Just what everyone wanted, another streaming thread.
We’ve always had a local feed from my laptop to a projector inside the venue. I use 3 c920’s and just dump it from the HDMI out on my laptop to the projector. Now that the bar is getting their wifi upgraded, we actually have a signal where all the pinball machines are located.
I did a test stream with OBS yesterday and it seemed to work out pretty well. I do have a few general questions regarding the entire OBS / Twitch thing.
How do I get Twitch to save the stream so it’s available after the stream ends? We had an issue with Godzilla randomly rebooting and I was going to post the stream for suggestions, but it doesn’t appear that Twitch saved it.
Is there a way to embed the chat box inside the OBS window? I was using my phone to interact with the chat, but it would have been nice to see the chat window on the projection screen.
What’s the best way to handle audio when you don’t have commentators? External microphone pointed at the game? Or just use the built in microphone on the camera? The bar is kind of loud and the camera mic isn’t the greatest.
I’m not even sure anyone would be interested in a stream without commentary? We had a whopping average of 1.8 viewers last night!
Make sure your setting is turned on in twitch to save the VODs. The longest you can do is like a couple weeks though. To save forever, make the video a highlight. Those stay forever.
Look up stream labs for help with displaying the chat window. It can be done.
Many mic opens. Just depends on the price you’re willing to pay. Most popular option is get a nice blue snowball usb mic or something similar.
Particularly the mic on the C920s is awful, so you’ll want at least one nicer external mic. Depends on your desired amount of setup + quality level. There are so many things to setup when doing a location stream, that I personally will skimp on the audio a bit. For these cases, I’ll use a single Blue Yeti mic for commentators as well as grabbing ambient audio when there’s no one commentating. This is probably the simplest option. For more serious events, I’ll switch to headsets for commentators and a shotgun mic plugged into the playfield cam. Depending on location layout, you can also grab direct audio from the game itself.
Besides having twitch save your stream, I always click both “Start Streaming” and “Start Recording”. By recording the stream to disk, I guarantee I will always have a perfect copy. If you drop frames or have some other mishap with twitch, that issue will become part of what twitch saves to its servers. I had one nightmare stream where my cable provider constantly cut off my bandwidth. By recording the entire stream to disk, I was able to rebroadcast it later by streaming it as a saved video.
When you are in a loud place, the biggest issue isn’t the lack of commentators. It’s the loudness of the venue! People don’t want to listen to a cacophony of voices all night. No brand of microphone is going to solve that problem. You are going to have to sacrifice something. When in doubt, sacrifice your game audio and the background sound. Your audience knows what the game sounds like, and they know where you are. I would recommend trying a gaming headset so you can talk directly into the microphone and the microphone will only pick up your voice and minimal background.
Thanks for all the helpful tips. With me running the leauge, playing tech and trying to play I just don’t have the time to run commentary. Especially seeing as how there were a whopping 2.2 people watching last week.
We were joking that I should just try and get a wireless headset that anyone could pick up and start babbling into . That might be interesting.
Then again, I did have someone asking why I was going to the trouble of streaming when no one is watching. My response was that I enjoy when other people stream and I’m able to catch some pinball when I’m not working.
The sound is what I really need to figure out. What audio to use and how to use it. As you said @mwelsh there is a bunch of stuff I already have to setup. Add the camera setup with getting game selection, answering questions, filling out score sheets, etc and it gets pretty hectic. I do have 2 assistant TDs which definitely helps.
