[00:00] If I said to you, Twitch released a feature that lets other streamers send hundreds of viewers into your stream to spam your chat with whatever they want, you'd kind of freak out. Well, that's what happened in 2017 when Twitch announced the Rave feature.
[00:13] Streamers were worried about abuse, harassment, spam, and some just thought it was useless. The same thing is happening right now. An insanely powerful feature called StreamTogether has dropped. And barely anyone knows about it, no one's using it, and in fact, people are kind of scared of it.
[00:26] So, let's break down what the heck stream together is, what drop-ins are, how to set them up, cover some of the issues it's had, and then you can let me know what you think about it. Hey, so I pretty much finished this entire video, and then Twitch reached out and asked to sponsor me to make the video.
[00:40] So, I said yes, obviously, because most of it's done. Nothing in the core video has changed, they're not asking to hide anything or say anything differently, but I just wanted to be open and honest with you guys, because that's who I am. Let's go. So, stream together and drop-ins. How the heck does this work?
[00:53] Well, pretty straightforward, StreamTogether lets you collaborate with live other streamers and even chatters while live. And actually, you can use this offline as well. I use this a lot offline to record. To get right into it, if you go to your creator dashboard and click StreamTogether, then click
[01:07] the little start button here, it will open all of your settings and controls where you can invite people, trust their voice, or actually include their webcam as well. If they and you give permission, that is, and I will show you how to set that up in
[01:19] a second. streamer if they have switch open they'll receive a little notification in the top right similar to a go live letting them accept or if they don't have switch over at the time when they do open it it will appear in their notification section next to messages now this is all great but why
[01:33] the heck am i excited well that's because it's entirely done in browser and with browser sources directly from twitch again i'll show you how to set that up in a second but this means you don't need any third-party tools no third-party extensions there's no downloads which i can't
[01:48] express enough how nice that is. But what I really like is not only do they give you one browser source that will automatically layout every other user's webcam neatly, for example if I have three guests it will format it for me, but if I want control over each individual guest and their
[02:02] placement you can actually take just that guest browser source and add it individually one at a time to fit your layout. This means if you and five other streamers want to do a collaboration you can control every single streamer's audio and visuals individually. This is huge because anyone
[02:17] like myself who has used StreamYard or Zoom or Discord video calls, you have to understand all of the problems they have with the streamers, like people joining or leaving, throwing off camera layouts, laggy voice coming in before visuals, general third-party software
[02:29] issues, echoing audio, or features being locked behind freemium, all that is solved while being integrated directly into Twitch for free. You can host podcasts, game shows, talk shows, or just play games with
[02:41] friends and allow those friends to be seen and heard on screen at full 1080p without any lag. Again, for free Now that a rough introduction to stream together We will set that up more in a second but first we need to talk about Dropping These are essentially impromptu and on collabs while streaming You can check your follower list or even just drop by another
[02:59] stream to stream and if they are allowing you to offer a collab, you can click knock. They'll get a private notification via their event list and if they accept, you'll both instantly be dropped into a call with just audio using the Streamtogether feature. But if you added the
[03:12] the browser source I mentioned earlier, you'll also get video inside OBS. Of course, again, if you and the other creator approve that camera being added and have it all set up correctly. This isn't a massive must-use feature being forced on you either. It's a tiny aspect of
[03:26] streaming together that I think has gotten a lot of attention and is distracting creators from how cool the overall feature actually is. But look, it would be disingenuous to say there wasn't history behind this tool that we need to talk about. There is a lot of confusion and genuine concern
[03:38] from streamers. For example, here is a response by a Twitter user concerned this will be used for abuse. Just kidding, that tweet is about the raid feature announced in 2017, and I just really wanted to include it again because the raid feature and these new features share
[03:52] a lot of similar concerns, seven years apart, but raiding is now a core aspect of Twitch. Change is scary, and it sometimes comes with issues, and I'm not arrogant enough to believe that I know where streaming is going to be in seven years. So, let's hammer out some
[04:06] the most common questions quickly to alleviate the concerns, show what Twitch has changed or included to perfect streamers and just get everyone up to speed. Is this different to the Get Star feature? Yes and no. This is an evolution of Get Star which was tested previously and now is called Stream
[04:19] Together which is still in beta and will likely continue to evolve and change. So make sure you provide your feedback below in the comments and I'll pass it on to Twitch. I don't want to collab or be asked to randomly collab. I don't want to opt into this.
[04:31] How do I opt out? That is totally fair. Streamers have enough to focus on. So if you aren't wanting to use this tool, just head to the Stream Manager dashboard, click Add Panel, Add a Collaboration Panel, and in you can set permissions and pause settings.
[04:43] For myself, by default, the permissions were set to channels I follow, which I didn't like, so I turned that off and selected Favorites, then using this Add Favorites button, I added four of my friends who I was okay with, giving them permission to knock or invite me to a
[04:56] collaboration. If I select Favorites Only and I didn't add anyone to Favorites, it means nobody can knock or invite me. I do wish when they rolled this out by default it was set to favorite only, and I have passed
[05:08] this on directly to Twitch, but it's a fairly quick fix either way now that we know how to do it. Also, if I don't want my favorites to knock, I can just click the pause for an hour or just this stream. And again, I will say I would love if there was a third option, a pause until I turn back
[05:22] on option, and have requested that from Twitch. Does it turn my webcam on automatically? So, when the feature first rolled out, it would prompt you to give camera access to the browser source and pick a camera. Then when joining a call that camera would turn on automatically which obviously not good in a lot of situations Twitch has listened to this apologized and has changed this so that it prompts you every time now and won just turn on the camera instantly Can I stop automatically showing guests Absolutely
[05:50] If you want to review a guest before they appear or are heard on stream, then inside the stream together session settings, which I'll show you more in a second, you can turn off automatically show on stream, meaning you can preview everything and everyone first.
[06:02] Can guests share their screen? Yes they can, but also you can stop that in the same settings as I just mentioned before. this being moderated? Yes, absolutely, you can give your mods a link directly to moderate the session,
[06:15] give individual mods permissions over all sessions, and also let them control or pick what guests appear if you want that. Will I get banned for guest behavior? No, if something happens and you do your best to remove that person who is causing issues or breaking terms of service, you will be
[06:30] fine. With all that out of the way, let's run through setting all of this up, starting with getting our audio ready first. A quick note, you can and should set all this up offline first. Head to your Twitch dashboard, go to Stream Together and click Start Streaming Together.
[06:42] As you can see, you'll have a few options along the bottom such as screen sharing, video, microphone, audio and settings. Now if you wanted, you can click the little arrow on each of these to select what audio sources are used for each, but we're going to do this in the
[06:54] settings instead. So click the cogwheel and just quickly this is where you'll edit all of your settings including some I mentioned earlier, such as browser sources, session settings, moderator permissions, how names appear on other creators and performance if you're struggling with lag can
[07:07] also be adjusted here as well. They're all labeled and explained really well so explore this at your own pace. But for now, let's click microphone. Here you'll select the mic you use for streaming normally. So for me, it's my bridge half microphone which is an audio interface that my mic runs into.
[07:22] Now, I have all of these settings below already set up on my bridge half but if you're using a usb microphone then you can turn on noise suppression, echo cancellation and gain control to help clean up your audio here. Because remember, if you add filters inside OBS,
[07:35] they aren't applied to the microphone everywhere, just the OBS. And the mic you add to stream together is again just the raw microphone. Once you have that set up, you can click test and see your own audio back the way others will hear it as well. Next click audio output. Now here you'll
[07:49] have two options. For me right now I use desktop audio capture and then select my output channel as chat bridgecast. Which again is an interface I use to split my audio sources. But you'd likely select your default audio output you're already using or if you've also split your audio with
[08:04] another tool, whatever you'd normally send Discord to. This setting means you'll control the audio from the stream to get a pop-out by right-clicking and changing it there and not through OBS. If I click control audio via streaming software though, it means the audio will come out of the
[08:18] browser source inside OBS and then you'll also need to double-click the browser source, which will stop in a second, and click control audio via OBS. If you do it this way you'll likely get audio doubling or echo and will need to spend a lot more time setting this up So if If you not confident in audio just leave it on desktop audio capture I had no issues with it so far I recommend taking some time offline to test this with a friend or two and find what works best for you You can completely use this feature offline and it is fantastic in general
[08:45] I use it to record with my mates a lot. Now, if you click camera, you can pick which camera to use. On Windows, your webcam can only be used on one application at a time, so you can't actually click your webcam and use it here if you're also using it in OBS.
[08:58] So we are going to select OBS virtual camera in this drop down and then create a virtual camera using OBS. Open OBS, click the cogwheel next to start virtual camera in the bottom right, select output type, source and select your webcam source.
[09:13] Now when you click start virtual camera, it will send a virtual version of that OBS source to stream together, aka just your webcam. This will also send all of the filters you've applied to your webcam as well. So that's great if you've added color grading or a chroma key or anything like that.
[09:28] Now, the final step, let's add our browser source to OBS so that our viewers can see the other streamers cameras or just their profile pictures so they know who's actually in the call. In the settings, go to browser source, click start by browser sources, copy the source that appears and now go to OBS. Go to the scene you'd want
[09:43] the vibrators to appear on, for me it's chatting so I'll go there and click add source, add browser source and I'll paste in the source I copied before. Personally, I also like to change my browser source to match my canvas size, so 1920x1080.
[09:55] Now, nothing will appear as you don't have any collaborators right now, but inside stream together pop out, you'll see all these little formats. If you leave it on the far left one, this format automatically spaces out all the guest cameras neatly.
[10:07] And if you do want to make sure you added the browser source correctly, click include my camera and it should appear in OBS, meaning you're all set up and can turn the camera back on. If it didn't appear, review the previous steps, try again, or click the link in the
[10:20] description for Twitch's detailed setup. Now, when I use this, personally, I add each guest individually, as I mentioned before, so I can have more control. So quickly, if we go back to the settings, browser source, you'll see the individual sources here.
[10:32] It says guest, it says stream share, and it is pretty self-explanatory. If I have two guests, then I will take guest one and guest two and add them as two new browser sources. Then I can hold alt and drag the edges of these sources
[10:44] to crop in just on the other streamers. Once that's done, I will place them wherever I want, whatever size I want, either in chatting or the game. You name it, you can do it. Heck, you can even chroma key a friend's chroma key for them so they're not covering your entire game.
[10:58] Now with that, congratulations, you've set up and prepped literally everything. I genuinely think these features, while young, are going to help so many creators to collaborate. Especially those not tech savvy enough to capture Discord cameras or set up third party tools properly.
[11:11] But my opinion doesn't matter. What do you think? So now that you've seen all of this, are you going to try StreamTogether? Are you going to set up who can knock and drop? Even if you aren't sure, I'd recommend setting this all up and trying out StreamTogether offline.
[11:23] so that you're confident and then let me know in the comments what you think and how to improve it. I'll see you guys next week.