Broadcasting in a Pandemic
disclaimer: Amazon links here are affiliate links. I’ll donate any proceeds to SF nightclubs that need it, like DNA Lounge. This document is updated frequently. Check back often!
Intro
It’s a terrible mess we’re all in. There’s a pandemic. It’s killing people. Our government has royally screwed things up, and we’re not getting out of this anytime soon.
The precautions taken in the form of shelter-in-place requirements smartly placed on us by cities and counties have taken their toll on the entertainment industry. We’re basically on hold world-wide. We don’t know when we’ll return.
Venues are on life support, bars are closed, and our living rooms have been turned into makeshift clubs, filled with cheap lights, and our hopes and dreams to return to the nightlife we once had.
A number of stagehands, friends, riggers, sound people, lighting people, and other technical and theatrical positions are out of work, waiting to put the curtains in, so they can rise once more.
By day I work in technology at a startup, but when I’m not doing that, I’m a producer, sound engineer, and overall theater nerd. I’ve spent a lot of time working on productions, with a lifetime count of over 5,000 shows, and want to share some of that experience with you.
There’s many wonderful and creative talents (just like you!) sitting alone at home wondering how they can still deliver their incredible content to the bedrooms and living rooms of the world, even if the venues are closed. I’m going to give you a small, but hopefully comprehensive overview of producing a show at home from the technical end of things.
I’ll try to cover everything I can and will add things as I think of them.
Getting Equipment
Remember, right now, you’re not the only one trying to do this. eBay sellers are gouging buyers on all aspects of video production hardware. Even muslin green screens are going up in price. (wat!)
One of the lowest priced and highest quality video hardware manufacturers, Blackmagic, is selling for two to three times the normal prices on sold-out items as people attempt to profit from the pandemic. While this is mildly awful, there’s still ways to get the hardware you need.
Look to smaller vendors when trying to acquire the hardware I’m about to describe. A lot of people know about places like eBay, Amazon, and B&H Photo. Few (outside of Hollywood) know of vendors like Markertek, FilmTools, and Wooden Camera. Shop at those vendors instead of the well-known consumer brands and chances are things will be in stock (Adorama is another fine choice.)
Computer
Depending on what you want to do on your stream, you’re going to need a decent computer with sufficient CPU to encode the video stream. Modern machines are more than capable of encoding your video in real-time, but it’s an CPU intensive process.
You’ll want to keep an eye on the CPU usage while streaming. Above 70–80% usage may lead to dropped frames, choppy stream, and more lost viewers.
You’re going to hate me for saying this, but when possible do your video encoding on a separate machine. If you can’t do that, get a faster machine.
Trying to stream on a ten year old MacBook, will bring you to the spinning pinwheel of doom with the machine’s fans running full tilt, and that’s not a good look.
Hardware Encoders and Streamers
Update: Blackmagic has released the ATEM Mini Pro which is an absolutely stellar piece of hardware, combining a switcher, a hardware encoder, a direct to USB or Flash drive recorder and a control surface in one box. I’m getting one today and will write up a review in a separate post. It looks incredible.
If your computer isn’t cutting it for streaming, get one of the hardware video switchers (Like the ATEM series, see below) and get a hardware encoder and streaming device, which you plug your video and ethernet cables into.
The Teradek VidiU ($795) has one job, does it incredibly well, but is expensive. It takes HDMI in and gives H.264 streams out. If you want to get fancy and get the H.265 version that is the Teradek Cube 705 ($2790) (much better quality, smaller streams, less bandwidth and SDI imports), go for it.
Don’t worry about what those compression formats are for now. All you need to know is that you can reduce the CPU load on your computer by making another piece of hardware handle the encoding that OBS is doing (however, it costs as much as a new computer, so maybe a second machine is a better solution for most people.)
