Steam Now Supports VA-API For In-Home Game Streaming

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Steam Now Supports VA-API For In-Home Game Streaming

Another Steam Linux client update is out today and with this latest revision comes VA-API video acceleration support when using Steam on Linux for in-home streaming...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTc2OTg

[Nille]

Looks like that Valve dont support AMDs VCE. Only Nvidias and Intels Hardware Encoder.

[Nille]

The New Stream shows that he is not using the Hardware encoder. He use x264 on 2 threads. but there is no error that shows a problem.

[tmpdir]

The GPU has a dedicated Video encoder.

sure, but how is the gpu performance compared to the situation without streaming?

Installing windows at this moment , wanna test it on my rig.

You probably seen this entry already, just to be sure:

How do I diagnose streaming performance problems?

You can look in logs\streaming_log.txt on the remote computer after you play a game to get a detailed breakdown of how much time was spent in each component of the streaming system.
While the game is running, you can hit F6 or the Guide button combined with the Y button on your game controller to turn on live statistics for the session. While the statistics are visible the game collects more detailed information which is saved in logs\SteamVideoTrace.txt and logs\SteamAudioTrace.txt at the end of the session.
While the statistics are visible, you can hit F8 or the Guide button combined with the X button on your game controller to save a screenshot and 10 seconds worth of stats to a zip file in the streaming directory in the Steam folder on the remote computer.
There is a good article on how to interpret the log information here:http://steamcommunity.com/groups/hom...3523404402134/

[Nille]

What about the GPU? the videostream is converted using the GPU.

The GPU has a dedicated Video encoder.

[tmpdir]

Yes. 2 cores are idling and the Host has the Hardware encoder available that Steam use for in-house streaming.

What about the GPU? the videostream is converted using the GPU.

[Nille]

converting the game to (I asume) h264 takes considerable gpu performance, are you sure you computer is fast enough for the game in that resolution and converting simultaneously?

Yes. 2 cores are idling and the Host has the Hardware encoder available that Steam use for in-house streaming.

[tmpdir]

this feature rocks, using a good desktop in my office and a simply laptop with a tv

Ehm... the downside is that this "good desktop" must be running cough.. windows... cough

[tmpdir]

OT: Im not very Happy about the Quality of Streaming. I tryed to Play Borderlands 2 over the Network. On The Host i can Play the game with all Settings on high with 1920x1080. But if i Stream it, its unplayable. I have to reduce the resolution to 1280x720 and set some settings to medium but then its playable with around 30 fps.

The host is a i5-3570k with a HD 7850.

converting the game to (I asume) h264 takes considerable gpu performance, are you sure you computer is fast enough for the game in that resolution and converting simultaneously? An interesting test would be to play a light game like team fortres 2 in the same resolution and see if that works. If it works than the problem was performance on the host side, because the workload on the client side should be the same using the same resolution. I'm interested in the outcome. Going to install windows this weekend specially for this feature, hope I can sleep after doing that.

[SevenOfMine]

GG

I was amazed by the quality of the in-home streaming feature. With Civ V at full hd resolution and maxed quality settings, I was able to stream the game without any special configuration straight to my laptop. Everything "just worked", which to be honest is sometimes a miracle in Linux.

My laptop has Core i7 3720QM with integrated Intel HD4000 graphics. I was connected via WLAN which on my home network has up to five times the latency of a cable connection, but still there was practically no mouse lag.

This got me excited enough to set up a dedicated small Shuttle box behind my TV into the VESA mount for casual gaming.