accessibility throughout the board — everybody wins right here.

Don’t have an RTX 40 collection GPU for AV1 encoding or an RTX card in any respect? No huge deal. This gained’t keep Nvidia-exclusive long-term. GPUs way back to the GTX 900 collection from Nvidia have HEVC encoding, and the overwhelming majority GPUs going again far longer have H264 encoding — so almost anybody can use this, ultimately.

Have sluggish web and don’t see your self with the ability to embrace extra tracks on prime of what you usually ship? That’s high quality! You can nonetheless allow Enhanced Broadcasting and the service will nonetheless optimize your settings finest on your system and web connection — and as soon as the newer codecs can be found, you’ll find yourself with the ability to ship much more than you’d anticipate, anyway.

Twitch ought to start inviting customers to the beta this week, however be warned: Invite teams will probably be small. Be ready to attend, however know that for those who take part you’re really serving to form the way forward for Twitch. The final objective right here is enhancing the viewer expertise on Twitch, and that’s what actually issues, isn’t it?