How to Start Streaming in 30 Minutes

[00:03] god this is too much i don't want to do this anymore i'm gonna run now you're super valid you're not alone all of us went through this so my goal for you by feel comfortable clicking start streaming from a technology standpoint

[00:16] overwhelmed and intimidated by the obs interface so let's talk through not just obs but also all of the other little software and assets pieces that make up scenes and your widgets and your alerts and all of those like cool sounds and

[00:29] things that just like trigger on streams all the time how do people do that we'll we're going to cover everything about streaming in a simple like 10 ish minute pretty high level and pretty much on the software side so software assets tools

[00:43] chat bots moderating your chat scheduling your streams graphics and be covering any of my hardware in this microphone my lighting my sound treatment my pc build my face tracking

[00:57] software and hardware for v tubing for example none of that is happening in this video we'll do it in a follow-up instead um so stay tuned for that if in i will make one exception however for the newest addition to my hardware setup

[01:10] the newest addition to my hardware setup which is the asus rog flow x13 asus is the sponsor of this video and they sent me not just this laptop but also the xg hand-me-down gaming laptop to record vocals from the closet or the occasional

[01:23] cooking stream from the kitchen but the battery's dead the track pad died also for a little while so i was actually eyeing the asus rog line in my options reached out just in the nick of time i don't know what it is with sponsors

[01:37] reaching me like right as i'm looking into them but that's been like a trend anyways i've been using this little guy for about two days now and so far i'm really impressed like it's obviously very compact portable great battery life

[01:49] that's really important it has a pantone validated touchscreen just like super really impressed by and so far it just really checks all the boxes for a go it also has a touch screen and it rotates 360 degrees to go into like

[02:04] tablet mode so my adhd self is very happy being able to contort myself into ground or like just in a weird i don't know shrimp position and still be able angle and i know i keep calling it really teeny but don't underestimate its

[02:19] processing power especially with the rog xg mobile which asus also sent me it really adds extra power and extra ports for all of your gaming multimedia editing rendering etc needs so laptops often aren't the easiest thing to

[02:31] upgrade and it's a really exciting way to get truly stunning performance out of promised we'll talk about the rest of my hardware setup in a later video so we'll little teaser thank you again to asus for sponsoring this video and let us

[02:45] carry on first off we're already in ovs let's talk about how you can organize overwhelming and talk through what each of the components actually means here we'll go over all of the components that

[02:58] of you and then part two we'll go into assets so that includes things like on someone's stream and you see something go like so and so followed or like so and so subscribed or like a little donut bar that fills up as people

[03:11] put tips in right how do those work where do they come from how do you connect them let's spend a little section on just those integrations and overlays and then the third part is around planning and logistics and

[03:23] tooling so we'll talk about chat bots for example or ways that you can use streams and where you can share the stream will be streaming so that's kind of a quick three-part overview let's get into

[03:36] the obs side of things yeah for those of you who don't know obs stands for open broadcaster software it is an open source program that pretty much all of twitch there's a lot going on right but

[03:48] of these things these docs these are called docs they can all be undocked my little twitch stats out over here if i want to or i can pop it right back in depending on what my stream is and how i need things set up but usually this is

[04:03] to have my chat floating because i move it around a lot the activity feed really this is where your like follows and your redeems come in and then i also have the to do a quick category change for example if i'm switching games or if i

[04:17] whatever the topic has shifted to on stream so that's a quick overview of down here is i think where a lot of the chaos happens actually so we have scenes

[04:29] and we have sources scenes are and again i'm recording in obs so it's like i'm change looks like right so i'm going to go into starting soon mode and you can see that my starting zoom screen has a little timer um i'll have a link to and

[04:42] timer set up if you'd like one um but basically you can think of it as just like different screens that you show people i often will call them screens they work in my head you basically have all of your different you know assets

[04:54] in one place you have it all set up and ready to go and then when you need to mode just chatting you can see like a little this is my just chatting mode and if i

[05:08] my content sharing mode then i can just click the scene and switch over just like that the scenes then are composed of individual sources there are lots of actually getting cut off here but you can see there's like audio browser color

