Timing your speedruns is an essential part of tracking your progress. Furthermore, if you stream on Twitch or upload videos to YouTube, your viewers will enjoy seeing your pace. Bettering yourself with every run feels great and it’s thrilling to watch! The timer on your phone may have sufficed as you were adjusting to the idea of splitting and timing your speedruns. However, if you’re ready to really start tracking your time, then you need to set up a more sophisticated timer.
To set up LiveSplit you need to download LiveSplit, add splits, establish your hotkeys, and edit the layout. Additionally, you can capture LiveSplit with OBS to display your splits on stream or in videos.
Welcome to the ultimate LiveSplit setup guide. This ‘more than you’d ever need’ in-depth, extensive deep-dive into the most common speedrun timer will cover just about every option available in LiveSplit. If you need to quickly look for a specific setting or feature, you can use the search functionality of your browser. Alternatively you can refer to our 5 steps below to jump to specific sections. This guide is extremely in-depth and covers everything you could ever ask about LiveSplit.
5 Steps to Set Up LiveSplit:
After setting up LiveSplit, you can easily start speedrunning with LiveSplit displayed on stream.
Downloading the Speedrun Timer LiveSplit
LiveSplit is the most reputable and widely-used timer for speedrunning. Download LiveSplit at https://livesplit.org/downloads/.
In case you are not a Windows user, you don’t want to make any downloads, or if you simply want to look through other options, check out our complete guide to speedrun timers.
The file will have a version number to the right of it, and a number of downloads below.
Open LiveSplit
Once you have LiveSplit downloaded, you’re going to extract the zip file and put it in the file destination of your choice. Open the folder and open the Livesplit application, no need to worry about the other files. Feel free to put the app on your desktop or even pin it to your taskbar.
If you’re not sure which file exactly you need to open from your extracted zip folder, it’s the Application file called LiveSplit, and it should look similar to the screenshot below (though, not exact).
Edit Splits
Splits are multifunctional. They can serve as mini-goals you have to achieve in your run. They are especially helpful in your early days of speedrunning to provide you insight (and motivation) in your speedruns, since it helps you track your progress in each “section” of the game. Once you are more familiar with the game, it will often be more useful for viewers of your run. And finally, they can be used to test out different strategies, tricks, or routes, if you start implementing something new into your speedruns without previous testing individual segment testing.
Ultimately, splits are functional, helpful, and exciting. Both your viewers and you will be glad you have these splits.
In Super Mario Bros., runners set up their splits for every level. Every game has its own common splits, but of course, you can set your splits to anything you’d like. In case it helps, you can find some runners in your community and watch their videos and streams to find out what splits they use.
Setting Up Splits
The first time you use Livesplit, you’ll need to go into the Splits Editor. To get there, right-click anywhere on the timer and select “Edit splits…“
First, you’ll want to type in the name of the game. You’ll notice as you type that a list of games will drop down for you to select from if you’d like. This is because LiveSplit is synced up to Speedrun.com to detect all available games. Selecting a game may add some predetermined settings to your splits for you to save you some trouble.
From here, you can select the speedrun category if there are categories available. If there aren’t any available categories, you can go ahead and give the category any name you believe is most fitting. Just like the Game Name field, you can also use the down arrow on the right to select from a list of available categories.
If you need more information to understand what speedrun categories are, you can check out our overall speedrunning guide here, with helpful tips and screenshots included: What is Speedrunning? Speedrunning Explained.
Start Timer at Setting
The “Start Timer at” field will likely be left at “0.00“. The reason for this option is that there are some exceptions to starting times in speedruns. For example, some speedruns start to get timed after the first input. Speedruns for Konami’s classic Nintendo game, Contra, start the timer as soon as the speedrunner gains control of the character. In this case, speedrunners set the timer to a negative amount of time counting from the time the player presses start on the title screen, to the exact moment the player gains control of the character.
In other words, you start your timer at the time you press start on the title screen, and the timer will reach exactly 0.00 to start counting your time the moment the Stage 1 title card goes away and your character drops in from the ceiling.
