A creative’s guide for getting started on Twitch

Hunter Becton
Aug 8, 2017 · 14 min read

I started streaming on Twitch. I thought the idea was a bit silly at first when a co-worker suggested I give it a shot. Why? I wasn’t streaming games, and I thought the entire community are gamers. So, how could a guy that loves Photoshop, video, and design have a shot with streaming to Twitch? The answer is Creative Communities.

The entire idea behind creative communities is for anyone to share their creative process to the world. Literally, anyone.

I already started sharing my creative process for Photoshop and other topics when I created Skillthrive, but now there was a new, scary layer to add–all of this was going to be live. No editing, no second shots, all on the spot.

It goes without saying I was nervous, and being a perfectionist made it easy to hold off on starting. However, with enough friendly badgering from my co-workers and a shrinking list of excuses, I started.

I’m by no way an all-star on Twitch or even on the B team, but I did learn a thing or two getting started. That’s what I wanted to share with you here.


The hardware

How much you spend getting started on Twitch really depends on a couple factors: your budget (duh) and how professional you want it to look.

A good rule of thumb is to always start small, test it out, and grow from there, but that ultimately depends on the person. In this section, I’ll cover my setup and point you to some useful resources to help you decide what’s best for you.

Computer

I have a custom PC that I built in the beginning of 2015 for a Hackintosh project. This PC was intended to be a workhorse for video projects and Cinema 4D, but after getting tired of messing around with the Hackintosh I decided to just convert it over to Windows 10 about a month ago. I felt like it would be a lot more stable and I had a concern that my computer would run into some random problems mid-broadcast if I kept it as a Hackintosh.

I dropped about $1,200 on this computer, which is nothing compared to a full-price, legit Mac Pro (remember, I was building a Hackintosh) with the same amount of computing power. Still, it’s not necessarily cheap either. For this build, the specific specs are as follows:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-UD5 ATX

CPU: Core i7–6700K

CPU Cooler: Corsair H60 (Water)

GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 760 Super Clocked ACX 2GB GDDR5 SLI Ready

RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport LT (16GB)

SSD: Samsung 850 EVO 250GB

HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB

PSU: Corsair RM 650 Watt

Case: Corsair Carbide 300R

The good news is that you can get a solid starter computer for around $500 according to the links below:

Building a PC for Streaming: Twitch, Hitbox and Game Broadcasting

How to Build a Budget Streaming PC

Ask for some help on Tom’s Hardware Forums

And if you think your computer is already powerful enough, be sure to check out suggested computer specs from Twitch.

What system do you use? Let me know in the comments!


Two computer streaming setup

Just to note, this section is completely optional, and streaming doesn’t require using two computers. However, I ended up using two computers (one PC and one Mac) to stream because it suited my needs.

On my first live stream I ended up just using the PC to stream and do Photoshop, but I ran into some issues that I didn’t foresee.

For one, I hadn’t used Photoshop on a PC in 6 years or more. You might be thinking to yourself, “Aren’t they the same program?” The answer is yes, but the number of times I hit the Windows key on my keyboard thinking it was a Command key on a Mac was pitiful. Plus, my Wacom tablet wasn’t setup for the PC and all my hotkeys were completely out of wack.

Luckily, I ended up using my mouse and getting through my first hour and a half broadcast with no problem. However, I got this idea in my head that I wanted to work on my Mac and stream the video to my PC. After doing a bit of research I discovered that this setup was considered a two computer streaming setup (go figure). Fortunately, it’s really easy to do and you have a couple options.

Option one: use a capture card

A capture card allows a computer to capture the video and audio from another device. This device can be another computer, a DSLR, a Super Nintendo, or anything else with an output video / audio signal. Retro gaming, anyone?

Anyways, there’s no shortage of capture cards out there to purchase.

Here’s a link to the 11 best capture cards for gaming that I used to get an idea of what was out there on the market. I ended up going with the Elgato Game Capture HD60 Pro for around $158 on Amazon. I went with the refurbished one because I’m always looking to save a couple bucks and have had good luck in the past with refurbished items.

The Elgato HD60 Pro is a PCIe interface, which means it’s installed directly into my motherboard on my PC. Some of you might want an external capture card for traveling, but I didn’t see this being something I would actually use. Plus, the HD60 Pro comes with some extra features that were completely worth it for me. Below is a simple chart comparing Elgato products:

What really drew my attention to this card is that I could capture a master copy of the video, use a higher bitrate (better quality output), and use the Elgato Game Capture software to stream and record at the same time.

There’s one catch though, you need Windows 10 (64-bit). At the time I had just Windows 8.1(64-bit), so I had to do a quick upgrade to Windows 10 in order to use the capture card. Before you go out and buy an upgrade though, see if Microsoft has some promotion for a free upgrade to Windows 10. A quick search on Google might lead you to some current promotions if they exist.