[05:22] source display captures etc so basically when you're setting up a scene all different sources so for me that's like a webcam a display capture and then you actually for me usually the way you compose and arrange the sources is then

[05:37] obviously preset is going to make your life a lot easier because most of us just have a few different modes that we we stream in um so for me it's basically just chatting and then my content mode two quick tips for your scenes and your

[05:50] also get a little bit overwhelming you can see that my list here is pretty long by using fake like empty scenes the dividers help me chunk up my scenes so when i'm scrolling through these looking for the thing i'm supposed to switch to

[06:05] clicking the wrong scene and it's the easiest way for me to stay organized and over here on the sources side i've done something really similar with my color coding color coding your sources is very easy it's just right click set color and

[06:18] then choose whatever color you want it's very very straightforward and then we are important one is controls and one is audio mixer you can see i'm actively obs to record and my mic is lighting up every time i talk on the audio mixer so

[06:31] i can visit visually see how loud things are and whether or not i should be decreasing my volume um lowering the mic sensitivity etc so even if you don't have a monitor on you can visually tell in your audio mixer whether your audio

[06:43] is okay or not i think my main lesson actually on the obs side is that you really want to be recording yourself and doing tests check your own recording the sources are like weirdly off center they're not positioned the way you want

[06:56] them to i actually advise most streamers to spend 10 to 20 minutes at least before you click go live to just test your setup because things move right in your webcam and now all the settings are like

[07:08] freaking out or whatever like you want to know before you go live that things on obs for a little bit doing a quick audio check that's how you reduce scuff point before we move on from the obs section is about audio filters so a lot

[07:22] of people have issues getting their audio clean um doing noise gates are really common all of that magic happens right here in the filters menu audio filters set up but most of them are actually disabled my most important

[07:35] compressor and the limiter i have a lot of volume variation issues when i'm live whisper to like screaming within 30 seconds right and the compressor basically to put it very very simply helps me level out those differences so

[07:50] that even my whisper can still be actually pretty audible or even if i'm yelling it doesn't like super peek out the mic right like it does kind of i limiter setup a little bit but they are currently keyed to try and minimize too

[08:03] much distortion too much quietness just control the volume a little bit and keep it within a certain range long story short audio could be its own video all on its own it's like it needs its own deep dive so if audio is your concern

[08:15] dedicated to just audio you will learn a lot about how noise filtering works and that realm so that was a really quick high level flyby of what obs is and how it functions again if you need a deep dive on things like source filters audio

[08:30] filters video filters right like definitely look up videos just for those video it gets really complicated really quickly but my goal today is to get you can start streaming even if the quality isn't the most refined right honing your

[08:45] stream setup takes a lot of time and iteration you will get there be patient with yourself so let's talk now about assets overlays beautifying your stream example my just chatting overlay that i

[08:58] boxes that appear when people say things say something i'm giving up on you it's of the box right this does not come integrations this beautiful donor bar i have over here how do we get those into

[09:13] obs how do these kinds of integrations work let's head over at this point to stream elements stream elements is one of two of the most popular options when it comes to things like overlays and widgets um

[09:25] labs is the other and we will look at both of them but let's start in stream looking at my stream elements dashboard it looks kind of empty because i kind of stream labs at the moment i'm kind of switching between them trying to figure

[09:37] it out but the main thing i want to show you all here is actually over here under you have an overlays gallery and my overlays if you go into overlays gallery you'll see that they actually have a lot of really cool overlays that are just

[09:50] explored it but like look at how cute this is and it's it's ready to go just if you would like um you can also go ahead and you can see they have a button fiverr commission people to do one for you or even if you go on etsy there are

[10:05] overlays and they are very beautiful so do check them out um i think especially don't really want to immediately invest like a whole bunch of money because you is the right thing for you right if you want to do it seriously or consistently

[10:19] things out you're just learning as you go i would highly recommend that you don't over invest in the very beginning just get your feet wet see how you feel most people though in my experience do like to do it themselves that's where

[10:31] you go into my overlays right here you can see i still have my old deprecated as i mentioned earlier is i have adjust chatting mode and then i have my content content mode so let me show you all how i did that on stream elements actually