This guide is extremely in-depth and covers everything you could ever ask about LiveSplit. If this guide is too detailed for you, you may just want a rudimentary setup that gets the job done. If that’s the case, instead, check out our 3 minutes Quick Setup Guide with significantly less detail.
Not all speedruns are timed in the same manner, but the most common approach is to start the timer upon starting the game and stop the timer upon seeing an end screen. Double-check with other speedrunners, their speedruns, or the game’s rules on Speedrun.com to confirm, if the game currently has speedrunners.
The screenshots below use Super Mario 64 speedruns as an example for finding the rules around timing.
If the game you are speedrunning does not have any other speedrunners yet, we have a guide for that: How to Start Speedrunning a Game Which Has No Runs – Creating a New Speedrun.
Attempts
Upon first setting your splits up, you’ll want to leave the Attempts field at 0, since you have not done any speedrun attempts yet. This will automatically be counted based on starting and stopping or resetting your splits. It may not end up as accurate if you have false starts or use these splits for testing. However, if you want accuracy, you can just come back and edit this field whenever you’d like to account for those instances.
Creating Splits
You’ll notice that there are tabs for Real-Time, Game Time, and Additional Info. Real-Time is often referred to as RTA or Real-Time Attack. RTA speedruns are the most common and it simply means that you are using the same seconds we’d use to bake a cake or run a mile. If the game you are speedrunning is timed using the in-game timer or has rules about stopping the timer during loads (common on PC games), that likely means you are using Game Time. Of course, you can also check this within the game rules on Speedrun.com (if it isn’t established, you will likely be using Real-Time).
In either case, the splits will remain when switching between tabs.
The process of adding or removing splits will be the same for Real-Time and Game Time.
Adding Splits
To start adding splits you can start with the Segment Name column. Simply double-click in the field, and type in the name of your first split. You can name the split anything you’d like — in this case, we’ll use an example of “Level 1”. You can name your splits anything you’d like, so long as you remember what they mean. Sometimes I even use splits to remind myself of what’s coming up (this can be really useful when first familiarizing yourself with a speedrun).
The only other field to work with upon initial setup is Icon, which is totally optional. The Icon Field is used to upload images if you’d like an image to be displayed for that split. All other columns will be automatically filled and tracked by LiveSplit as you start speedrunning the game.
Now, you can head to the left sidebar of the Splits Editor where you can click Insert Below.
From here, you can just add as many splits as you would like to your timer. You have a lot of room for your splits and even if you do run out of room, you can set your splits to scroll only displaying the current and final splits. We will look into styling your splits after the initial setup is complete.
If you want to remove a split, go ahead and click on Remove Segment.
If you’d like to get notified for any new Speed Gaming News articles, videos, giveaways, or more feel free to hop into the Discord channel!
Auto-Splitting and Game Time
When a game features an in-game timer that is accurate and reliable, often times the community will decide that there really isn’t a need to set up a timer. For example, individual-level speedruns (also known as ILs) of GoldenEye 007 or Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64 do not require speedrunners to use timers. The game already tracks their times. If you can opt-out of a timer, that’s less setup and more runs!
However, sometimes Game Time is tracked outside of the game. This can be done for various reasons, or sometimes it’s just for the visual aesthetic of having the splits viewable to yourself or your audience.
LiveSplit automatically detects if Auto-Splitting or Game Time is available for a game. If either option is available, LiveSplit will let you know and will provide access to buttons to Activate, check out the Settings, visit a Website, or take other setup actions. From here, LiveSplit will walk you through the steps required for completing the setup.
Add Comparison
Typically speedrunners will compare their live or current time to their personal best, also known as PB. However, sometimes it might help to add some context. Let’s say, for example, your personal best had a really amazing start but the last three splits lost enough time for you to miss a world record. The current world record, by a different speedrunner, might have had a slow start, but an incredible finish to their run.
In this example, adding comparison splits to the current world record, held by another speedrunner, will provide good information to your viewers and potentially inspire you to keep pushing. Maybe you’ll find yourself struggling to compete with those amazing early splits of your own, but compared to the world record, you’d be “in the green” or ahead of the world record holder.
There are plenty of reasons why you might want to add a comparison, but you certainly do not need to add any type of comparison, since your personal best will automatically be recorded against any speedrun you do.
