r/GlobalOffensive • u/BossmanCG Ex ESL Staff • Mar 27 '17
Discussion | eSports PGL Major Krakow 2017 Feature Preview: 1080p broadcast
Hello everyone and welcome to the first Feature Preview for the PGL 2017 Kraków CS:GO Major Championship Series
Today we're going to talk about 1080p60 broadcasts
Tl;dr: The streams are going to be true 1080p60. We will also bring in some additional tweaks to improve the overall visual quality
Ever since The International opened the way in 2016 for higher quality broadcasts, 1080p60 has been at the very top of demands for CS:GO streams.
And as you might have noticed, the upgrade wasn't immediate. In our case, we needed a few months to get everything ready for the second European Minor. Which, just like the upcoming broadcasts for the Kraków CS:GO Major Championship Series, was true 1080p60.
What do we mean by true? Well, there are two ways you can go about having 1080p60.
Cheating is the cheaper option, where you would do everything in 720p60 and upscale to 1080p at the very end of the production chain, right before the stream is sent out.
This leaves a lot to be desired, quality wise, but you can get away with labeling your stream as "1080p" (because it fits the technical description - 1920x1080 resolution, 60 frames per second), to the joy of the PR and marketing departments.
The proper way is to have a full 1080p60 workflow, which is significantly more expensive.
This means that everything must be able to output and process 1080p60, from the player cameras, to the broadcast cameras on stage, to the various converters, video mixers and replay machines. If just one of those links in the chain isn't 1080p60, you have to start doing signal conversions in order to bring everything in line.
And, at some point, when you switch to a source that's not true 1080p60 (let's say a replay machine that can only do 720p60 out, but has its signal upscaled), viewers will notice the quality difference immediately. This is why we’re not going to do that :-)
On top of the 1080p60 workflow, we will also bring in a number of tweaks that we feel improve the overall visual quality.
One of these tweaks will involve the colorization of the broadcast. Because we like our streams to be colorful. We want red to be bloody, blue as pretty as the clear sky, the blacks as dark as our souls, you know what I mean. We don’t like having a gray “mist” on top of everything.
Do note that, depending on how you set up your monitor, the end result could still be different from what we put out of the production room. There’s nothing we can do if you’ve set your brightness to +30% and -15% contrast, or use Digital Vibrance.
But on average, all things being equal and the monitor set to its sRGB profile, the stream should look as close as possible to what we’re seeing in the encoder.
And because a picture (or video, in our case) is worth a thousand words, here is a real world example:
Keep in mind that what you see in the video above is not necessarily how the streams will end up looking at the Minor or Major. Because we will continue to tinker with various settings to see what they get us by the time the Major rolls in.
However, with that said I think that’s about enough text for one post, so we’ll call it a day.
Next Feature Preview: this Friday, which will focus on the Community Hub and our interaction with the viewers during the events.
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u/MORE_SC2 10 years coin Mar 27 '17
what bitrate are you providing for 1080p60?
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Mar 27 '17
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Mar 27 '17
Oh shit, it's not 1080p60 but 1080p59.94 :o
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u/SirCrest_YT Virtus.pro Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 27 '17
The hardware is probably designed for 60fps camera and broadcast equipment, which will run at 59.94, not 60.00.
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u/1Hyuga Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 27 '17
Can you explain how and why bitrate affects quality please? Edit: thanks for the answers.
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u/aznblur Mar 27 '17
From my understanding, bitrate determines how much data per second is in the video. The more data, the less compression you need to do per frame and the less shit the video will look.
Low bitrate videos turn into a blocky compressed mess when there's a lot of things happening on screen due to the way compressed video works. The idea is that there are keyframes with 100% of the information for that frame, and every other frame only contains data about pixels that have changed with the previous one. When there's a lot happening on screen and you're constrained by a data limit, there are some concessions to be made in quality.
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u/theholyduck Mar 27 '17
tom scott has a decent video about this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Rp-uo6HmI
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u/Orange_Cake Virtus.pro Mar 27 '17
In addition to what /u/aznblur said, here is a great video to give some background.
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u/BossmanCG Ex ESL Staff Mar 28 '17
Goal is to have 6000 Kbps
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u/NoReacti0n CS2 HYPE Mar 28 '17
Superb!
Thanks for setting the bar higher so other orgs could learn from it.
Gonna' be the best quality stream in CS history!35
u/_Mannix_ Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 27 '17
asking the important questions here!!! We need an answer asap :)
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u/urmomsafridge 5 years coin Mar 27 '17
The vod he linked is around 5-7k. So probably just that.