[10:45] let's click edit you can see all these layers over here right this image in the back is the thing that i designed first in google slides so i currently have it set to be a little bit invisible but this is how it

[10:59] actually used to look so i would put my v tuber over here or if i was in webcam background and here is how it was set up in google slides so i have a whole video on google slides for your stream

[11:12] description in our resources list but basically all it is is like literally a background image some like text it's really simple but it looks pretty clean and it definitely functioned for like half a year for the time that i was

[11:24] designed it here in google slides exported it and then i uploaded it into a sense of where i needed to place my widgets over it over here this thing that i'm moving right now that is the alert box you can go into the settings

[11:38] enabled so if someone were to give you a tip for example you can emulate one test it out see what it looks like let's say i got a 10 tip my audio is playing as well that's my little tip sound alert um and that is

[11:53] all set up my name is bill sorry i forgot i had tts as well tts is text to speech um this is my tips alert tofi did my stream alert sound over here that i have uploaded so you can see that it's all like very highly customizable this

[12:05] over here is my chat widget so actually if i type something in chat hello it should show up right here there it is hello so it's much simpler than my chat currently is nowadays but um this obviously did the job all it is

[12:19] are some settings around how you want to uh maybe you want to change the font or the colors or the size etc all of it is customizable right here so obviously within these menus there's a little bit of a limit to how much you can customize

[12:32] if you really want like super fancy chat boxes like the ones i showed you earlier those will have to be custom coded your javascript html css has to be custom done right and both stream labs and stream elements will support that but if

[12:44] maybe you're not a coder this is the easiest way to go there are some very very functional overlays on your own without paying a dime absolutely the main thing to take away here is actually that i have all of these widgets in one

[12:59] have all of these widgets set up here on stream elements right how i get this into obs is i click over here copy overlay url and then i would go into obs click plus and then click browser i'm going to

[13:14] copied from stream elements just now but before i do that let me change the width and the height so i want it to be 1920 by 1080 because it's the full dimensions of my of my scene and then i'm gonna change the url do not show people your

[13:27] dangerous don't do it so i'm gonna hide this from you all to put it in so it have things set up is that they're more modular they break into little pieces so i have the widget it's kind of in there like floating places on stream elements

[13:42] and then i set up a little image asset that i import as an image source like this i have a webcam source and then i have an image source for these boxes and widgets on top so that's showing me the names over here as well as the chat

[13:57] that's three different sources that are composing this scene and that is one way using stream elements that's one way to do it next up we have streamlabs stream labs is a little bit contentious um they have been under fire for some of their

[14:11] have a bunch of widgets that are actually quite useful so right here you can see all of my stats i'm kind of exposing myself a little bit um we'll go essentials over here so you have the all widgets menu you can take a look and

[14:25] streamlabs similar to stream elements has a lot of pre-made widgets stylized widgets that you can use whether that's chat or your alert boxes i went straight into the alert boxes and did some customizations here uh all the alert box

[14:38] followed image that shows up so let's let's show you uh let me show you what my follow looks like that's a follow alert for me i also have a subscription which comes with audio and then i have let's do a test donation

[14:53] there we go so you can tell that i have lots of customizations for the audio the texas speech donation for 41 that's the texas speech um and the image so that's what you would customize over here in your alert box i do currently have

[15:08] widgets are all built on streamlabs before we go into my custom widgets use streamlabs widgets instead of stream elements widgets unlike the way i did it scene with all of the all of the different widgets kind of all into one

[15:22] source you had to add to obs with streamlabs it's much more piecemeal so if i were to go into all widgets and search for chat for example here is my um again i'm not going to show you all the url but this is where you would

[15:37] click to copy it and you would then one by one add these browser sources in to your sources menu on obs you can see how that would get a you can you know obs side there are things to organize that you can use

[15:49] folders and collapse them together um but that is how you would do it on are standalone they don't really have a way for you to compose them together into one browser source that you can then import into obs what you see here

[16:02] is my custom chat this is something that was coded for me by freeref um specifically wonder penguin and seoul and i will put their information in the show you the actual code very much we'll just look at the we'll peek at the top

[16:15] of it right but you can see that there's like custom html css and javascript the area in which if you had customized code this is where it would go on stream currently powering this beautiful chat box that we have over here the key

