Viewing Retropie Gameplay through SSH/Putty?

dankcushions · 17 Jun 2020, 22:17

surely the best approach would be to get a videocapture device for your latop and do the video compositing there via OBS.

froccoar · 17 Jun 2020, 23:11

@BGallagherLA So many things to answer.
First. HDMI only outputs video. No video input. Unless you have a grabber. HDMI-USB are video outputs.
There is an option, which is forwarding the graphic part in an ssh client. Something like "How do I forward x11 using PuTTY?"

froccoar · 17 Jun 2020, 23:23

@BGallagherLA https://aruljohn.com/info/x11forwarding/ Testing this.

dankcushions · 17 Jun 2020, 23:29

@froccoar retropie (on pi) does not use x.

froccoar · 17 Jun 2020, 23:48

@dankcushions
yeah i just realized when the wall hit my head! BUT ... I managed to open a window and the emulastation throws me an error. What do use then ???

froccoar · 18 Jun 2020, 00:09

@froccoar https://github.com/ponty/framebuffer-vncserver

BGallagherLA · 18 Jun 2020, 07:46

@froccoar So in theory would installing this on the pi allow me to access the Pi's game feed on the VCN program on my laptop?

froccoar · 18 Jun 2020, 17:56

@BGallagherLA I have not had time to try it. I'm not sure if it will walk. But try it and tell us how it went!

BGallagherLA · 18 Jun 2020, 19:24

@froccoar Sure! Anything is worth a try at this point haha.

joesnow81 · 18 Jun 2020, 20:38

This is something I have been looking into as well. My plan was to get something like this video capture device. Pi hdmi plugs into this and then hdmi out to the tv. USB from this into your laptop. You can then have the webcam, mic and video of the Pi all on the laptop.

BGallagherLA · 18 Jun 2020, 21:17

@joesnow81 Yes, exactly. I ordered something similar to this. Should be here this weekend. I also am gonna try a more unconventional, roundabout approach as well that, in theory, should work. There is this other article about how to stream to YouTube through your RetroPie - http://selsine.com/2016/10/17/how-to-live-stream-to-youtube-from-a-retropie/ - so in theory, I could stream to my YouTube, put the YouTube full screen, so OBS/Streamlabs captures that, and bam! I signed up to "go live" on youtube but it takes 24 hours for your account to activate, so that should happen later today. Only thing I'm worried about is a lag/delay, but we'll see what happens.

BGallagherLA · 18 Jun 2020, 21:18

@BGallagherLA Have you been streaming without a video feed like I have? If so drop your Twitch link and I'll give you a follow. I'm at

BGallagherLA · 21 Jun 2020, 21:12

@joesnow81 Update: I technically got a camera feed to work on Twitch.... but the video of me and the gameplay kept freezing. I think it might have been just too much for my six year old laptop which isn't a high end machine by any means. Perhaps you may have better luck on your setup... though it is a very weird and roundabout way to do it haha.

Basically what I do is first stream my game to YouTube following this article (http://selsine.com/2016/10/17/how-to-live-stream-to-youtube-from-a-retropie/ - basically the same thing as setting up streaming to Twitch - http://selsine.com/2016/10/16/how-to-live-stream-to-twitch-from-a-retropie/ - but using your YouTube stream key instead of Twitch. Then I send the YouTube stream to a VLC player so you can see the whole thing in full screen and then I add the VLC source in OBS. So I'm still playing from my Pi to my TV, but I sent the stream to YouTube first so it could be seen by OBS and then I stream to Twitch via OBS. Sadly.... the video kept freezing on me and it just overall sucked. I'm pretty sure it's my old computer so perhaps you'll have better luck on yours.

joesnow81 · 25 Jun 2020, 09:26

@BGallagherLA said in Viewing Retropie Gameplay through SSH/Putty?:

@joesnow81 Update: I technically got a camera feed to work on Twitch.... but the video of me and the gameplay kept freezing. I think it might have been just too much for my six year old laptop which isn't a high end machine by any means. Perhaps you may have better luck on your setup... though it is a very weird and roundabout way to do it haha.