If you’d like to make use of this feature, click on the Add Comparison button in the left sidebar. Alternatively, you can ask someone to export their splits, which you can then use the Import Comparison… option to import their splits. You may also be able to find some comparisons on Speedrun.com by heading to your speedrun game’s page, then checking in the Resources section found in the left sidebar.
The Other Button
If you ever want a fresh start, you can clear your speedrun history, your times, or your sum of best, you can refer to the Other… button.
Settings and Hotkeys
With the splits set up, you’ll now have to make sure you know how to activate them using hotkeys. Hotkeys are key presses that perform an action for the timer while you’re in a speedrun. This is how you can keep track of your time in-game.
Right-click the timer and go to settings. Here you can assign all of your hotkeys to specific keys on your keyboard. Before you set up your splits, there are a couple of things to be aware of.
First, make sure that you don’t use any keys that you might accidentally bump during a speedrun. Secondly, you’ll want to make sure that there aren’t any conflicting keys being used. For example, if you use a number on the Numpad area of the keyboard for your speedrun, be sure that it is not used for any LiveSplit hotkeys. It is important to know that you will likely be using LiveSplit’s Global Hotkeys option, meaning even if you are within another program, LiveSplit will detect your inputs.
Assigning Hotkeys
Here’s what all of the hotkeys do:
- Start/Split: Start the timer and advance to the next split. This will also stop the timer when you’ve pressed this hotkey while on the final split.
- Reset: Resets the timer.
- Undo: Undoes a split in case you accidentally pressed it.
- Skip: Skips a split in case you forgot to press the split key on time.
- Pause: Pauses the timer.
- Switch Comparison (Previous): You will likely be comparing your splits to your PB. But in case you have other comparisons set up (world record splits, old PB splits, etc.), you can use this option to rotate through the splits in a previous order.
- Switch Comparison (Next): Same as above, but in the next order.
- Toggle Global Hotkeys: Turns on or off LiveSplit’s Global Hotkeys option.
I typically leave Pause, Switch Comparisons, and Toggle Global Hotkeys set to a key I don’t use (such as the Home key), as I like to stay as focused as I can on the actual speedrun to avoid major distractions.
Options
The Global hotkeys option allows you to interact with the hotkeys while not clicked into the LiveSplit window. This is a setting you will want to turn on in most cases, to avoid clicking into LiveSplit for every split.
Deactivate for Other Programs does exactly as it is named. Use this option with caution, if used at all.
Double Tap Prevention is a great option to have checked. On good pace runs, sometimes your hand can get a bit shakey, and it’s easy to accidentally double-tap a split button. This will prevent you from splitting twice if you’ve tapped the split hotkey multiple times within a fraction of a second. This also applies to all of your other LiveSplit hotkeys.
Checking the Hotkey Delay (Seconds) option will delay the action a set number of seconds after you have pressed a hotkey. Unless you have a good reason, I would suggest leaving this option to 0.
Allow Gamepads as Hotkeys is a good option, especially if you are using a foot pedal for your splits (this will free up your hands).
Hotkey Profiles
Different games sometimes require different setups for maximum comfort. The setup you are seeing in the settings panel will be your Active Hotkey Profile. The first profile you set up is automatically set up as “Default“, though you can rename it anytime. If you’d like a different setup for a different speedrun, just go ahead and click on the New button and you’ll be able to set a new Hotkey Profile.
Advanced Settings
Simple Sum of Best Calculation can be a bit confusing, as it relies on the sum of best option in the layout settings (covered below). Checking this option will not take any effect without the Sum of Best layout option in use. The Simple Sum of Best Calculation option will display the sum of the lowest time ever recorded for all segments.
With this option unchecked, the sum of best is handled in a more complex way that will include attempts where some segments are missing a split time. Without the Simple Sum of Best Calculation option checked, LiveSplit will make some assumptions to fill in the missing splits, which may or may not be completely accurate. If you are planning to display a sum of best, I’d recommend checking this Simple Sum of Best Calculation option to start off, and later compare your sum of best with the option checked and unchecked to see which most accurately reflects your best times.