[16:29] takeaway for the stream labs and stream elements widgets portion of all of this is that you should just experiment it's a little bit of a learning curve just going to be enough to help you understand it like end to end so

[16:43] definitely like experiment try both of them see which one feels more natural to or less like a hassle do you prefer it all in one or do you want them in separate pieces um sometimes different things serve different purposes

[16:55] just remember that like the two writing simultaneously can get really confusing and i would personally recommend choosing one and just sticking with it switch all of your widgets over at the same time because otherwise you're gonna

[17:08] get some weirdnesses like double alerts triggering or like the audio doubling is experiment and then commit to one of them instead of using both we have arrived at part three which is about planning logistics and tooling

[17:21] including chatbots and we'll start with the chat bots because they are just the the ones that you will see around the most are stream elements and nightbot so just finished talking about their widgets right now let's talk about their

[17:34] chat bot over here on the left nav you can see it chat commands before we go though what even is a chat bot right so you see once or twice once in a while in chat right they'll their little commands that

[17:47] chat can use commands that mods can use a chat bot is just a tool basically that you can use in stream to try and either help moderate your content you can use bots to help answer questions a really common way that you'll see bots used is

[17:59] that in the stream title you'll see like exclamation mark recipe for example if if you were to type exclamation mark recipe into chat then the chat bot would the streamer is using that's just an example bots have lots of uses the best

[18:14] way to get ideas for how to best leverage and utilize your bot is to watch other people stream actually so observe how other people have configured dedicated to this subject as well but we're just going to look really quickly

[18:27] commands as well as custom commands and explore these at your own leisure right like see what works for you set up special commands if you'd like so now element spot let's go ahead and head over to nightbot just like with stream

[18:40] go ahead and click log in authorize everything assign your life away and here you have your nightbot dashboard so oh hey corinne is our top chatter corn's also one of our mods lovecorn stancorn and our top command is

[18:53] stan cause we're doing a big shout out stream earlier so everyone was using the stan command um where if you do exclamation mark stan and then someone's bot will respond and be like stan corey right if you typed exclamation mark stan

[19:06] corn just an example of one way you can use a bot to uh bring some good community vibes for example the primary way that our chat likes to use nightbot is we like to immortalize a lot of funny quotes or typos that

[19:19] people have made in chat will will like make a command with the chatter's username in your nightbot settings you can also permit your mods to add etc so it's just a very versatile tool very

[19:32] handy and it's especially helpful for moderators i think because it makes their life easier so do consider configuring a nightbot and also setting certain words you want to blacklist for example to keep your community safe and

[19:45] environment something else i've done is set up an faq command which actually see that if someone uses this command they will get this link and if i should take you to this link now you'll see that it's basically just like a list of

[19:59] common questions that i get i also have these listed on my twitch about menu an faq section over here and this is like what microphone do you use what are but a lot of times on mobile it's really hard to read the about menu so that's

[20:14] why we also have um commands to cover a lot of the information that's in there type things because streamers often are subjected to a lot of that bots will like a lot as a fun side note just because i didn't touch on it earlier in

[20:28] these are called panels these are your about panels and this panel asset all of in google slides so helpful and i hope that it will be helpful to you as well one last note

[20:43] before we leave chat bots behind you can also use these bots in discord actually twitch chat or your youtube chat will also work in your discord if you obviously there are some limitations right like emotes don't really transfer

[20:56] because the annotations you use for them are a little different but it can be for the same community in two different places right it's it's a really just a cozy vibe um and just really helpful overall i really enjoy having the bot

[21:09] commands it saves my life every stream now let's talk a little bit about stream schedule plan your schedule share your schedule why do people make schedule graphics right for me it's it's an accountability system so i have adhd

[21:22] it's a little bit hard for me to i have to really have structure to my life the stream schedule is an accountability announced to the world that i am streaming at a certain time on a certain

[21:34] without it feeling really bad to me you know like i feel like i've let someone down so for me it works it may not work for everyone but if this is something you set up a stream schedule so i used to do these kinds of stream schedule

[21:47] was also really helpful for me to do this on google slides because right here in the notes section i could just like like put a dump of all of my stream ideas as they were coming to me while i was scheduling because that tended to be