Also, if you’re wanting to stream retro games, don’t worry, Amazon sells HDMI to RGA converters that you can use.

If you want to see more about the HD60 Pro, here’s the video I watched before buying:

I had to mess around with the settings on my Mac for awhile to get my PC to recognize the signal from the right screen in my broadcasting software. That’s because I still wanted to have a dual screen setup for my Mac, but I wanted to stream the image from my monitor and not my Macbook Pro.

I was also already using the HDMI output on my laptop, so I had to snag a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter so I could use the second monitor.

Option two: use LAN

I didn’t actually try this method because it was way easier to just plug in a capture card and get started with what I needed. Plus, if I ever wanted to capture video from another source I now had the ability to do that.

However, for those who want to save a few bucks or are more adventurous than myself, check out this video on a two computer setup without a capture card:

Did you try this method? How’d it go? Drop a line in the comments!


Webcam

Probably the most popular camera on the market for streaming is the Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920, which you can grab on Amazon for around $60.

Keep in mind, this isn’t a DSLR, it’s a webcam. Don’t expect amazing output quality, but it’ll do just fine for what you need for streaming. It’ll still look amazing by the time you shrink your video window and stream it to Twitch.

Webcam settings

If I had to complain about this webcam it would be the fact that the settings randomly change. Usually it’s the white balance getting jacked-up and turning me into a Smurf or the auto-focus turning on and focusing on the wrong thing. Regardless of the issue, I’m always going back into the Logitech Gaming Software to reset my settings.

Below I mention some of the settings I have to make sure are set up before streaming:

Turn off auto-focus

I appreciate what Logitech was trying to do here by giving this webcam auto focus, but I can’t see too many use cases for myself. I’m just sitting in the general same spot for a long period of time, so I wouldn’t want any slight movement to trigger the auto-focus and give my viewers a dizzy camera adjustment.

Turn off auto white balance and properly set

White balance refers to “color temperature” of your scene. Warmer scenes appear to have more yellow tones and cooler scenes tend to have more blue tones. I usually want this to be as close to natural colors as possible, so I’ll set my white balance to a point somewhere in the middle of the slider and make sure auto white balance is turned off. Again, I appreciate Logitech adding these feature, but my light source isn’t changing throughout the entire stream, so it’s a bit useless in my case.


Lighting

Lighting is super important. Nobody wants to be looking at some person in a dark room–it’s creepy. Maybe it’s the photographer coming out in me, but I wanted to make sure this was on point, on budget, and fit into my tiny space. With that said, here’s a look at my setup:

Lighting the room overall — replacing the ceiling fan lights

First up was removing the glass shades on my ceiling fan lights and replacing them with LED lights. To replace those I used the EcoSmart
60W Equivalent Daylight A19 Basic Non-Dimmable LED Light Bulb
from Home Depot. An 8-pack only runs $13, which felt like a steal considering how expensive LED lights can be.

Keep in mind, you want your lighting to have the same illumination (similar idea to white balance), which is 5000K in my case. This will produce the bright, white light that you see above, instead of the yellowish light that feels like seeing life through an Instagram filter.

5000K is typically referred to as “daylight” and the yellowish light is considered “soft white.” I think this is a bit confusing because I imagine daylight as being more yellow and white being, well, more white. Not the case though. Here’s an example to illustrate the difference (left is “soft white” at 2700K and right is “daylight” at 5000K):

Lighting the green screen — Clamp Lights

In order to get the best results from a green screen you want the background to be lit as well as it can be. That’s why I bought two clamp lights from Home Depot for about $8 a piece and threw one of the LED bulbs in each that I had left over from my 8-pack. I then clamped them on my desk, adjusted them to point towards the screen, and called it done!

Lighting my face — IKEA desktop lamps and round soft box covers

I’m the most proud about how this turned out, so I saved it for last.

I had an old IKEA TERTIAL Work lamp laying around from college that I thought would be perfect for having an adjustable light source. After setting the first one up I went ahead and bought a second one so I had light filling both sides of my face.

For these lamps, I ended up purchasing two Cree 100W Equivalent Daylight (5000K) A21 Dimmable LED Light Bulbs from Home Depot. Unfortunately, one of these light bulbs cost about the same as the entire 8-pack that I mentioned earlier, but I am super pleased with how they turned out.

Also, I wanted to make sure these lights were dimmable so I could adjust the lighting as needed. I’d highly suggest spending the extra money getting dimmable bulbs because these lights are going to be your main light source, so you want the extra control for getting it right. The only thing you’ll need to purchase is a plug-in dimmer chord like this one from Home Depot in order to control the lights.

My next goal was to figure out how to diffuse these lights so they weren’t as harsh on my face. I first tried using parchment paper and clothespins that I had laying around my apartment, but this just looked wack.