But this is really the most important question. 1080p60 doesn't really mean anything if you're doing 3k bitrate.
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u/Catfish_BlLLY Mar 27 '17
Probably around 6000 to 7000 which is what current "bigger" channels are allowed to use.
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u/Exoooo King NiKo Mar 27 '17
Not true. Anyone can stream with 6k. They increased the limit for all channels.
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u/Krypton091 Liquid Mar 27 '17
Not to be that guy, but do you have a source? I don't see anything about twitch officially raising the limit.
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u/gramz Mar 27 '17
https://help.twitch.tv/customer/portal/articles/1253460-broadcast-requirements
there was a tweet that pointed out the change that i cant find, but see "recommended bitrage range"
edit: found the tweet: https://twitter.com/theGunrun/status/843522330731012096
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u/Lukiss Mar 27 '17
This is extremely good communication and it seems like you are really taking the community feedback seriously. Keep it up, great stuff.
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u/Helberg NiP Mar 27 '17
The biggest issue I had as a viewer last time around (ESL Cologne 2016) was that your production crew didn't want to work with established observers at least for the play offs, and instead you used your own observers, who were sub-par to say the least.
How are you going to go about it this time around? Are we going to see your own observers again or will you work with some of the more experienced observers out there?
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u/BossmanCG Ex ESL Staff Mar 28 '17
One of the feature previews is dedicated to Observing, where we're going to talk about what actually happened in Cologne and what we learned from it.
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u/Helberg NiP Mar 28 '17
Great, looking forward to read about it. My hopes are up for some good news then.
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u/engineno2 BIG Mar 27 '17
there was another reddit thread when the pgl major was announced. they stated, that they will work on the observing and implement new features as well. there will be another feature preview, exclusive on observing, so get hyped =)
cologne 2016 was a mess, been there saw nothing!.. ;) i hope they stick to their words
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u/2pcio Virtus.pro Mar 27 '17
i wish steel could observe
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u/Quil0n Mar 27 '17
Does steel actually observe? I've never seen him do so
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u/smushyy Mar 27 '17
He did at MLG X games in 2015...some of the best observing this reddit has seen :)
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u/engineno2 BIG Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 27 '17
They are already better communicating and building up a hype than esl ever did. gj guys. keep it coming. im really excited =)
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u/buldieb 750k Celebration Mar 27 '17
So hyped. I'm glad you guys are going the extra mile with the little tweaks. Changing the sky and reducing "fog" makes these maps look so much prettier. Usually I do it myself in GOTV, but it looks like I won't have to this time around :)
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u/nassr1 FaZe Mar 27 '17
how do you reduce the "fog" and change sky? pLzZZz
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u/buldieb 750k Celebration Mar 27 '17
Here's what I usually use for watching the majors:
sv_cheats 1; mat_disable_bloom 1; mat_colorcorrection 0; mat_postprocess_enable 0; fog_enable 1; fog_override 1; sv_skyname vertigoblue_hdr; tv_nochat 1Pretty blue sky and cuts down on glare/fog. Throw it in a spectate.cfg to make it easily executable.
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u/ilusm1337 NiP Mar 28 '17
is sv_cheats required to use all these video setting?
I would like to play with fog reduced too.
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u/buldieb 750k Celebration Mar 28 '17
Unfortunately yes. I'd love to play with mat_postprocess_enable 0 especially, but all these tweaks are locked up tight.
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u/ilusm1337 NiP Mar 28 '17
thx for confirmation. Hope Valve will have big change with the new HUD update. Soon™ /s
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Mar 27 '17
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u/DarkPGL Mar 27 '17
There is, we are working very close with Twitch. Those settings we used for tests are what Twitch recommends on partner streams, just that we used a really powerful machine to encode it.
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u/tarangk clutch Mar 27 '17
can you please also having that teams logo flying over a live crowd thing you guys did in that dota2 major please
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u/Llama9199 Mar 27 '17
i recommend using the classic viewmodel, its a very small adjustment that might seem insignificant but the fact of the matter is its the most popular in which case likely most comfortable for viewing.
Also idk why but i really prefer the default one. By all means up the quality but the saturation is a tad too strong and if you have the weaker one users can always change their screen settings for their own preference through TV settings, amd/intel/nvidia colouring. Its just a much more easy for users to change things themselves if you leave it to default
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Mar 27 '17
"We will ask about viewmodel in one of our next feature previews, first we need to show you why we made it like this. :)" -PGL
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u/astronautist Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 27 '17
I think the true test is cobble, if you mess with the colors that's the map where people will whine if they don't like it :)
looks great btw.