Hardware encoding via GPU
Hold up on that Teradek purchase if you’ve got a machine that supports nvenc. OBS has support for hardware encoding via your graphics card, if you’ve got an NVidia card. Enabling that should help quite a bit with CPU load. Check out that link for information on how to configure OBS.
from the docs:
Hardware encoding is supported in both the Mac and Windows version of OBS, however the developers only recommend using it on computers running Windows. Additionally to get the best results we recommend you use hardware encoding if you run a Nvidia GPU.
Software
The software of choice for most streamers is Open Broadcast Software (OBS). It’s available for MacOS and Windows, and it’s free.
There’s two versions of it available: The open source version (which is really quite good) is available at https://obsproject.com and another version geared more towards Twitch streamers at https://streamlabs.com/
The StreamLabs one is substantially better (and you don’t have to be a gamer!) with a lot of interface improvements and direct access to all of the widgets that streamlabs has to offer. If you looking for widgets, overlays, and slightly better ease of use, I recommend the Streamlabs version over the current open source version. The long-awaited MacOS version just came out and it’s excellent.
OBS handles switching of video sources, compositing things together, and the encoding and streaming of video to your service of choice.
I’ll talk about operations in this software in the rest of the post, but I won’t get into a lot of detail here.
I’d recommend watching some Tutorials on OBS; here’s a 30 minute tutorial on OBS, and another on Streamlabs OBS.
Network
The first thing you need to figure out is your outbound bandwidth. That’s the speed that you can send data to the Internet. You can test your outbound (upload) bandwidth at https://speedtest.net/. Shut down everyting on your network (Movies, Netflix, etc…) before running the test.
If you don’t have sufficient upload speed, none of the production techniques we’re about to discuss will help out. A choppy stream leads to irate viewers, who, having been trained their entire lives on HD YouTube, will probably leave.
Always connect over a wired connection. Don’t use Wireless! Wireless will just add another layer of uncertainty to your stream. The reasons why are for another Medium post, seriously.
It’s probably fine to watch one copy of your stream so that you can verify that things are fine (and reply to comments!), but try to limit the other network activity you are doing while streaming.
Having your six roommates watch you on their machines, all sharing your network connection while you’re trying to upload is probably a terrible idea.
As the network becomes more congested, a rising “dropped frames” indicator in the streaming software will increment. (OBS offers a “dynamic bitrate” option, which can help here, but it’s still in beta — we’ll talk about OBS in a minute.)
A few dropped frames is okay, but generally the number should be around zero.
Always have some extra bandwidth available. For example, if your live stream has a bit rate of 5 Mb/s, then ensure you have at least 7.5 Mb/s total upload bandwidth available to ensure a reliable live stream.
Audio
I should have begun this discussion with audio! Audio is 90% of video. It’s usually more important than the video quality. If you audio quality sucks, your video sucks too.
There’s an old saying that a film is “100% direction, 100% audio, 100% lighting, and 100% sound” — drop any of those and the production fails.
It’s important to start with a high quality source. Nothing makes up for not having a good source audio signal. All of that begins with you, your voice, and the mic. Speak directly into your microphone. Wear headphones, or turn your speakers way, way, down to avoid echoes and feedback.
Turn off your fans and AC, close your windows, and if you can, treat the room. Sound foam doesn’t help keep the sound in your room, but it sure helps reduce echos and makes you sound better on a microphone.
Choose a microphone wisely, but don’t spend too much money here. Sub-$200 mics can be had that sound amazing.
There’s many microphones to choose from and frankly, most modern microphones sound great — whatever you choose will be excellent, so long as it’s not the internal mics on your camera or computer. They’re not designed for close pickup or good quality sound. Get something else.
The Shure SM58 ($89) is a nightclub standard, and it’s the mic you’ve seen everywhere. Another low-cost, high performance mic, the Shure SM57 ($89) was used by the US president for years, and Bruno Mars recorded 24K Magic with it, so it’s won a grammy or two. These are cabled mics, which need to be plugged into a mixer or audio interface, via an XLR cable.