Basically what I do is first stream my game to YouTube following this article (http://selsine.com/2016/10/17/how-to-live-stream-to-youtube-from-a-retropie/ - basically the same thing as setting up streaming to Twitch - http://selsine.com/2016/10/16/how-to-live-stream-to-twitch-from-a-retropie/ - but using your YouTube stream key instead of Twitch. Then I send the YouTube stream to a VLC player so you can see the whole thing in full screen and then I add the VLC source in OBS. So I'm still playing from my Pi to my TV, but I sent the stream to YouTube first so it could be seen by OBS and then I stream to Twitch via OBS. Sadly.... the video kept freezing on me and it just overall sucked. I'm pretty sure it's my old computer so perhaps you'll have better luck on yours.

So I got my twitch channel/streaming up and working faultlessly, although it does require extra hardware, another pc and an HDMI Capture card.

I bought one of these HDMI Capture devices and plugged it into an old laptop. The laptop was a high spec machine (i5, 8gb ram and SSD drive) but it is about 4 years old, running windows 7, beaten up and generally messed up (always runs hot, battery doesn't charge etc) so not the greatest thing but it does work.

Setup a Twitch account, installed OBS on the laptop, assigned it the twitch account details, added a video input device as the HDMI card, added another video input device as the laptop webcam and added an audio input as the laptop mic. One thing to note with this setup is to add the audio of the game from the HDMI then you need to add another audio input and set it as the HDMI capture card. I then turned the volume down on the cabinet as it was also using the mic in the laptop.

And thats it. Super easy. Couple of extra things to note, the USB cable that comes with it is about 30cm long so I have ordered a longer one (it is USB 3.0 male to male). As I was using the laptop webcam I had to have the it sat on top of the cabinet so the cable is fine currently. I have now ordered a seperate webcam to mount above the screen so it's not looking at the top of my head.

and a quick test stream

Clyde · 25 Jun 2020, 11:25

@joesnow81 said in Viewing Retropie Gameplay through SSH/Putty?:

I bought one of these HDMI Capture devices

Interesting. I tried one of those once, but sent it back because it added approx. ½ second delay to the picture. I presume yours doesn't do that?

That said, my Pi is set to 1600x1200 pixels. Maybe your resolution is lower or more widespread so the device is able to process it faster?

BGallagherLA · 25 Jun 2020, 22:24

@joesnow81 Yeah, I have a little Toshiba Satellite that's six years old with just two gigs of ram. I'm overdue for an upgrade anyway haha. I was hoping to find a way to just add a mic through the 3.5 inch jack on the Pi but I'm not sure how to enable that for a twitch stream. Any ideas @Global-Moderators ?

mitu · 26 Jun 2020, 03:35

@BGallagherLA Please don't tag the moderation team unless there's something that requires moderation. Reporting posts can also be done with the 'Flag post for moderation' post option. Thank you.

BGallagherLA · 26 Jun 2020, 03:48

@mitu Apologies.

joesnow81 · 26 Jun 2020, 08:47

@Clyde said in Viewing Retropie Gameplay through SSH/Putty?:

@joesnow81 said in Viewing Retropie Gameplay through SSH/Putty?:

I bought one of these HDMI Capture devices

Interesting. I tried one of those once, but sent it back because it added approx. ½ second delay to the picture. I presume yours doesn't do that?

That said, my Pi is set to 1600x1200 pixels. Maybe your resolution is lower or more widespread so the device is able to process it faster?

There is no delay for the audio or video between my pi and the output captured on the laptop. It's pretty seamless. There is about a 2-3 second delay between the output and twitch but that is to be expected I guess when streaming directly across the web.

Clyde · 26 Jun 2020, 21:34

@joesnow81 Curious. What the screen resolution of your Pi?