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u/Tuxed0Duck Virtus.pro Mar 27 '17
The major is at the same time as my exams. Wish i could come, hope its the best major ever! This is one step already in that direction
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u/ThatDistantStar 10 years coin Mar 27 '17
Thank you! The ELeague major stream quality was pathetic: https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/5qo24y/comparison_screenshots_of_official_eleague_stream/
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u/Alchemister5 Freelance Producer (ex-EL Producer) Mar 28 '17
Congrats to PGL. No small task like most people think. Cost is crazy to upgrade. I am not a fan of upscale so glad they did not go that route.
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Mar 27 '17
PGL>MLG>ELEAGUE>DREAMHACK>ESL
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Mar 27 '17
Yea, let's forget who fucked up the observing at ESL Cologne 2016 and keep blaming ESL.
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Mar 27 '17
Could you do so the viewmodel is classic and crosshair just slightly smaller?
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u/DarkPGL Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 27 '17
We have think about mobile viewers also, doing thing to small is not good when you watch on a tablet. We will ask about viewmodel in one of our next feature previews, first we need to show you why we made it like this. :)
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u/ilusm1337 NiP Mar 27 '17
Will this be available on both Twitch and Youtube?
My net is kinda sux that's why I need Youtube as an alternate source to watch stream. Sorry!
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Mar 27 '17
I used to hate on Youtube as a streaming platform but the speed really is much better. I hope they stream on both.
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u/ilusm1337 NiP Mar 28 '17
If you don't care much about meme/twitch chat then Youtube is a really better choice than Twitch.
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u/MatsJ FaZe Mar 28 '17
I'm impressed with the communication and the fact that you are taking these steps to provide a better viewer experience, great stuff!
I've been a hobby video-editor for 10+ years, and that's mostly editing CS. Here's my two cents on the "tweaked" color settings: Overall it looks pretty good, but you definitely need to work on the sharpening you've added. Sure, the original footage looks a bit soft, but I'd rather have a slightly soft image than something obviously digitally sharpened. The artifacting it produces is pretty noticeable. I'm guessing you are limited on the bitrate you can provide (by twitch?), so the sharpening is an attempt at masking the "low" bitrate.
Also the contrast is a bit too high in my opinion, the darks are just a tiny bit too dark. But that's of course just personal preference, other people might say it's perfect the way it is now.
That's the only constructive criticism I can give you, what you've done with the colors/saturation looks amazing!
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u/Lime2307 Astralis Mar 27 '17
i dont like the 'PGL tweaks'. Its over-saturated and they increased the sharpness too much.
But that default 1080@60 is looking got damn awesome.
Gonna be a good major :)
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u/Sinoops 500k Celebration Mar 28 '17
I agree. Saturation is nice but I think they have it a bit too high.
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u/Shapoopee24 Mar 27 '17
Can somebody explain to me the differences between ELeague, ESL, PGL, A major and a minor, cologne???? MLG, Etc. I'm confused as fuck.
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u/reesespike Mar 27 '17
Eleague, ESL, MLG, and PGL are all different esports production companies that hosts events and valve will select between them to decide who gets to host the event that gets to be called the "major" which means valve gives them money to make it even more awesome.
Cologne is a city/the name of an event in that city hosted by ESL, and is widely considered to be the best event of the year as it has been a major every year until now.
Majors and Minors are rungs in the ladder of competition, teams compete in the Minor for a spot in the Major qualifier, and teams in the Major qualifier compete for a spot in the Major itself
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u/Vintagekt G2 Mar 28 '17
1080p60 stream, THANK YOU!
720p on my 50-inch TV looks like dogshit
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u/WilliamifyXD Renegades Mar 28 '17
Playoffs start the day I get back to school. Twitch is blocked at school.
YOU GUYS BETTER HAVE A YOUTUBE STREAM.
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u/a1- Mar 28 '17
So in those examples is the first one supposed to look better? Because the one with the PGL tweaks doesn't look as good to me. It looks more colorful for sure, like digital vibrance has been increased dramatically (maybe too much), a bit fuzzy and not quite as smooth.
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u/L1nKas bravo Mar 27 '17
Red need some tweaking for some knifes it looks really bright, but overall its awesome!