On the higher end, broadcaster-sound style, I’d also recommend the ElectroVoice RE20. It’s another amazing broadcast-standard microphone which gives you that “voice of god” sound. A full kit with stand and suspension mount is $469. The Heil PR-40 is another outstanding broadcast microphone (you’ll see them on TWIT.tv) at
There’s even cheap full kits with mic stand, USB condenser mic, and pop filter for $69. It’ll probably fall apart in a month, but it’ll get you through for far less than my professional equipment in my studio.
Right now, my studio setup is a little ridiculous. I’m rocking a Shure SM7B ($400–600) microphone, through a Universal Audio Apollo x8p ($2395), on a Heil PM-2T ($100) stand.
The r0de PSA1 desk boom standis an excellent alternative if the Heil stand is sold out.
I run that through an Avalon VT-737 Tube Pre/Compressor ($2,965) (a Unison Mic pre-amp), and I sound like someone from NPR. It’s all Linda Wertiheim up in this place.
Microphone choice is very personal. It’s a question of what your voice sounds like on a particular microphone and pre-amp combination, how much you’re willing to spend, and how many mics you need. Experiment with what works for you. Each mic requires an input on your audio interface. If you only have one input on the audio mixer, you need an external mixer.
Mackie makes some great audio mixers, and the Mackie Mix12FX ($130) or the Mackie 802VLZ ($200) is a great mixer for four microphones. If you want to get one that also contains an audio interface, pick up the Mackie ProFX8v2 ($100). It’s got a USB interface and comes in 2, 4, and 8 channel versions.
What about competitors? Behringer’s and Yamaha’s track record on low cost mixers hasn’t been great. Lots of static, noise, and lots of problems. Behringer made up for this with the Midas acquisition and x-series of mixers, but I digress.
If your microphone is a ‘condenser’ mic, it requires something called phantom power. Your interface or your mixer has to provide that and it has to be turned on for the microphone to work. A discussion about Mixers and Microphones from Sweetwater Sound, is very useful here.
If you don’t want a mic on screen with you, place a large boom stand and a shotgun microphone just out of the frame, like they do in Hollywood. Good shotgun mics are expensive, in the $1000-$3000 range.
The Sennheiser MKH416 ($1000) or Audio-Technica AT875 ($185) are graet choices here. If you have a metric shitload of money, buy a Schopes CMIT5 ($2397). Here’s an awesome shotgun mic shootout from Parker Walbeck, he’s a great teacher.
Lavalieres: Lavalieres have pretty much been synonymous with sucky sound. This is because most lavalieres are omnidirectional microphones mounted on people’s chests, and guess what? Sound doesn’t come out of your chest. It comes out of your mouth. The distance and gain required to make these mics work creates more room noise in the final output.
This being said I’ve made many short films, recordings, and good quality mixes off of them. The Sennheiser EW 112P G4 is an excellent unit for this. Battery-powered, portable, and easy to clip on to someone.
Once you’ve got your microphone picked out, you’ll also need some XLR (or 1/4") cabling for any mic you buy, unless it’s got a built in interface. The cheapest place to get those is at https://www.monoprice.com.
If you still don’t have an audio interface, nor a video switcher that takes XLR in for “professional mic connections”, pick up the Focusrite Scarlett Solo (1 input for $109), 2i2 (2 inputs for $159), or the Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (four inputs at $374) to deal with that. These are fantastic low-noise interfaces.
If all of this sounds like too much money, Your airpods or iPhone headphones with mic will work too. Just… enh.
Getting Output into your Input
For those of you using things like Ableton Live, Serato, Traktor, another DJ software on the same computer as your streaming machine (use another computer for this, please!) you’ll have to have a way to route the output of the DJ software into back into the system. Computers don’t normally do this and need some help — they don’t expect to take things meant for the output to come back into the input!
