What I Learned From My 1st Livestream on Twitch
Webcam issues, audio drops & a bumpy debut ride
If you follow me on Twitter, you will know the struggles I have encountered with Twitch, StreamLabs, OBS, Ableton and virtual drivers…and I hadn’t done a single livestream yet!
The challenges inspired me to write 2 articles to help producers like me get in front of their fans around the world:
- How To Connect Your DAW To Streamlabs OBS For Livestreaming
- How To Sync A Facetime Camera On A Mac With A PC To Livestream on OBS
So I thought with these roadmaps to hand, I was going to be in for an easy ride. How wrong I was.
First of all, I couldn’t get the virtual webcam to sync up on my Mac using OBS and OBS Ninja. There is a weird thing called an NDI Source that needs to be in place on StreamLabs so you can use the virtual camera.
I was getting the video to show on OBS but not on OBS Ninja. I had entered the URL into the NDI Source on StreamLabs under “Properties” but still nothing.
I played around with the “Browser Source” and “NDI Source” on StreamLabs & finally managed to get the video stream through with brute force. It felt a little like when Han Solo sees the Millennium Falcon is not going to make it into hyperspace and he smacks the dashboard to get it to boot up and narrowly escape the Imperial Starfleet.
Now to the audio. I remembered to add the ReaStream plugin on the master channel of the Ableton project I was working on so the audio could be relayed to StreamLabs. However, once I hit “Go Live” on StreamLabs, I started getting CPU spikes, crackles and latency.
I deleted a few CPU intensive plugins which helped & then made sure the Limiter on the Master channel was set to -0.3dB so it wasn’t going to peak to the people listening and watching on Twitch.
For the first 2 hours, I worked on a new song I am producing called BRIGHTON ROCKS and the experience was good. I had 5 people viewing and commenting.
The very first person on was a Canadian friend and he told me he could see me but couldn’t hear me. It turned out he was on a plane which probably explained the lack of bandwidth!
I then got a gaming developer who had bought my video game soundtrack VAMPIRE POLICE chatting with me from his work. He had me on his second monitor.
A producer in Quebec then appeared and told me about his first DAW which I had never heard of and then gave me a tip on a YouTube creator who published tutorials.
My goal is always to reply to every message and certainly early on as I build my community on Twitch, this is possible. But as I grow, I can see it becoming extremely difficult to keep up with the chat as it scrolls down while you are trying to focus on creating mind expanding music and ultimately content that your fans are there to watch.
When I switched projects to another new song ODYSSEY REX, I got a heads up from my Canadian friend that there was no audio. This is what I immediately see as being a big benefit of an interactive livestream — I learned about the issue fast and realized that when I switched projects, I forget to re-insert the ReaStream plugin to enable an audio signal to reach StreamLabs/Twitch.
When I finished the stream after 3.5 hours, I felt good knowing that Twitch/StreamLabs had autosaved the video which I could upload to YouTube to educate people and raise awareness of the channel. The downer was realizing that it had not been autosaved!
The option was hidden far too well in the Settings menu on Twitch. To get to it do this:
- go to Settings (top right and hit your profile photo).
- Click “Channels and Videos”.
- On the left menu on the Creator Dashboard under the “Setting” option, click “Stream”.
- Scroll down to “VOD Settings”.
- Next to “Store past broadcasts” toggle the button to ON. This will automatically save broadcasts for up to 14 days (60 days for Partners, Turbo and Prime users).
- Next to “Always Publish VODs” toggle this to ON.
You will now have your videos saved after you have broadcast on Twitch.
If you want to have a copy for your YouTube channel, on StreamLabs next to “Go Live” click on the “REC” button. This will record your stream to your hard drive on your computer.
Like what you just read? Please consider subscribing to my Medium publication The Electronic Music Producer.
Want to support my music? These are two channels I use because they actually help artists in the right ways:
Bandcamp
Patreon
