How to set up a live casino studio: equipment, streaming and costs

This page is for operators building a live dealer studio, or taking tables they already run online, with elite. Your studio deals and films the games; elite runs the game system, delivers the video to players and handles betting, settlement and reports. Here is what to prepare, and how to estimate streaming costs before you open.

Live dealer studio equipment checklist

Item	Used for	What to look for
Table, cards and shoe	The game itself	Baccarat and dragon tiger deal from a shoe; the dealer tablet checks card counts for 1–8 decks and supports burn cards. Niu Niu uses a fresh 52-card deck every round, Texas Hold'em a new deck every hand
Camera	Filming the table and the dealer	16:9 landscape, for example 1280×720 or 1920×1080. Keep the card positions and the dealer's hands in the top two-thirds of the picture: on the desktop screens the betting panel and roadmaps cover the bottom
Lighting	Card faces that read clearly on a phone	Even light across the layout and no glare on the cards. With EWIN AI VISION, set up the cameras and recognition equipment as AI VISION instructs
Streaming PC or hardware encoder	Pushing the picture to elite over WHIP	OBS Studio 30 or later (built-in WHIP output) or any hardware encoder that supports WHIP; each table needs two outputs, desktop and mobile
Network	Streaming and the tablet connection	A stable wired network or Wi‑Fi. Upload bandwidth must exceed both feeds combined, with headroom: at the suggested 3 + 1.5 Mbps, more than 4.5 Mbps per table
Tablet	Running the dealer tablet app: starting rounds, next-card prompts, confirming results, voids and corrections	An Android tablet, iPad, or Chrome/Edge on a computer; 10 inches or larger, in landscape and on power, with auto-lock off and the app pinned (Guided Access on iPad, screen pinning on Android). The app is in Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese and English
Card-reading shoe (optional)	Sending each card as it is drawn	Keyboard mode (HID, USB or Bluetooth) or a serial reader on a computer. Without one, the dealer enters each card on the tablet. Recommended for Texas Hold'em
Staff	Running the table	Dealers; a supervisor who holds the supervisor PIN (4–8 digits, set in the Console) for voids and corrections; someone responsible for cameras, network and streaming

The list is the same for every game: a baccarat table needs the same equipment as dragon tiger, Niu Niu or Texas Hold'em. Hold'em records every card of every hand, which is why a card-reading shoe is recommended there.

The minimum

A camera, a streaming PC or encoder and a tablet are enough to open a table; the card-reading shoe is optional. More detail is in Run your own live tables.

Live dealer streaming: two feeds per table

Each table you create gets two stream names, one for desktop and one for mobile. The table's Streaming button in the Console shows both push URLs and the push key, which your encoder sends as a Bearer Token.

Feed	Played to	Suggested bitrate
Desktop	Players on the desktop game screens	About 3 Mbps
Mobile	Players on the mobile game screens	Lower, for example about 1.5 Mbps

• Push both feeds. If only one is live, players on the other kind of screen see no video.
• Same picture, different bitrates is fine.
• What you push is what players get. elite does not transcode, so your bitrate sets both the picture quality and the streaming traffic.
• Keyframe interval: 1 second, so players see video sooner when they open a table.
• Two outputs per table. One OBS instance streams one feed at a time, so use two streaming PCs, two OBS instances or a hardware encoder that sends two streams at once.
• elite requires only WHIP and the push key; resolution and bitrate are up to you.

OBS settings, stream checks and error codes: Pushing video (WHIP / OBS).

Choosing a result source

Video and round results travel separately: elite never reads cards from your video. Each table has one result source that sends the round opening, the close of betting, the cards and the result; elite checks the result against the cards and drawing rules before it settles.

Result source	Games	Choose it when
Dealer tablet (card-reading shoe or manual entry)	Baccarat, dragon tiger, Niu Niu, Texas Hold'em	You want the simplest setup: there is nothing to apply for, and it is the only source for Texas Hold'em
EWIN AI VISION card recognition	Baccarat, dragon tiger	You want IP cameras to recognize the cards instead of a card reader; AI VISION is a separate service with its own account, API key and setup
RoadMapServer	Baccarat	You already have a RoadMapServer merchant account (an advanced feature, off by default)
elite API push (GFI)	Baccarat, dragon tiger, Niu Niu	Your studio already runs its own results system

• A table is linked to one result source at a time; you can change it later.
• If the result source goes down, the table stops taking bets at once, and a round that gets no result within 10 minutes of betting closing is voided and refunded automatically.

Pairing, card readers, the supervisor PIN and the other sources: Result sources.

Going live on elite, step by step

1. Sign up on the elite website. Your account is created at once and the Console password arrives by email.
2. Create the table under Table → Table management → My tables → Add table and choose baccarat, dragon tiger, Niu Niu or Texas Hold'em. It starts in Maintenance, with both stream names ready.
3. Connect the result source. For a dealer-tablet table, install the app from Table → Dealer tablet download, pair it with the 8-character pairing code or QR code from the table's Tablet button, and set the supervisor PIN.
4. Push video. Enter both push URLs and the push key in OBS or your encoder and start both feeds.
5. Rehearse. While the table is in maintenance the dealer deals and confirms rounds as usual; elite records the results and the roadmap but takes no bets. Compare cards and results under Table → Round results.
6. Set bet limits and timing: a bet-limit profile for every currency you enable, and the betting time. On Texas Hold'em tables, also line up the on-screen seat frames with your camera picture.
7. Upgrade before real operation. The free Demo plan limits video and shows a demo watermark; top up prepaid credit and upgrade under Plan & billing → Plan.
8. Open the table. Make sure it is Offered to players under Lobby tables, set its status to Open, then enter it with your own test players on a computer and on a phone to confirm both feeds.

Table settings, maintenance and Hold'em seat positions: Going live and costs.

How to estimate live casino streaming cost

elite bills streaming by the video your players watch. Pushing video to elite is not billed, and nothing is billed while nobody is watching. That makes the volume easy to estimate:

GB ≈ bitrate (Mbps) × viewer-hours × 0.45

• Bitrate: the feed your players watch, for example about 3 Mbps on desktop and 1.5 Mbps on mobile.
• Viewer-hours: the average number of players watching at the same time, across all tables, × the hours you are open.
• 0.45: 3,600 seconds ÷ 8 (bits to bytes) ÷ 1,000 (MB to GB), so one hour at 1 Mbps is 0.45 GB (1 GB = 10⁹ bytes).

Worked example. An average of 20 players watching at the same time across your tables, 12 opening hours a day, for 30 days, at about 3 Mbps:

Viewer-hours per month = 20 viewers × 12 hours × 30 days = 7,200
Streaming per month    = 3 × 7,200 × 0.45 = 9,720 GB
Per viewer-hour        = 3 × 0.45 = 1.35 GB

• A viewer on a 1.5 Mbps mobile feed uses about 0.68 GB an hour, half as much as at 3 Mbps.
• To turn GB into money, enter the same numbers in the streaming cost estimate in the pricing section of the official site; it also lists the current table fee and price per GB. Your actual charges are itemized daily in the Console.
• The table fee counts every day a table is offered to players, including days in maintenance, so disable tables you will not open for a while under Lobby tables.

Start building

Ready to build your live casino studio on elite? Sign up free — self-service, no sales call — rehearse on the Demo plan and upgrade when your tables are ready. The games, features and current pricing are on the elite website; for the platform overview, see A live dealer platform for operators.