Two options for this are Soundflower (free, open source, but hard to use) and Loopback ($99). I really like Loopback so far, I just wish it wasn’t so damned expensive. They create a virtual interface inside your computer, just like your physical audio interface, with a mix of inputs that you can select.
If you have the know-how you can set-up Soundflower on your system. Loopback is far far easier to use, though.
Once you’ve got your configuration set up (like the image above), you just add an “Audio Input Device” in OBS and select Loopback as an input.
Video
You can expect to spend a fair amount of money on a camera, lighting, switching system, and some time on designing the overall look for your stream. Let’s go though some basics.
Cabling: HDMI vs SDI Video vs NDI
You’re probably used to HDMI as it’s what most consumer video is transmitted on these days. In the broadcast world, SDI is the standard for sending video. However, once you start buying SDI equipment, most of the prices go up.
SDI is designed to send high bandwidth video over coaxial cables with BNC ends. It requires high quality cable (BlueJeans ($75) are great) to do so.
HDMI to SDI converters ( and SDI to HDMI ) are relatively easy to purchase. I’ve been extremely happy with the Decimator MD-HX ($295) for this purpose.
When I’m streaming from a venue, I use the Decimator MD-HX to convert the incoming HDMI signal to 1080p/30. If someone comes in with a laptop that won’t run at the same frame rate as the rest of my equipment (I’m looking at you, MacBook Air), the Decimator will buffer and force the frame rate to any format I need. This feature is built into many switchers, so you might not need this hardware.
In general HDMI sucks because it was invented by lawyers, not engineers. Copy protection (HDCP) is built into the protocol and causes tons of problems and the cabling really isn’t designed for what is asked of it. HDMI works for about 10 feet of cable before things start to break down (or before you need special cables with amplifiers to go the distance.) An entire market of rip-off cables and high end ‘audiophile’ HDMI lines has sprung up, and none of them are worth the money.
Stick to HDMI for webcasting, unless you’re like me and you have to have long cable runs to cameras.
NDI
NDI is like SDI, except, it runs over computer networks. It allows you to send the video from a device (a source) across your network to an NDI destination.
What you can do with this is install an app like NDIHXCamera on your iPhone, and send that video wirelessly to OBS.
This lets you use your iPhone as an additional camera in the OBS Stream.
I’ve found that the latency here is very high and it’s really only good if you have no other way of getting video into the machine. Sync is a disaster, and if you are mixing this video source with other, directly connected sources, you’re going to have a hard time getting the audio to sync. It’s better for B-Roll and close up shots where no one is speaking.
Cameras
The first thing to realize: the camera on your laptop is garbage. I’ve never seen one that’s a true 1080p camera, nor one that looks “professional.” If this is driving your stream, it’s going to look terrible.
USB webcams are pretty much in the same boat. They look OK with plenty of lighting and smart settings — the Logitech C920 ($229) is pretty good, but no match for a broadcast camera.
One of the best choices here is the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4k ($1295) or the Razer Kiyo ($299) which has an integrated ring light. You’ll need a lens for the BPCC4k, but it’s output looks like a movie and it’s output is dreamy. Just watch!
When using your own camera, be aware that many cameras that have HDMI outputs don’t have “clean” HDMI outputs. This means the camera’s overlays and such find their way down the HDMI cable, and that’s no good for streaming. On most cameras, you can’t even turn off those overlays.
We did Tomas’ Test Kitchen on multiple Sony a7s on low-cost tripods, and they worked great as a small, micro 4/3rds camera which are self-cooled and don’t shut down.
If your camera outputs HDMI, you need a device to bring the camera’s output into OBS. The Blackmagic Mini Recorder ($114) handles this really well for machines with a Thunderbolt 2 Interface, while USB2.0 and USB3.0 interfaces like the Elgato Game Capture HD60 ($179) can be used on Windows machines.
