PCS Pro Live Streaming

Hi Everyone,

NV Play are proud to have launched our NV Play/PCS Pro Live Streaming kits in 2021 & we now have our great Community Forum where you can post & engage with fellow users to share knowledge & experience to help enhance everyone’s NV Play platform usage. We have a broad range of passionate & experienced users from across the UK and beyond so get to know your fellow users & share your experiences.

We thought we'd kick things off with some important information around PCS Pro Live Streaming this season. Feel free to direct any questions & comments here so the Community can engage & help fellow users.

Happy Streaming!

PCS Pro Live Streaming Support

ECB Play-Cricket Help Desk

The ECB Play-Cricket Help Desk will be available for live match day support from 10am-4pm on the first six Saturdays of the season, starting from Saturday 17th April. Support requests can be sent to play.cricket@ecb.co.uk. Non-match day support will also be available through the full season through the same channel. Outside of this, we are working on a premium support offering which we will communicate about as soon as it’s in place.

Support Videos and Knowledgebase

To help get you started, we have built out a library of support videos and articles to help you & your club get the best out of your live streaming kits. These resources will be useful to refer to before you make a purchase, and during your setup & use of PCS Pro’s powerful Live Streaming capabilities. These will always be available to refer to as an alternative to the Help Desk support above.

• PCS Pro Live Streaming Kits & prices. You’ll also notice links to setup videos within each packages details: https://www.nvplay.com/live-streaming
• PCS Pro Live Streaming support videos: https://support.nvplay.com/hc/en-gb/articles/1500005630981-PCS-Pro-Live-Streaming-Instruction-Videos

Laptop Specifications

For Live Streaming and Video Capture there are a lot of variables. In general, NV Play recommend a ‘healthy’ computer 3 years old or newer, with the following baseline specifications:

• Intel i7 CPU or greater (8th generation or newer recommended). For better performance with video, it is recommended to use a model ending in an H (denoting High Performance), and to avoid the models ending in U or Y which are designed for low power use. More on intel model numbers & variations here: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/processor-numbers.html
• 8 GB RAM (minimum)
• Solid State Drive (SSD) highly recommended for Video Capture or Live Stream Instant Replays. Size can be determined based on how much video will be stored longer term, but 256 GB should be considered a minimum
• Windows 10 Home, Pro or Enterprise Operating System (not Windows 10 S)

Healthy computers should have Windows Updates installed regularly, including the latest available device drivers. When possible, use the device drivers provided by the computer manufacturer (especially for Display Adapters) as Windows Updates does not always have the latest versions for all hardware.

While a dedicated graphics card is not 100% necessary, it will improve overall Windows performance and deliver Hardware Acceleration for optimal PCS Pro Live Streaming and Video Capture performance. NV Play recommend NVIDIA Graphics Cards for higher performance configurations – it is important to confirm a specific NVIDIA device supports Video Encoding by searching the following website – check green YES values:

https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new

For example, the following card would be suitable: NVIDIA GeForce 1660 Ti graphics card

But the following would NOT be suitable for video encoding: NVIDIA GeForce MX350

Internet Requirements

In order to be able to live stream successfully, it is recommended that the live streaming laptop is connected to a network with a dedicated, minimum 8mbps upload speed.

Here are some data usage estimates for Live streaming at these Resolutions with the default Target Bitrate:

• 1080p at 4,500 is approximately 2GB of data per hour to stream
• 720p at 2,500 is approximately 1.1 GB of data per hour to stream
• 480p at 1,000 is approximately 0.5 GB of data per hour to stream

Users can go to Tools -> Configuration -> Live Streaming, select a different Resolution from the dropdown and enter different Target Bitrate values, and an estimate of the data usage will be provided, for example: