I casually asked TK today about online broadcasting, and he managed to deliver a lot of knowledge on the topic. I didn’t even know he was into that kinda thing 😉 I’d asked about twitch.tv after seeing an article able using twitch to control paintbrushes to create painting, in a strange crowd-sourced kind of artwork (article at intel.com). I’m logging all this here for my own future reference, or for any other lonely stranger who may come across it.
Most important thing I’ve seen that make for a great show is
-a good mic
-a compressor (so you don’t get too loud)
-good lighting
-an ability to talk to chat.
(The last item refers to the live chat in mediums such as twitch.tv provides. it can get distracting trying to do a show while also interacting with chats, especially when they come in a fast rate.)
I don’t even think having a great camera makes as much of a difference as the mic and compressor.
(doing ok in the mic department – see pic below!)
If you are loud with hissing and popping no one is watching you.
Info on sound compression, to smooth out the hiss/pop sounds: https://theproaudiofiles.com/voice-processing-eq-cuts-boosts/
Basically you want to do whatever you can to have that radio DJ sound, not annoying, just one even level of volume.
This link is the OBS Project – Open source casting software – https://obsproject.com/
It’s used by just about everyone, supports scenes / multi inputs.. supports youtube streaming as well as twitch and others.
Another trick is to use a dedicated monitor devoted to chat, put in portrait mode if possible. Twitch chat is built on IRC so you can use an irc client to connect to chat, makes it much easier to read and can fill this devoted screen easily.
Oh and get good moderators for chat. Even with good mods, I’ve seen streams come to a halt because the streamer happened to see an inappropriate message in chat before it could be deleted.
One streamer even recently talked about this, how that out of 1k people watching and having a good time, you just latch on to that one negative comment and your whole stream is ruined.
Will add more here as more is discovered. Still need to cover lighting topic a bit more.