Steam In-Home Streaming Issue - Slow Capture - Due to Multiple Windows on PCSX2
#1
Hi Everyone! Let me give a little background on where I'm at so people can fully understand my situation and hopefully help me find a nice solution for it. I really think the issue should be solvable one way or another. I apologize if this is a little lengthy but please bare with me, I really need some extra information and input from you all. Smile

I just recently started playing FFXII and am really loving it but it looked incredibly awful on my HDTV using my PS2 and component cables to the point that it is almost unplayable. So I looked online and found this wonderful PS2 emulator and decided that emulating it with my nice gaming PC would work much better than playing it on my PS2.

So I followed the guides posted on this site: Got PCSX2 installed, dumped my PS2's BIOS, made an ISO of my FFXII disc and got PCSX2 up and running beautifully on my gaming PC. It runs flawlessly for FFXII in 1680x1050 at locked 60 FPS without any issues at all. So PCSX2 itself runs great on my gaming rig with absolutely zero issues.

However, we have a newborn baby so I never have time to sit down in front of my gaming PC in my office. We spend most of our time in the living room with the baby. Which is why I got into FFXII now in the first place as I needed something to occupy me in the living room rather than my office. So my end game idea behind emulating FFXII was that I could then use Steam In-Home Streaming to stream FFXII from my gaming rig in the office to my laptop OR the TV in our living room. This would allow me to play FFXII in it's full glory on either the living room TV or my laptop while my wife uses the living room TV - Everyone wins, hehe.

With that said, this is not just a Steam In-Home Streaming question/issue as I use Steam In-Home Streaming flawlessly with my PC games and Steam games without issue. So PCSX2 works great, Steam In-Home Streaming works great but when I stream PCSX2 through In-Home Streaming I get very slow capture on the "GSDX" game window. I'm 100% certain this is occurring because PCSX2 uses multiple windows when running and the "GSDX" window is treated as a secondary window by Steam.

Steam In-Home Streaming renders/streams each window to the client PC. So when you open PCSX2 it streams both the Main Menu Window and the Console Log Window. Then when you launch the game, a 3rd window for the GSDX Plugin Player (The actual game). You can easily close the Console Log window or set it to not open in the first place. But that still leaves the PCSX2 Main Window and the GSDX Plugin Game window. In this situation I can easily place the GSDX Window on top and go fullscreen and it works to stream fullscreen to my Client PC. However, the framerate gets destroyed down to 15 FPS and a "Slow Capture" warning is visible above the framerate.

If I alt+tab over to the PCSX2 Main Window, that one streams at a solid 60 FPS without issue. The problem only occurs on secondary windows opened after the main window. I think the issue is that either my network or my client PC can't handle streaming more than 1 window at a time. The issue occurs even on the PSCX2 Console Window before I even launch a game. I further tested it with other games and applications and discovered any rendering of a 2nd window causes the terrible framerate in the 2nd window. Regardless of what is streaming in either the first or second windows. With the PCSX2 Main Window and Console Window open (no game running) I can alt+tab between the Main Window which gets 60 FPS streaming and then the Console Windows which only gets 15 FPS streaming. And they are both static windows without any actual content or graphical rendering occurring.

So the issue definitely seems related to the fact I'm Streaming more than 1 window and has nothing to do with what is being streamed in those windows, just the fact it has to stream multiple windows. Further it gives priority to which ever window is opened first (Primary Window) and then any subsequent opened windows seem to get less priority and thus can't stream more than about 15 FPS.

So to resolve the issue I think it comes down to one of four things:

1) Is there a way to run PCSX2 without the Main Window and just the GSDX Rendering (Game) Window? I just need it to launch FFXII ISO directly into a single window. Or have the ability to close the Main Window after the game is launched and running? I believe streaming a single window would resolve the issue entirely as I have no problems streaming anything as long as it is a single window.

2) If there is no way to run PCSX2 emulation with a single window, is there some way to trick the In-Home Streaming into thinking the GSDX Plugin Game window is the primary window rather than a secondary window so it gets the priority of streaming? The framrate slow capture issue only occurs on the subsequent opened windows after the Main PCSX2 window. The main window seems to get a higher priority by the streaming and the subsequent windows are only handled after the main window. So if I could make Steam Streaming think the GSDX Window is the primary window that would probably also solve the issue.

3) If the issue is my network then how do I determine that and would a solution be to get a better/faster router? I have tried this Stream of PCSX2 both fully wired and wireless and neither makes any bit of difference to the issue. Any subsequent windows after the Main PCSX2 window chugs at a ridiculously low 15 FPS regardless if my client PC (laptop) is on wireless or wired connections. My Host Gaming PC is always wired from the office.

4) If the issue is my laptop failing to encode/decode more than 1 streaming window at once then how do I determine that? If it is the laptop, then I guess I'm boned for now as I don't have another client PC to stream to at this time. But I would like to know for sure if it is the client laptop I'm streaming to.

I have seen other people and threads on these forums reporting they successfully streamed PCSX2 pretty well. So I'm really hoping some of those people can chime in here with their information, ideas, results, configurations etc.

If you have successfully streamed PCSX2 using Steam in your home did you get solid framerates on multiple windows? Did you do some work around like I suggested above to lower the number of windows being streamed or change the priority of which window the stream should focus on the most?

ANY information or ideas you can provide would be of great help. I'm so close to having this working perfectly. I just need to iron out this last issue of the very slow capture/frame rate on subsequent windows being streamed.

I'm at work right now but I will post screenshots of the issue later tonight when I get home so you can get a visual idea of what is occurring. Thank you soooo much to everyone who takes the time to read this and post any feedback, information or ideas you can think of. I love the PCSX2 Emulator and would really like to resolve this minor issue and get it streaming in my home. Smile
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#2
i guess this frontend might help you. It has a no-gui option.

Still it is surprising for me that you can get decent fps. I always thought that network streaming can only create something like 15 FPS for such content. At least RemoteDesktop and Teamviewer are in this range.
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#3
Thank you very much for that information Willkuer! I will definitely look into it and similar ideas. I have been digging around on the forums more after posting this thread and changed some of the things I was searching for and may have found my answer via the first possible option/solution that I listed in my thread above: Launching the Game ISO directly without the main PCSX2 GUI Window. It appears there are ways to launch the Game ISO directly to GSDX window without the PCSX2 Main GUI window and I think that will resolve my issue entirely as I will only be streaming the game window then.

The Steam In-Home Streaming works very well in general. You'd be surprised. I stream all kinds of pretty high end games to a really crappy Intel based laptop and range anywhere from 35-60 FPS consistently with full graphical settings. I do lower the stream resolution to fit either the laptop screen 1366x768 or my TV 1280x720p. So it's not streaming in full 1680x1050 or 1920x1080 that my main gaming rig does in the office but it still looks great on the living room TV in 720p or my laptop. And allows me to finally get in some precious gaming time while still spending time with my wife and raising a newborn baby. Finding any time to sit down in my office these days is just non-existent. This makes a great compromise to still play games in a very aesthetically pleasing and convenient way. Smile

If I can get this all figured out and working as intended, I will try to write up a quick and easy guide for others who may want to In-Home stream and run into this same issue with streaming multiple windows.
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#4
Yeah, I can stream BF4 quite well with steam streaming. I was streaming BF4 at 90 fps to my school netbook last year.
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#5
(10-20-2014, 06:55 PM)Nobbs66 Wrote: Yeah, I can stream BF4 quite well with steam streaming. I was streaming BF4 at 90 fps to my school netbook last year.

Nice! How are you achieving 90 FPS? Mine seems to be locked to a maximum of 60 FPS when I stream even though my Host PC is capable of well beyond 60 FPS. I thought the streaming was locked to a max of 60 FPS on the client PC? Is there an option within the Steam Streaming Settings to allow framerates higher than 60 FPS? Smile
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#6
I'm not sure what my exact settings are for steam streaming. I don't use steam in home streaming anymore as it had horrible lag on my low bandwidth
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#7
(10-20-2014, 07:25 PM)Nobbs66 Wrote: I'm not sure what my exact settings are for steam streaming. I don't use steam in home streaming anymore as it had horrible lag on my low bandwidth

Is there any other alternative to In-Home Network streaming than Steam?
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#8
I had good luck with Steam in home streaming and PCSX2. The key is to use nogui, and a high bandwidth(wireless AC or wired LAN, even N will have lag).
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Gaming Rig: Intel i7 6700k @ 4.8Ghz | GTX 1070 TI | 32GB RAM | 960GB(480GB+480GB RAID0) SSD | 2x 1TB HDD
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#9
(10-20-2014, 08:26 PM)Blyss Sarania Wrote: I had good luck with Steam in home streaming and PCSX2. The key is to use nogui, and a high bandwidth(wireless AC or wired LAN, even N will have lag).

Yeah I think I need to learn how to launch ISOs without the Main PCSX2 GUI Window to resolve my issue. I found a couple threads talking about this on the forums. What method do you use to launch game ISOs without the GUI Blyss Sarania? if you don't mind me asking that is. Smile
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#10
First, run PCSX2 normally and disable the log window. Otherwise it will show up anyway.

Then you can make a shortcut like "PCSX2.exe --nogui "C:\directory\name of game.iso"" and add that to steam.

Edit: you will probably want "PCSX2.exe --fullscreen --nogui "C:\directory\name of game.iso"" for in home streaming.
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Gaming Rig: Intel i7 6700k @ 4.8Ghz | GTX 1070 TI | 32GB RAM | 960GB(480GB+480GB RAID0) SSD | 2x 1TB HDD
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