Some just want to broadcast games to their friends, show off a few runs of Mario 64 on an emulator or perhaps just have a recording of their webcam shenanigans. But regardless of your intentions, how do you get started? That’s where games.on.net comes in, with all the details you need to know about broadcasting your own action.

First of all, you need a computer – a fairly decent one. Streaming requires a hefty amount of CPU power, and whether you use Xsplit or Flash Media Encoder (I’ll be discussing the first for the purposes of this article: it’s more common and less hassle to set up) the process requires a substantial amount of grunt.

Anything less than an i7 series CPU or a quad/hexacore from AMD won’t do; the FPS loss is too great, particularly if you go down the easy route of using Xsplit only. Dual-cores simply won’t be able to cope, especially with games like Starcraft 2 that are CPU intensive.

Each game taxes your machine differently and the settings used not only within the streaming software but the game itself will affect the entire process. I recommend keeping all settings to the absolute lowest to start with – irrespective of the game itself – until you can play without any noticeable lag.

For the purposes of this discussion, I’ll assume you have a decent computer. The next step is getting the means to stream – and that means Xsplit.

Described as a “desktop application designed to make your multimedia broadcasting and recording a lot easier and more fun to do”, the truth is that without Xsplit, the majority of people wouldn’t stream at all.

The principle is that Xsplit acts as the conduit between a camera – the footage you’re shooting, whether it be your webcam or your in-game view – and a streaming service (Own3d, Twitch, Livestream and so on).

Seeing as you’ll need an account on one of the aforementioned sites, that’s the best place to start. Given that Twitch and Own3d have servers in Singapore – the closest to Australia – those are the best sites to go with.

Once you’re signed up, the next step is to download the Xsplit software. After you’ve made an account and installed Xsplit, you’ll want to link it to your account – it supports all the major websites – by going to Tools, General Settings and Channels in the window that opens up.

The properties window that opens has several important tools for controlling how much bandwidth Xsplit uses, but the first thing you’ll want to do is enter in your username and password. After a few seconds, it’ll pick up a channel (whatever you named it when you made the profile). In the Location box, pick the Singapore server – and now it’s into the meat and the potatoes.

The major limiting factor in establishing a stream is your upload. Most Australian connections will have a maximum sync speed of about 100kb/s. Those lucky enough to have picked an ISP and a plan that supports Annex M+ can get double the speed, but we’ll stick with the more common figure to keep things simple.

A standard rule of thumb is to leave around 25% of your upload bandwidth free – but considering that Australians lose a good chunk of their bandwidth sending packets across a couple of oceans, it’s better to ensure that you use a maximum of 40% of your upload speed. In other words, if you get a maximum upload rate of about 100kb/s, you only want to be uploading 40kb/s maximum for the stream.

There’s a few reasons for this. Firstly, if you use all your upload on the stream, there won’t be any left for the game you’re playing and you’ll lag. Most people also have multiple programs running in the background, like Ventrilo, Skype, Teamspeak, their e-mail clients and a whole host of other processes which will want a small amount of upload for themselves.

Leaving a significant amount of headroom means you won’t get any nasty spikes mid-game, while acting as a safeguard for the random upswing in data usage from the stream itself. In the second screenshot, you’ll see two boxes – VBV Max Bitrate (kbps) and VBV Buffer (kbit). The first dictates the upload rate of your stream, while the second relates to the buffer for the Flash player stream. Xsplit automatically changes the buffer to match the bitrate, and most people will want to leave this as is. (If you’re one of those lucky people with Annex M, then you can double the buffer, but otherwise it’s best to leave as is.)

For the remainder, leaving preset to XSplit Default and quality to 6 will be sufficient. Some people believe that you get a substantially better quality with higher values, but XSplit’s own FAQ says “most people would not even be able to see any difference” between the levels.

The resolution box can be left unchecked: this is only relevant if you wish to stream in different resolutions. That’s handy if you’re streaming in 720p and someone on a poor-quality line wants to watch in 240p, but considering that most Australian internet connections will have difficulty streaming beyond 480p, it’s best to leave it be.

Audio adds to your upload as well, so it’s good to change it around until you find a value that doesn’t require too much bandwidth while still sending out a clear enough signal. I’ve found that 22.050 KHz 16 bit stereo with 64000 bitrate is sufficient, but you’ll want to test this for yourself.

Once you’ve decided on the settings, it’s best to test your connection to the server with the “Test Bandwidth” button. If the diagnostic discovers that your internet can’t maintain a stable upload, try lowering the audio and buffer settings until things are more reliable.

The next step is to select what resolution you’ll be streaming at. The View tab has all your settings for the resolution, frame-rate, scale-size and even transitions between scenes. Given the difficulties mentioned above with streaming, it’s best to keep the frame rate to 25 – it gives you enough frames for relatively smooth viewing while allowing enough headroom.

Your resolution should be the same aspect ratio as whatever resolution you use in-game. Keep in mind that you can play in 1920×1080 and stream at something quite low like 768×432 perfectly fine. Lowering your in-game resolution can take a little bit of the load off your CPU as well, although the impact and effect on yourself and the stream will vary from one game to another.

It’s a good idea to leave the scale-size quite high initially, close to Actual or 90%, until everything’s sorted. Once you know you have all the settings right, drop it down to 10% to reduce your overhead slightly – every little bit counts!

Now that the account and the channel settings are sorted – it’s time to get down to the business of capturing.

The most common capture method is to use screen region, which will broadcast everything on a single monitor, and I mean everything – if you’re playing a game and you alt-tab, that’ll get broadcast over the internet too.

Obviously, that’s an inherent problem, but the flipside is that you can stream multiple games or various kinds of footage without having to change a single setting. The microphone and speaker icons on the main page, as well as the adjacent bars, control their respective outputs; in other words, unchanged, your viewers will hear everything you hear and everything you say.

To add a screen region, select add in the bottom right of the main window and choose screen region. This brings up a red set of crosshairs – simply select on the screen you want to capture (same rule applies if you have a dual or tri-monitor setup). From there, all that’s needed is to load up the game of your choice, switch to XSplit, select the Broadcast tab, click on your channel from the drop-down list and the world is at your fingertips.

While that’s the basics of it, you can go a lot deeper. You can add titles, pictures and even other streams into your stream, while a second scene can be set-up with a background picture so that you can safely browse the internet at your leisure without advertising your bookmarks to the world.

There’s a whole world of streaming out there, so if you’re one of the ones who can stream but haven’t given it a second thought or wondered why people would bother to watch, you might be surprised – having your own TV channel is a lot more fun than you think.