Streamers with jobs

OG_slinger wrote:

I've worked in PR for public (and private) companies that both acquired and were acquired. The official announcement only happens once the deal is signed, sealed, and delivered. It is never, ever announced beforehand. To do so would give the acquiree added leverage in the final negotiations as well as leave both companies vulnerable to looking foolish or weak if final terms could not be agreed to.

It may be different in Canada but what we were told at my old employer that we were buying another company and going public, it had to be filed with the stock exchange (that's what I meant by accounced, I should have said filed) that we had the intention to merge and anyone could see that information if they wanted. The press releases and such happened after the deal was set to go but we had to make our intentions to buy this company available in a public fashion well before it happened.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

It may be different in Canada but what we were told at my old employer that we were buying another company and going public, it had to be filed with the stock exchange (that's what I meant by accounced, I should have said filed) that we had the intention to merge and anyone could see that information if they wanted. The press releases and such happened after the deal was set to go but we had to make our intentions to buy this company available in a public fashion well before it happened.

Ah. It was very likely the going public bit that triggered the reporting requirement, not the merger itself.

Here in the States private companies that want to go public have to file Form S-1, aka the prospectus, beforehand. It's supposed to provide full disclosure of the company's business and financials to investors. A potential merger or acquisition would have to be disclosed in the S-1.

IMAGE(http://abload.de/img/throw-your-vote-awayizevw.gif)

[edit]

Hitbox.tv is (smartly) looking to capitalize on the Twitch fiasco by publishing this blog post: Time to Switch

Here's the first paragraph:

It’s sad to see someone lose touch with the very people that made them big. Forcing a 30+ second delay on streamers and ruining their VoD’s with automated copyright claims is a slap in the face of everyone who tries to share their passion for gaming with the world.

Yeah, they dove on this in a really smart way.

I'm going to try streaming to both Twitch and Hitbox simultaneously tonight. I've got the bandwidth and I found a way to do it with OBS. If Hitbox works as well as I'm reading, I'll double stream for a bit to let my subscribers know and then I think I'll finally drop the jank fest that has been Twitch for a long time now. Enough people were pissed off by their CEO's ridiculous answers on his AMA today that there might be a big shift of people to Hitbox, which hopefully means I can use it and actually get viewers.

Unfortunately for me my Roxio Game Capture HD is only set for Twitch. Perhaps there's a way I can shift it to Hitbox somehow. I'll Google it later.

ccesarano wrote:

Unfortunately for me my Roxio Game Capture HD is only set for Twitch. Perhaps there's a way I can shift it to Hitbox somehow. I'll Google it later.

There must be. There's no way that hardware can only use that feature with one service.

I finally changed ISPs to where I can maintain an upstream connection, so thought I would try this out for a while. Here's where I've signed up.

http://www.hitbox.tv/tanstaafl

http://www.twitch.tv/paleogamer

I've done some streaming on Twitch (www.twitch.tv/masher_66). It was useful for the minimal level I was operating at, but I always felt like I was hamstrung with the web interface and the highlighting tools. And now with the limitations on archiving and highlights I'm looking elsewhere. Xeknos pointed me towards Hitbox.tv and I dipped a toe in this past week.
I like a lot of what they're doing with their web interface. The pop-out dashboard panel is particularly handy and the stream seemed to be just fine at a full 1080p. Video highlighting and playback is another story. I have yet to be able to successfully play back either of my recorded broadcasts. Tried multiple browsers on both Windows and OSX with no joy. I get about 20 seconds of playback and then it locks up. So, I can't edit highlights or really do anything useful with my footage. I suspect this is because it's archived at 1080 and they are probably being slammed with new streamers and viewers that are overwhelming their servers. I have FiOS, with 35Mb/s symmetrical upload/download, so bandwidth on my side shouldn't be an issue. I'm going to try some test streams at lower resolutions to see if that helps, but if this doesn't get sorted then that's a non-starter for me. I mostly want to archive gameplay, which I could do by recording locally and pushing to YouTube if it came to that but then I lose the interactive component.
I'm also a bit concerned about the CEOs history, but as a casual streamer I don't expect anything they do business-wise to really affect me. I'm not trying to earn my living by streaming (although the fact that some people can is fascinating to me) so I can always just bounce to the next service and don't have to worry about dragging a large following with me.
I think it's good to have another alternative to Twitch, just hope they can keep their heads above water as they grow.

Trainwreck wrote:
Thin_J wrote:
AP Erebus wrote:

What are people using to stream with (eg. application)?

I use OBS. It's functionally almost identical to XSplit, at least as far as core functionality goes, and it's open source and completely free.

There hasn't been a real reason to use Xsplit since its release.

*Here's an example of what my stream looks like with my current ~1.4mb upload speed.

I also use OBS to stream and would highly recommend it to people who are just starting out or casually streaming. The fact that XSplit requires a yearly license made me wary.

I'm having some issue with the software, as i dont know how to use it...

Could someone give me a crash course?

Happy to help out. What kind of issues are you running into?

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

Happy to help out. What kind of issues are you running into?

I just don't know how to use the software.

Well, I might be somewhat sleepy when I go thru the tutorial, gaming/pc time is late at night...

I just want something that somewhat easy to just click, and it goes live.

Now, it's late, gonna go catch some ZZZ

What are you folks on windows using to edit your videos? I'm trying to find a decent free editing suite.

Honestly, I just use Windows Live Movie Maker. It's pretty basic, but free.