Be careful when using DSLRs. Many of them have large CCDs which can overheat, offering up only 10–15 minutes at a time for streaming. This sucks. The Canon5d mkII is a good example of this.
Cameras with mini-HDMI typically require a mini-HDMI to HDMI converter before plugging them into the video interface. Same goes for laptops, you can take their video in on HDMI by using a mini-Displayport adapter. Buy that from Monoprice or Apple.
If you don’t have a decent camera, there might be one in your pocket! For all iPhones, Teradek’s Live:Air Solo is free on the Apple App Store and will handle streaming and switching on your phone. As a Bonus: If you add a Lightening to HDMI adapter, you can use LiveAir to route the 1080p from your into another switcher.
You can add cameras and additional video interfaces can be plugged into the same computer, until you run out of ports or CPU. You can then add each camera as a source to OBS, and switch between them in real-time. Speaking of that…
Switching and Mixing
You have three options here, really.
- You switch video inside of OBS and you bring in all of your cameras and video content into one machine. Check out the OBS tutorial for how to take in video sources and switch them. You need devices to connect video sources (like the MiniRecorder) and then switch from there.
- You purchase a hardware switcher, and switch video externally, sending a single feed out of the hardware switcher to OBS. I’m going to recommend some more Blackmagic hardware here; I really like their stuff, sorry, not sorry. The newly released ATEM Mini Pro ($599) looks absolutely incredible. You plug everything into it and it outputs, via USB, a video signal and you’re done!
- You buy a dedicated hardware streamer/switcher combo, and use your computer just for sending slides, stills, and other media content to the hardware device. The hardware device does all the work and talks to the Internet. This would essentially be the ATEM Mini Pro above, plus, say, a HDMI capture device.
I’m currently using a Blackmagic ATEM ME/1 ($2495) with the Blackmagic Smartview Duo 4k ($795) as my monitor when I’m working live events. It’s never failed on me, but the ATEM Mini Pro would have saved me a ton of money.
Why two monitors?
Because when you’re switching live with hardware, it’s nice to see all of the cameras on one display, while seeing your program on the other (or a preview.)
You don’t need external monitors if you are using OBS. Only for the full-hardware solution mentioned above.
StreamYard
Another switching option available is StreamYard. It offers an all-in-one streaming solution with banners, chat, screen elements and many other features.
Ten reasons why StreamYard sucks:
- It appears to limit your camera to 720p, not full HD resolution
- It seems like an attempt to shoehorn some basic features of OBS into a browser and is highly dependent on the browser to handle all of the audio and video processing.
- It runs through the browser and not as a stand-alone application
- You can’t add plugins to it like you can OBS. You only get what’s on StreamYard’s site for banners, overlays and whatnot.
- You can’t independently add Window and Browser sources like you can in OBS.
- You’re trapped inside of StreamYard’s site and people have to interact with you on StreamYard.
- The audio controls are terrible. There are no audio meters.
- Forget about running prebuilt media through this, you can’t play local movies into StreamYard. You can show images, but no video loops or otherwise
- Since it’s running through the browser you can only access one local camera at a time. This makes it impossible to run multi-cam shows.
- Forget about running custom transitions. You get what they give you, and that’s it. No macros, no triggers, and certainly no fancy StreamDeck tricks (see below)
Really just learn OBS, you’ll thank me later.
Camtwist
Another not-so-good piece of switching is CamTwist. It may have its uses as a virtual camera plugin for MacOS, but it has the stink of ‘written by engineers for engineers with no design’ all over it.)
Frame Rates
A word about frame rates. The frame rate needs to be the same across all of your devices for most video devices. Forcing the computer to transcode (convert) between different frame rates will cost more CPU. Having frame rates be different between devices, will cause video to look odd or drop frames.
Different frame rates make different looks. 24fps looks like film, 30fps looks like 80s video, and 60fps looks well, maybe too real. Higher frame rates are (usually) better for sports and fast action. It’s up to you.