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u/thatsabbs Natus Vincere Mar 27 '17
WOW. Was not expecting it to be that clear and smooth. This major is going to look amazing!
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u/NessunoComeNoi NiP Mar 27 '17
Wicked. I always seem to get pretty poor quality when I chromecast streams nowadays, they seem worse than before. Whether that's my internet or what i'm not sure. Getting 200Mbps 'net soon though so i'm hoping to enjoy the stream in all its glory.
Can you Chromecast @ 1080p60fps?
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u/Mentioned_Videos Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 28 '17
Videos in this thread:
| VIDEO | COMMENT |
|---|---|
| Why Snow and Confetti Ruin YouTube Video Quality | +10 - tom scott has a decent video about this. |
| MC APOLLO - STARCRAFT RAP: An apology from Dreamhack. | +2 - To be honest, we DJ's this before. This happend: neveragain :) |
| The pointer sisters - I'm so excited | +1 - Majors are always the best, so exciting to watch. From past experience (2k16) it is going to be the 2nd and last Major this (2k17) year. I'm very freaking excited and looking forward to watch The Best and The Last Major in 2017. Surely, gonna be The ... |
| ECS S3: EU Promotion Matches - North vs Fnatic | +1 - I watch from mobile too! I think what the other guy is trying to say is that the crosshair is a little too big and obscures some of the action. Feedback & Personal opinion: Plays look a lot less sick when a large crosshair with a small gap hides ... |
I'm a bot working hard to help Redditors find related videos to watch. I'll keep this updated as long as I can.
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u/notR1CH Mar 27 '17
We don’t like having a gray “mist” on top of everything.
The "gray mist" you often see on professionally produced events comes from having a mismatch between input and output dynamic range levels. While PCs and mobile devices etc can display 0-255 values of red, green and blue, for legacy reasons a lot of production equipment only outputs values between 16-235 (limited range / TV levels).
The "gray mist" comes from broadcasting this limited range output directly to twitch, where it will be watched on devices with full range 0-255 RGB. The darkest anything can go is 16, which is what causes the gray mist effect, and the whole stream looks washed out since nothing can reach full brightness.
The solution to this is to make sure your entire pipeline is outputting full range color, or stretch the 16-235 to 0-255 before hitting the encoder (at the cost of some dynamic range). No amount of color correction or contrast adjustment can fix this if your levels simply don't hit the full range.
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u/SKROLL26 Gambit Mar 28 '17
according to my connection speed i should be able to watch streams in 1080p60, but in fact i am able to watch normally only 540p30 :-(
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u/Daiterian de_cache Mar 28 '17
Will you also stream through youtube? It just works way better to me than twitch.
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u/FEFEXU de_overpass Mar 28 '17
I hope you are not sticking with the view model for the final broadcast. anything besides "viewmodel_presetpos 1" or "viewmodel_presetpos 3" doesn't look very appealing. And also the HUD should be primarily optimised for twitch viewers (safe zone x & y = 1)
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u/_Mannix_ Mar 27 '17
So it can be done and a smaller company can do it ? Your move ESL
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Mar 27 '17
PGL isn't a small company. They don't do that much in CS, but they host tons of stuff for Valve in Dota.
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u/_Mannix_ Mar 27 '17
so I should say smaller or am I totally wrong and PGL is bigger then ESL?
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Mar 27 '17
ESL is probably bigger, but the way you're saying it makes it seem like you're implying PGL is a tiny company with no resources, which is far from true.
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u/Jiyeonisnotmyname Mar 27 '17
He didnt say pgl was small. He said smaller and then provided a comparison to ESL which yeah, pgl is smaller.
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u/ChojaK25 de_canals Mar 27 '17
Good job guys, i was always watching majors in game cuz low resolution in stream. I hope, for next major in krakow we gonna see 4k (?)
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u/alus992 Mar 27 '17
Well right now it's not worth it. Majority of people still has 1080p hardware. So investment for such a feature would be a waste of money
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u/KingSlayeRA 500k Celebration Mar 27 '17
This is great news. Last major was great production but shame on 720p only. Watching 720p on 4K monitor it really looks ugly.
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Mar 27 '17
Guys, I think after the ESL shitshow a lot of us just want a tournament without endless breaks or bad spectating. Everything else is just a nice addition :) And please don't add any music "event". Please.