If you are starting a new speedrun, constantly getting notified in between runs that you have new times may get annoying. This is where the Warn On Reset If Better Times option can be unchecked. However, it is typically a better choice to leave this option checked in case the splits in your speedrun aren’t accurate — this is especially important if you care about your best time for any given split.
Speedrun Race Settings
The Race Viewer determines the website that will open to show you live races. To see the effect of this, you will have to right-click on your timer and check out the live races. Live races will be shown under SRL Races, racetime.gg Races, etc.
When you click on one of the active races, LiveSplit will open up a new browser window. The URL this takes you to will be decided based on your selection in the Race Viewer. Options for viewing races include SpeedRunsLive, MultiTwitch, Kadgar, Speedrun.tv, and will likely be added to as speedrunning continues to grow in popularity.
Racing Services controls the races that show up in your LiveSplit menu when right-clicking on the timer. When you click on the Manage Racing Services… button, a new window will display. From here, select or deselect the race sources you’d like to see. As shown in the picture above, SRL Races and racetime.gg Races are showing in my menu, because these are the items I had selected when I created the screenshot.
Personally, as someone who does not join races, I like to keep this option deselected to avoid extra clutter in my menu. Please note, with these options deactivated, you will not be able to watch, join, or create new races directly from LiveSplit.
Other Settings
In the Active Comparisons section, click on the Choose Active Comparisons… button to bring up the comparisons menu. From here, you can check or uncheck any set of splits you would like to see displayed in your timer. You will be able to rotate between your comparisons using the hotkeys you’ve selected in your Switch Comparison settings. The options available here are as follows:
- Best Segments
- Best Split Times
- Average Segments
- Median Segments
- Worst Segments
- Balanced PB
- Latest Run
- None
A lot of speedrunners like the Balanced PB option, because it helps put into perspective the pace of your active speedrun (to prevent runners from getting caught up in a negativity cycle when competing against very strong PB splits). Worst Segments may also be useful for no-reset runs when you are just trying to get a completion or some practice in but don’t want to scare yourself or viewers away with a wall of red splits.
There are many options and reasons to toggle between the various comparisons if you’d like. Alternatively, you can feel free to keep it simple and stick to your personal best comparison. Your PB comparison is active by default and cannot be deselected from this list.
Saved Accounts in LiveSplit
Saved Accounts are the accounts you have associated with LiveSplit. Having accounts saved can be useful if you like to join races on SpeedRunsLive or other speedrun racing services. If you’d like, you can click Log Out of All Accounts to remove any of those connections. If you speedrun obscure games, you can check out this interesting case study on how an unpopular, and unlikely game blew up in the speedrunning community.
Edit Layout
Now that your splits are all set up and ready to use, the next step is customizing your splits to look great on your stream or in your videos.
To get started in this styling phase of setting up your splits, you’ll right-click on your timer and select Edit Layout… and a new window titled Layout Editor will open. From here, you’ll be able to click the plus (+), minus (-), and arrow buttons on the left to add, remove, and move layout items. Instead of using the arrow buttons, you can simply drag and drop items.
When clicking the plus button, you’ll have many options of layout items to add. I will go through all components, but first, we’ll go through the most common setup.
The top-most item you will want to add will likely be Information > Title. This will add the game and category to the top of your splits, assuming you have added them to your splits. The next common item will be List > Splits, which should be displayed by default. Then, Timer > Timer to display the current time of the speedrun.
Information
Information > Previous Segment is useful and should not be confused with the time displayed next to your splits. When splitting your timer, next to each split you will see how far ahead or behind you are in the full run. However, the Previous Segment is used to display how far ahead or behind you are compared to the specific split or segment. While you may be 10 seconds ahead in a run, you may be 3 seconds behind in the previous segment. This would mean you’re still 10 seconds ahead of your personal best, but you lost 3 seconds compared to your personal best during the previous segment of the run.
Information > World Record can be useful, especially if you are a world record holder, or you are getting close to it. If you have “World Record attempts” in your stream title, many people will want to know how close your PB is to the WR. With this option enabled, you will save yourself from answering the same questions too many times.
There are many other options available here, but above are the most commonly used layout items. Below, is a full list of all layout items with a brief description of each.
