Support multiple devices for the school esports initiative.
Support multiple devices for the school esports initiative.
Starting from the top, thank you for your support. This situation is quite new to me. I work in a school district and my school is planning to host an esports program. We need to buy gaming devices like Nintendo Switch, Xboxes, and PS4s, plus a way to display them. The esports coordinator wants to stream the games on Twitch or YouTube. I’m trying to determine the most effective approach. My idea is using OBS for streaming, with three computers: one for 5 consoles, another for another 5, and the third for the consoles themselves. I’m unsure if this is optimal or how to reach it. Should I purchase a capture card for each device and send them to the streaming PC, or is there another way? Bandwidth seems manageable since I plan a 10Gb switch and fiber connection. The cost is a concern, but I’m aware it could be very expensive. Also, would using a LAN cache be practical in an educational setting?
You'll need HDMI capture cards that support pass-through configurations, allowing one HDMI input and one output. Prefer raw video transmission to cards with built-in H.264 encoding, as compression adds latency and complexity when decoding back to raw video. Consider using NDI or similar protocols to send lightly compressed streams over the network to your main broadcast PC. Treat each capture card as an independent input in your main system, enabling seamless integration into scenes. For 1080p content, network transfers should typically be around 200 Mbps. Broadcast and streaming traffic should be isolated on separate switches or in a dedicated VLAN to maintain security and performance.