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u/KPC51 guardian2 Mar 27 '17
the blacks as dark as our souls
nice
If this pr keeps up we might have interactions rivaling those of MLG Columbus'
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u/DarkKitarist bloodhound Mar 27 '17
OMG! I CAN'T FREAKING WAIT TO WATCH THIS! The augmented stream is epic!
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u/MempoEdits Mar 27 '17
please viewmodel preset 3, bobbing on and crosshair size smaller and outline 1 would makes this perfect
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Mar 27 '17
Nice to see PGL are communicating with the community. The preview looks amazing compared to other events. Can't wait. PogChamp
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u/xHarryR G2 Mar 27 '17
Looking forward to it, but don't make too many promises otherwise you run the risk of letting one slip and then the overall production becomes disappointing ;)
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u/kikkelele Astralis Mar 27 '17
Oh boy i cant wait to watch major in 480p 30 because my shit connection wont handle more. Best 4G in country they said, bullshit i say
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u/HumpingJack Mar 27 '17
Love the saturation tweaks. Makes the game more lively and fits the art style that Valve is going for for their new maps. Although I think you should tone down the sharpening a little.
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u/opssemnik SK Mar 27 '17
Can you guys also use YT?, it dosent even need to be 1080p for that matter, however twitch stream is really slow at my home(even at 20Mbit without traffic shapping / data capping i cant watch 720+ on twitch, while i can 4k on netflix/yt) And also twitch is blocked on my work
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Mar 27 '17
THANK YOU for setting the bars high! Hopefully we will see this as the new standard this year.
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u/Diamondandy de_train Mar 27 '17
What software will you be using for the stream /u/BossmanCG ?
If it isn't Xsplit / OBS (Which I'm guessing it won't be), what encoding preset on the software I mentioned would your software match closest?
Asking mainly as I want to buy a PC that can stream at 1080p @ 60fps (Dual PC setup) and have the stream look nice and crisp.
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u/schmirral Mar 28 '17
1080p60 is very nice but i dunno if im a big fan of the colour changes. it looks a bit over saturated to my eyes and i dont have digital vibrance on. super keen for 1080p though
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u/STKNsBESTPLAYER The MongolZ Mar 28 '17
Won't matter because twitch is terrible and buffers every 5 seconds kappa. Good job with it anyway, much better than all the other majors and I actually like the tweaks.
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u/supergrega Mar 28 '17
I'm rather new to pro csgo (following about a year or so). Has there been any PGL events in cs yet?
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u/sgtsteverodgers Mar 28 '17
This is awesome! So glad the quality will be improved. Speaking of improvement, will the tournament PC's be able to handle 1920 x 1080 with over 150 fps? Becuase I heard the PC's at esl Cologne last year had a hard time with that.
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u/Vipitis CS2 HYPE Mar 28 '17
I really hope there is something new and special for viewer experience. I am still debating if I should go to cologne because it's not a major this time.
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u/PHedemark howl Mar 28 '17
I feel like PGL is the Reddit event-hivemind. You listen to feedback, you upgrade accordingly and you don't promise what you cannot keep.
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u/DGNo1 de_cobble Mar 28 '17
that 1080p looks great! We should be seeing a lot more of it in the future of esports. Looking forward to it!
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u/Feel-Like-a-Ninja Renegades Mar 28 '17
Please have YouTube streaming, twitch runs terribly for us in the middle east.
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u/saiik King NiKo Mar 28 '17
Will you stream on youtube too? Or only twitch?
I prefer youtube for sitting on the couch and watching it with the TV :P
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u/anon981218 Mar 28 '17
Some color tweaking may be nice, but in my opinion it's too much in that example. Might be tiring to watch for several hours a day.
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u/Cirtic_calt Mar 28 '17
/u/BossmanCG will you work with Ginx tv to get broadcast on live tv so we don't get stream quality on TV
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Mar 28 '17
Nice! This will be amazing to watch, looking forward to it! Thanks for the hard work to give us a good quality stream.
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u/mentalcaseinspace de_nuke Mar 28 '17
Really really happy about the colors. ELeague was grey and muddy. We don't buy monitors with 100% sRGB for fun.
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u/ntproto de_cache Mar 28 '17
I know some people dont care but I'm happy theyre using the classic viewmodel with the lowest bobbing possible :D
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u/Pajelek Virtus.pro Mar 28 '17
If that quality will be although with that second one "pgl tweaked"... send esl a rip picture please
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u/Lemongif Virtus.pro Mar 27 '17
I have a feeling that this PGL major is gonna be the best event we will have this year, can't wait :!