Layout Components
Timer
- Detailed Timer: Displays the run timer, segment timer, and segment times for up to two comparisons.
- Timer: Displays the current run time.
List
- Splits: Displays a list of split times and their deltas in relation to comparisons.
- Subsplits: Displays a list of split times and their deltas in relation to comparisons, and only shows subsplits when relevant.
Information
- Current Comparison: This shows which comparison you are actively comparing to.
- Delta: Displays the current delta to a comparison. Deltas are the times that show up when a split hits the best time that segment has ever had (your gold split), and continue displaying until you split. For example, if your personal best time for a specific split is 1:10.4 and your gold for that same split is 1:03.6, the delta will show up at 1:03.6 displaying a -6.8 because your gold is 6.8 seconds ahead of your personal best. This time will count down until it meets your PB time and then will start counting up to show how much time you are starting to lose. In this example, when the timer reaches 1:11.5, the delta will be displayed as +1.1 to show that you are 1.1 seconds behind your PB of 1:10.4.
- Possible Time Save: This option displays the difference between your best segment time and the segment time of the personal best run. It can be used to show the amount of time that can be saved if the segment is played as well as your best ever.
- Previous Segment: Displays the difference between your personal best and the current run over the last segment. This component becomes “Live Segment” if the current segment is longer than your best segment.
- Run Prediction: Displays a predicted time of the current run based on a chosen comparison.
- Sum of Best: Shows the sum of best segment times. All of the best times you have achieved for each segment or split will total to display your optimal run time based on your run history.
- Text: Customizable text to include any extra information you’d like, such as goal times, 2nd place time, etc.
- Title: Used to show the game, category, attempt count, and the game icon.
- Total Playtime: Used to display the total amount of time played with the current splits.
- World Record: This shows the world record time for the current game and category, pulled directly from Speedrun.com.
Media
- Graph: This graph shows the current run in comparison to your personal best. Graph colors can be adjusted to your liking and you can decide whether or not the graph is updated live.
- Sound Effects: Plays audio and sound effects for different actions such as splitting, resetting, etc.
- Video: Use this option to show your PB or a world record video that is synced up to the current run time. This can be useful to visualize pace comparisons and better spot time saves.
Control
- Manual Game Time: This option allows the user to manually enter segment times as the game time.
- Scriptable Auto Splitter: Allows scripts written in the ASL language to define the split behavior.
Other
- Blank Space: Used for adding spacing to your splits with adjustable size.
- Hotkey Indicator: Creates a separator that changes color depending on whether or global hotkeys are enabled or disabled. The indicator will be green when global hotkeys are enabled and will show as red when they are disabled.
- Separator: A section separator, shown as a line, is often used for more visual clarity.
Click on the Download more… option if you’d like to try out some of the custom-built components. These components have been built by various members of the speedrunning community.
Layout Settings
Within the Layout Editor, you have radio buttons to choose between Horizontal and Vertical layouts. If you’d like your timer to get placed on the left or right sides of your stream or video layout, you’ll likely want to select the default Vertical option. If your preference is to have the timer displayed on the top or bottom of your layout, the Horizontal option conveniently puts your splits and layout components side-by-side.
To set the size of your splits you can simply hover over the edges or corners of the timer and manually size the timer. Alternatively, if you want to make sure your timer is pixel perfect, you can head to Edit Layout… > Set Size and choose the exact Width and Height here in the Set Layout Size window. The more important aspect of this feature is the Keep Aspect Ratio checkbox, which some users may find helpful.
Now we’ll really get into the layout design.
To start designing your layout with colors, transparency, and images, we’ll need to open the Layout Settings window from Edit Layout… (the Layout Editor window) > Layout Settings.
Layout
Starting with the Layout tab, you can choose the background color and type. You have the following options for the Background: Solid Color, Vertical Gradient, Horizontal Gradient, Image.
In the Color section, you can click the colored box to bring up a color selector. Please note, if you’d like to use the eye-dropper tool to select a color from anywhere on your screen, you can click and hold the eyedropper tool next to the hex value (examples: #FFFFFF, #3F3cFF). Releasing the mouse-down will select the color when using the eyedropper tool.