I recommend starting at 1080p/30fps and working up from there. More frames == more bandwidth. Make sure you have it to spare.
If bandwidth is extremely limited, drop down to 720p/24fps. It sucks, but it works.
Bitrates and Output settings
This is the one setting that is the most confusing for new users. These settings control the quality of your stream, how much of it you send to the Internet, how much and how well you’re compressing, and what resolution you’re in.
Understanding the bitrate setting is important to providing a solid stream without choppy performance.
First of all, what’s bit rate? It’s the speed at which you are sending video. It relies on your upload speed. If you exceed 85% of the available upload speed (remember our test earlier?) you will experience problems.
Once your data makes it to say, Twitch, they send the data back to everyone else who is watching. Twitch, unlike YouTube, does not transcode the video to a different bit rate if the user can’t download as fast as you can upload.
Read that again: Twitch and YouTube will deal with the data you send them differently. Only Twitch Partners can get transcoding options on their stream. Learn more about bitrates on Twitch here.
If you pick a too-high bitrate, and that person doesn’t have enough download bandwidth, that person will not be able to watch your stream because they have to download the whole bitrate you are sending
Twitch recommended bitrates and frame rates (a more complete chart is here):
720p 30fps: 4,000 kbps or less
720p 60fps: 5,000 kbps or less
1080p 60fps: 6,000 kbps
YouTube recommended bitrates:
YouTube automatically transcodes your stream, no matter how many viewers you have. That means viewers will have all quality options from 360p to the highest quality you are streaming.
4K 60fps: 20,000–51,000
4K: 13,000–34,000
1440p 60fps : 9,000–18,000
1440p: 6,000–13,000
1080p 60fps: 4,500–9,000
1080p: 3,000–6,000
720p 60fps: 2,250–6,000
720p: 1,500–4,000
480p : 500–2,000
Sync
Audio/Video sync is critical. You’ve got to make sure the video matches the audio. There are delay settings in OBS if they don’t line up between sources, which can correct for delays between the presenter’s camera and mixed audio feed. Delays happen, you can fix them. Please don’t make your stream look like a poorly dubbed Kung-fu movie from the 1970s. Delay settings are in the Settings → Advanced tab.
Lighting
Lighting is critical to webcasting and any video production. Without it, even the best camera will look dark and lifeless.
One of my favorite YouTubers, PotatoJoe, has a great 1-light, ten options, lighting tutorial here and another video on choosing a video light.
Some basics:
- Don’t backlight your subject
- Put two lights, at 45 degree angles to the subject.
- Light the background to separate it from the subject. Colored lights, like this well imitated Chinese model (4 for $90), work really well here. You can drop a few of these around the room and give a feeling of depth by uplighting the walls in any RGB color you want. They also do DMX.
- Use lights above or below the subject to flatten shadows, light the subject’s hair, and pull the subject off the background.
I’ve been using Dracast lighting lately and I don’t really like them. I agree with PotatoJoe that their lights are not great. At some point, I’ll blow $1400 and buy Aputure LS C120Dii lights, but not today.
Neewer makes a nice two-pack of lights, with remote control, case, stands ($239). They can even be battery powered, which is pretty great. I’ve seen a few webcasts with these in use and it looked pretty decent. A similar solution can be found with the Elgato Key Light Airs.
If you want a green, black, or white screen with lights, you can grab Neewer’s Background Kit ($185) which comes with a ton of lighting stuff.
An even cheaper version of this (with CFL lights and backdrops) can be had from various Chinese vendors on Amazon for around $90, but there’s a high probability that the stands and lights will easily break with use.
External Applications and Windows
Zoom
You can add Zoom to OBS using “Window Capture.” Start the zoom session, add the Window as a source to OBS, and bring the Zoom call into the stream. You can even crop out Zoom’s UI and make it look nice.
If you want to go the other way and stream into zoom, it’s very easy to get audio to go from say, Loopback to Zoom, but virtual camera devices (where you can create in OBS and publish to Zoom) only easily work in Windows.