[22:01] when i want to be thinking about oh what are my ideas anyways like what streams do i even want to do so these two things living side by side for a while this was handy dandy function for me so there are a lot of limitations to doing your

[22:13] stream schedules like this though because obviously it's very static um right like you can see over here it says all times in pdt but like not all of my think most of my viewers are not in pacific time and so it's it's a really

[22:27] like oh what's 7 p.m pacific in my time like how many hours ahead or behind me is seeing it was just a hard time it was a headache and so even though this is a way to do it it's not like the tweets were getting that much attention anyways

[22:41] um so i ended up moving over to discord so here over on my discord i have a special stream schedule channel just for me to post my stream schedule in i've appreciated the fact that discord has an ability for you to do localized time

[22:53] for everyone everyone no matter where you live in the world they would always be able to know in their time zones when my streams would be this is what the time stamps look like and the way so this big number here this is called an

[23:05] epic time stamp it's basically a milliseconds since a certain point in since epic is what it's called the format that it's encapsulated in designates what format the date will show up as so the reason that this shows

[23:18] up as specifically like wednesday may 4th year and time instead of just like time for example or wednesday um is because it's formatted with this like t colon and then coleman f thing at the end so the easiest way that i have found

[23:32] obviously it's not something you're going to get off the top of your head is to use a tool called hammer time hammer time is super intuitive you in my case i'm in pacific time and then you set the time here based on whatever

[23:45] my case i usually go live on stream after work at about 7pm and then it generates all of these different formats that you can use i personally like this long form one where it includes the day of the week click copy to clipboard copy

[23:59] of the week click copy to clipboard copy copy to click click clock copy this is stupid a quick copy to clipboard and then go ahead and dump it over in is my current preferred way of doing schedules but everyone has their own

[24:12] people just hit go live when they feel like going live and that is also okay are interested in doing then these are just just two options of many that you creative with it i think the most important thing with streaming and

[24:26] should just be flexible to your personal needs and interests and should just adapt to those changes and figure out what works for you it's different for everyone the last thing i want to show you all around organization

[24:39] notion you all already know i'm a notion fan i introduction to notion even a few weeks ago that i will also link if this is have gotten a little serious around this content stuff i have to track deadlines

[24:54] with sponsors for example and that will impact my stream schedule in a lot of that i have actually shared as a nightbot command so with notion you can share these things as a page so i can i can copy this link and put it in a

[25:07] exclamation mark schedule into nightbot they will get a link to this calendar different streams that i've had before the streams that i have coming up i we'll keep stream philosophy and approach to a different video as well

[25:20] think that there's a really important trade-off to be considered between the the amount of time that you spend on other channels of content right whether that's youtube or tick tock or twitter or wherever it is that you disseminate

[25:33] your content generally speaking um growth in your stream happens cross-platform nowadays that's the current meta at least so for me at least be streaming all the time because that is not the only way to grow that's my

[25:46] personal philosophy we can discuss that in another video anyways my point is that notion is a really flexible versatile tool if you are interested in strategic about your timelines your calendars tracking your sponsorships and

[25:59] there's a lot of things to track and i think it's important to use something whether that's notion or something else to track everything that is happening if consecration and streaming thing a little more seriously right maybe that's

[26:12] later but it's something to look out for in the future and if you want to just be more intentional about your content and that's basically it i have taught you that's not actually true we're gonna do a few more videos um probably one on

[26:25] bit of that like stream philosophy i was talking about earlier in terms of like content should you stream should you be variety or like a niche content creator what enables growth how do you get sponsorships should i get a manager or

[26:40] really really big questions to come right um and you know if if this goes you get successful these are questions that you will have to answer so i will tackle those in upcoming videos in the meantime thank you for joining me for

[26:54] if you have any questions leave them in the comments and i will do my best to address them in upcoming videos if it was helpful for you please do consider comment i would appreciate that very much it's really important because i'm

[27:06] the numbers mean a lot to the sponsors unfortunately this one right thanks isis anyways aces link is down below as well click it give me the bread all right whether it is morning

[27:20] time of day i will see you all next stream or next video peace [Music]