The Gradient options will give you two color options, and the Image option activates the Image Opacity and Image Blur sliders.
If you’d like another simple approach to adding an image behind your splits, you can use the Opacity slider. I’ve seen this option used to display music visualizers, webcams, gifs, and more.
In the Fonts section, you can choose the fonts for the Timer, Times, and Text. Disabling Anti-Aliasing will remove the option for Text Outlines in the Colors segment below. Additionally, you can check the box if you’d like to add or remove Drop Shadows.
If you were looking for rainbow splits, the Colors section is where you’ll find a checkbox for that option for the Best Segment color. Checking the Use Rainbow Best Segment Color checkbox will cycle through a rainbow of colors when a split is the best time you’ve achieved.
Though many people have a preference towards the standard split colors (default), feel free to experiment with any of the color settings. The available settings are listed below.
Quick Reference Guide
Best Segment: The best time you’ve ever had on a specific split.
Ahead (Gaining Time): You are still ahead of PB on the speedrun itself, and also ahead of this specific split’s time in your PB.
Ahead (Losting Time): You are ahead of your PB on the overall speedrun time, but this specific split took you longer than it took you in your PB.
Behind (Gaining Time): Though you have gone faster on this split compared to your PB, you are still behind in the overall run.
Behind (Losing Time): You are behind your PB’s split time, and run time.
Text: Any text you have, such as the title, times, and split names.
Text Outlines: Outline color for all text.
Not Running: When the timer is not in use.
Personal Best: Your personal best time.
Paused: This is for when you have your timer paused, using the Pause hotkey.
Thin Separators: These lines can lightly be seen in between each split, used for visual clarity.
Separators: These are the separators added in the Layout Editor (Edit Layout…) window.
Shadows: Determine the color of the shadows.
Note: These explanations assume you are comparing to your Personal Best time, though the same is true for all comparisons.
Reference Expanded
If you’re anything like me, you mess up your gold splits frequently (as shown in the screenshot above). If you’d rather not show these split bests, you can uncheck the Show Best Segments option.
Always on Top is an option that only seems to work in windowed mode, but aims to always display your splits over any other program or software you have showing. This option will not work while you are in the Layout Editor, or have other LiveSplit windows open. Be sure to test this setting while LiveSplit’s only window open is the timer itself.
And finally, we have the Ignore Mouse While Running and Not In Focus option. When this option is checked, if you are focused on another window and click the timer, the timer will not be recognized by your mouse, and can even hide behind the window you are working with. This option can be used to avoid unintentional interactions with your LiveSplit timer.
All Other Tabs
It is important to note that other than the Layout tab, the tabs you see in the Layout Settings window will be determined by the components you add within the Layout Editor window. With that said, I will only cover specific component settings here. If I miss any that have been troublesome for you to figure out, please let me know and I will add them to the list below.
Title
- Show Category Name: Use this option if you’d like to show or hide the game’s speedrun category.
- Show Attempt Count: Displays the number of attempts you have given this specific run. This data will increase with each run, whether or not the run has reached the end.
- Additional Category Info: Show Region, Show Platform, and Show Variables will only be displayed if they are set as sub-categories that can be selected on Speedrun.com (SRC), not to be confused with the information that is shown within the individual leaderboard runs. These are usually used on SRC if they have large enough impacts on the speedrun itself.
Splits
- Background Color: If you dislike the alternating split colors, you can change to Plain, Vertical, or Horizontal split colors.
- Total Splits: If you’d like to condense your splits, you can choose how many splits are given at any given time.
- Upcoming Splits: When condensing your splits using the Total Splits option, you can force show the next splits after the split you are currently on.
- Split Height: Used to determine the height of all splits.
- Current Split Background Color: This is not decided in the Layout tab, and can only be determined within the Styles tab.
- Always show Last Split: As it states, this is how you can make sure the final time of your PB or comparison is always displayed.
- Fill with Blank Space if Not Enough Splits: If you set your Total Splits to a higher number than the splits available for the speedrun, you can use this option to hide or show the spacing of those empty splits. With this option active, you can decide whether you’d like to Lock Last Split to Bottom.
- Split Times > Accuracy: If you’d like to display your split times by Seconds, Tenths of a second, or Hundredths of a second, you can use this option. Use this setting to show or hide decimals in your split times.