I was familiar with soft boxes and diffuser covers, so I knew there had to be something out there to cover these lights. After a quick search on Amazon, I found the Haoge 7" 180mm Soft White Diffuser Sock. The best part is that the diameter of the IKEA lamps are also 7", so these diffuser socks fit perfectly!

Do you have any interesting lighting hacks that you’d like to share? Let’s hear about them in the comments!

Broadcasting software

Your broadcasting software is what takes inputs from your computers, encodes, records and streams to Twitch. In other words, it’s essential for streaming.

There are several paid and free options out there for broadcasting software, but I’ll go over the ones I considered and used.

OBS Studio

OBS Studio is a free and open source software solution, so it’s incredibly popular. I found it easy to use for the most part, but some of the settings can be a bit confusing, especially if you’re not familiar with video.

Fortunately, because OBS is so popular there are a ton of resources and tutorials online to help you get started.

I’m not going to spend any time talking about how to setup OBS, rather I’ll point you to some a helpful video that I used to get going with OBS:

LightStream

I found this tool on ProductHunt a while back when they were featured. It’s basically the same thing as OBS or any other broadcasting software, but it’s in the cloud.

That means you don’t have to download anything on your computer, you can access your dashboard anywhere in the world with an internet connection, and their engines handle most of the composing and encoding so your computer’s precious CPU is preserved. To get a better idea of what this means, they have a handy chart comparing CPU usage with their product and other popular software options (this is comparing 72oP at 60FPS):

Pretty neat, right?

Setup is similar (or even easier) to OBS Studio, so if you’re familiar with how to set that up then working in Lightstream should be a cinch.

Unfortunately, at this time they don’t support 1080P and their chroma key feature was recently disabled for improvements, so I’ve been sticking with OBS until they figure that out.


Handy tools

Restream.io — Stream to multiple channels at once

Right now I’m using Restream.io to stream to Twitch, YouTube and Facebook simultaneously. They make you pay in order to stream to Facebook, and getting Facebook setup is a bit annoying (I go over that in the “Other lessons learned” section below.)

Other than that, I really like this tool so far. In their dashboard I can monitor my status on each network, see a live preview, update my stream title, and they have a handy tool that aggregates chat from multiple platforms.

However, if Lightstream lets me stream to multiple platforms at once I may be switching over to them full-time. More on that as things change!

Nerd or Die — Overlay freebies

Derek, the founder of NerdorDie.com, has created some useful free and paid resources for creating overlays in Twitch. He also streams on Twitch, so be sure to check him out!

Here are a couple resources paired with helpful videos that I found from Nerd or Die that I use on my stream:

Free Scene Maker — Make your own intro, outro, and BRB scenes

Free Social Media Animation

StreamLabs — Free streamer tools

StreamLabs has a ton of free widgets like live alerts, tip jar, stream labels, chat box, event list, and more.

It’s all accessible from their easy to use dashboard, and I found their support content easy enough to use for getting started. But if you are looking for a video to watch, I found this one helpful for setting up alerts in OBS:

There’s also a handy tool called Stream Labels that you’ll need to download to your computer in order to handle the text info for updates like follower count, last donation, latest sub, and much more in your stream.

I finally got an idea of how this works after watching the Free Screen Maker video above from Nerd or Die. In the video Derek goes through how to setup a text file on your computer that will update and feed info to your broadcasting software.

Collapsible green screens rock

I didn’t buy my green screen specifically for streaming, but it’s worked perfectly in my setup.

I personally have the Neewer Collapsible Background Panel and CowboyStudio Clip Stand, which will run you about $70 together. The background panel is absolutely awesome because it folds into a small circle for storing and gets the job done at the same time.

The clip stand does the job, but it does feel quite flimsy and low quality. For light use I don’t see it being an issue though.


Other lessons learned

Yes, Creative is considered a game

When you’re streaming to Twitch you have the option to pick the game that you’re streaming. This is a bit embarrassing to admit, but I didn’t realize Creative was considered a game, so I never set it when I started streaming–whoops! A lot of you are probably shaking your head, but hopefully this will help someone not make the same mistake.

Don’t forget to change your Facebook Stream Key

You have the option to start a live feed right from a Facebook share. One tab allows you to start a feed from your computer or phone camera, and another tab allows you to start a feed from an external device.

When you click on the external device this is where you’ll be presented with the server URL and Stream Key that you’ll use in your Broadcast Software.

In Facebook though, you’re presented with a new Stream Key each time you start a new stream. It’s not like Twitch or YouTube where the Stream Key is the same unless you change it.

Therefore, be sure to update this in your broadcasting software or Restream.io each time your start a new stream for Facebook!


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Hunter Becton

Written by

Marketing at FullStory and design tutorials at Skillthrive.

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