I haven’t tried this yet, but it may be a possible solution MacOS users.
Zoom is a paid service. Note that if you don’t pay, calls are limited to 100 participants, and 40 minutes. This might impact you, it might not.
Oh, and please, please, if you run the Zoom room, manage your participants;
- Mute all incoming users and control the incoming audio. 40 open microphones sounds like shit, and spending the entire call saying “can you hear me” or “someone please mute your mic is on” ruins the show.
- Hide the participant list with the meeting controls if it’s going to be a huge public event with hundreds of users
- Force people to use the ‘raise hand’ feature before you unmute them.
- Tell people that you can click on the gallery view instead of the speaker view to see everyone in the stream
Presentations (Keynote)
Here’s a great tutorial on doing presentations with Keynote and OBS, if you want to run a more conference-style / business style broadcast.
Mixing in Existing Media
Existing media can be brought in via the “Image Capture” source in OBS, and you can add videos via “Media Source”. It’s even possible to do looping video, like a spinning logo or whatever you like using this source.
I’d recommend pre-recording some segments and flying them in mid-broadcast like the pros do.
Overlays, Graphics, windows, oh my!
Using the “Text Source” , “Browser Source”, and “Image Source” in OBS will give you the ability to add logos, web sites, graphics and other elements to your stream. The Streamlabs widgets are also great for asking for donations, adding chat to your stream and other goodies.
Transitions
Transitions add excitement to your broadcast. Use them, but don’t overuse them.
You can do some crazy things with transitions— this guy has got it figured out, using a elgato Stream Deck ($150) to drive macros.
Streaming
First, go through and set up some scenes in OBS. Rehearse switching through them and your show. If you don’t want to design this, there are complete theme packages from streamlabs to handle most of your setup work.
Then set your frame rate. Remember, 1080p at 30fps is a good starting point.
Enter a stream key (which you can get from Twitch or Restream.io.
For Twitch, this is basically:
- Login to your account at twitch.tv.
- Click on your avatar in the top right.
- Click dashboard.
- In the menu on the left, click channel under the settings header.
- Click the stream key button.
- Click show stream key.
- Copy the text.
Paste that text into OBS, under Stream →Settings.
….and hit that magical Start Streaming Button! You’re LIVE!
Pro-Style: If you want to stream to more than one site at a time, add your stream keys to https://restream.io and stream to restream. Then you only have to send one stream from your house to the Internet, and it’ll broadcast to Twitch, Facebook, Periscope and many others in one fell swoop.
Don’t be afraid to ask a friend in to be your “producer”. Let them deal with the stream, comments, and audio levels while you just perform and do your thing.
The part that sucks about this is trying to manage comments. You’ll be streaming to multiple services, dividing your audience, and you’ll have to juggle multiple windows trying to answer questions. Restream is only going to send the stream multiple places. It isn’t going to aggregate comments for you.
Fancy Add Ons and Toys
When your scenes get very complicated, the elgato Stream Deck ($150) is a fine piece of hardware for automating OBS and firing off clips. It’s a beautiful piece of hardware when you want to move past just the keyboard. Check it out!
It is also possible to scan a QR code from the Settings → Remote Control tab of Streamlabs OBS and control Streamlabs OBS from your phone, including scene changes, emulating a lot of the StreamDeck features. Download “Streamlabs Deck” by “streamlabs” in the iOS App Store.
Wrap-up
This document is the result of many phone calls from friends that want to share their content with you. I had to write it up, and wanted a reference for friends to read. Thanks for reading.
If you’ve enjoyed this, please support your local San Francisco Live Entertainment, streamers you enjoy (now you know how much it costs!), and local bay area artists in our time of need.
I’m keeping a spreadsheet, here, with lots of places and artists you can donate to:
I hope you’ve enjoyed this. I’ll update it as I can!