- Columns > Show Column Labels: This can be checked to ensure that users know what each column of your splits represents, time, ahead or behind (displayed as “+/-” by default). You can also add columns, and edit each column below to change the Name, Column Type, Comparison, Timing Method, and reorder them by moving them up or down.
Timer
- Timing Method: From here you can select Current Timing Method, Real Time, or Game Time.
- Timer Format: You can use the first dropdown field to display seconds (1), minutes (00:01), hours (0:00:01), or 10s of hours (00:00:01) even before the timer needs to make use of that space. Additionally, you can use the second dropdown field to hide decimals, show one decimal place, or show two decimal places in your timer.
- Decimals Font Size: If you are using decimals, you’ll notice they are smaller than the whole numbers by default. You can use this slider to change the size of those decimals.
Previous Segment
- Possible Time Save > Show Possible Time Save: Checking this box will show how much time you can save (or have saved) over the best time you have ever previously achieved on any given split.
World Record
- Filter Leaderboard By: If there are notable enough differences between Region, Platform, or Variables that they have separate leaderboards on Speedrun.com, you can filter the World Record based on those options here.
Video
- Video Path: Select the video file you’d like to load into LiveSplit to race against.
- Run Starts At: Use this setting so that when you press start on your run, the video’s run begins at the same time.
Sound Effects
- Sound Files: You can upload sound effects for any of the actions you can take in LiveSplit, including Start Timer and Undo Split. On top that, you can also add sound effects for Personal Best and Not a personal Best.
- Volume Mixer: All volume levels can be individually adjusted in the volume mixer, so there’s no need to edit the sound file volumes before adding them into LiveSplit.
Scriptable Auto Splitter
- Script Path: This is where you’ll be able to add the path to the code used to detect auto splitting.
Saving Splits & Layouts
While the options do exist to save your splits and layouts at any time, LiveSplit will ask you if you’d like to make these saves before you close out of the program. You can also right-click in the timer to Open Splits or choose Open Layout to pull up a previously saved layout.
Getting the Timer Ready for Your Live Stream
Now all you have to do is get your splits to show up on your Twitch live stream (or wherever you prefer to stream). To do this, we’ll go through the steps used for Streamlabs Open Broadcaster Studio (also known as Streamlabs OBS), though most live streaming software will share similar steps.
If you don’t have OBS, you can download it at Streamlabs.com. Open OBS, and check out the Sources area. In the upper-right corner, you’ll see a plus sign (+), click on this and it will open a new window.
From here, you’ll select Window Capture and click on the Add Source button. You can add the timer from Add Existing Source, if you have previously added a timer as a window captured element. If you haven’t yet added it, toggle the switch for Add a new source, give it a name that you’ll easily recognize as your LiveSplit speedrun timer, and click the Add Source button.
A new window will open called Settings for Window Capture. In the Window dropdown, select LiveSplit which will be recognized by OBS as [LiveSplit.exe]: LiveSplit. Capture Method should be left as Automatic, unless you run into specific issues with capturing the timer, and Window Match Priority can be left as Match title, otherwise find window of same type. If you’d like your cursor to be hidden from viewers while hovering over the timer, uncheck the Capture Cursor option. Now click the Done button, and your timer has been added!
A few quick OBS tips:
- You can simply click and drag items anywhere you want within your OBS scene.
- Holding Alt while resizing a source with your mouse (horizontally or vertically) will allow you to quickly crop!
- Hold Control (Ctrl) while resizing to maintain the source’s aspect ratio.
I hope that’s helpful with getting LiveSplit to display in your live stream!
Now You’re Ready to Speedrun!
Timers are invaluable when it comes speedrunning, and also free! Now that you’ve got one you will definitely be better able to track your speedrun progress. Now that you’re ready to start speedrunning, all you need is some time and dedication! I hope this in-depth LiveSplit setup guide has helped to clear up any confusion or trouble you may have been facing.
SpeedGamingNews.com wishes you the best of luck on your new speedrunning adventure!
If you’re a fan of Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64, be sure to check out this analysis of the upcoming Perfect Dark game!