I was using Movie Maker for a while. It's decent, but lacks features and was crashing a lot, so save often!

Now I'm using Adobe Premiere, which is all sorts of amazing.

EDIT: Is there a way with OBS, or any other software to stream at one resolution and record in another? I want to stream at 720p so people with bad connections can watch, but record at 1080p since those viewers can just drop the quality on YouTube if they need to.

Delerat wrote:

Is there a way with OBS, or any other software to stream at one resolution and record in another? I want to stream at 720p so people with bad connections can watch, but record at 1080p since those viewers can just drop the quality on YouTube if they need to.

It looks like you can use -multi as a launch option for OBS. That will allow you to run multiple instances with different settings.
Have a look at this thread. I haven't tested myself, but sounds like the right direction.

Manach wrote:

I just want something that somewhat easy to just click, and it goes live.

If you have an NVIDIA graphics card you could give GeForce Experience a try. You can set it up to record locally and stream directly to Twitch [exclusively].
You don't have the level of control of OBS or XSplit for managing multiple layouts, but it's dead simple to set up and you can overlay a webcam in any corner. It will also continuously record the last 5 minutes of your game so if something exciting happens and you aren't already recording you hit a hotkey and it saves off that 5 minute chunk. You can set the buffer duration higher or lower depending on how much drive space you want it to allocate.
Maybe an option for you?

Deadmonkeys wrote:

What are you folks on windows using to edit your videos? I'm trying to find a decent free editing suite.

Adobe Premiere Pro is really good. You might have a look at Lightworks. They have a free version that has some restrictions like not being able to export at 1080 to YouTube, which might be a deal-breaker for some. You can get the Pro version on monthly and annual plans or buy it outright for about $280. I haven't used it myself, I mostly work on Premiere Pro, Final Cut and Avid Media Composer. Some say the learning curve is kind of steep, but you can certainly try out the free version and see for yourself.

ButtonMasher wrote:
Delerat wrote:

Is there a way with OBS, or any other software to stream at one resolution and record in another? I want to stream at 720p so people with bad connections can watch, but record at 1080p since those viewers can just drop the quality on YouTube if they need to.

It looks like you can use -multi as a launch option for OBS. That will allow you to run multiple instances with different settings.
Have a look at this thread. I haven't tested myself, but sounds like the right direction.

The multi thing with OBS is very touchy I find. When I was trying to stream simultaneously to both Twitch and Hitbox (before everyone ran back to Twitch after their half-assed apology), I tried using multi mode because OBS can't stream to two places in one instance. It would only show my webcam in one session and some games would not capture to both instances. Apparently it varies a lot depending on your system configuration. XSplit can do multi-streaming in a single session but of course, that's not free. OBS is in the midst of completely rewriting the software from scratch and the new version will apparently support multi-streaming. I've given up on that though because despite what a crap site it is, Twitch is the only place to get viewers.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:
ButtonMasher wrote:
Delerat wrote:

Is there a way with OBS, or any other software to stream at one resolution and record in another? I want to stream at 720p so people with bad connections can watch, but record at 1080p since those viewers can just drop the quality on YouTube if they need to.

It looks like you can use -multi as a launch option for OBS. That will allow you to run multiple instances with different settings.
Have a look at this thread. I haven't tested myself, but sounds like the right direction.

The multi thing with OBS is very touchy I find. When I was trying to stream simultaneously to both Twitch and Hitbox (before everyone ran back to Twitch after their half-assed apology), I tried using multi mode because OBS can't stream to two places in one instance. It would only show my webcam in one session and some games would not capture to both instances. Apparently it varies a lot depending on your system configuration. XSplit can do multi-streaming in a single session but of course, that's not free. OBS is in the midst of completely rewriting the software from scratch and the new version will apparently support multi-streaming. I've given up on that though because despite what a crap site it is, Twitch is the only place to get viewers.

It may still work for me, since I'm looking to stream to one place and record locally, just at different resolutions.

Do you think it may have bugged out because of a bandwidth transfer limit? Streaming to two places must be hard on your connection.

I was streaming on Twitch last night and it was awful. Their chat servers were down for some reason or another, and so I'd have viewers who'd come in, realize they couldn't say anything, and leave. I was sitting at two viewers (Twitch counts you as a viewer even when you're watching from your dashboard) and it wasn't until the chat servers sorted themselves out that people realized they could interact with me and stay.

I'm in sort of a Twitch wind-down mode, and will continue to use it (while directing viewers to my Hitbox) at least until Extra Life. Once that ends, I'll probably jump over to Hitbox and start rebuilding my channel.

Oh! I guess I only posted my streaming info in the Spelunky thread.

So here's my stream channel:
http://www.twitch.tv/chubbylootmedia
My friend Chibwe and I currently stream Spelunky every Wednesday around 2PM PST.

I put a highlight reel up on our YouTube channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/ChubbyL...

The early episodes have audio and video quality issues.
Episode 5, which I am putting up tonight, is the first episode to have good quality video and audio together. Higher quality should be more consistent now that I've changed my recording setup around too.

Delerat wrote:

Do you think it may have bugged out because of a bandwidth transfer limit? Streaming to two places must be hard on your connection.

I've got 10Mbps up and only pump 3.5Mbps to each stream so I've got room to spare. The problem is that things like my webcam get the driver locked when it's activated so because each OBS instance is a separate process, the camera can only be in one place at once. The same restriction also applies to a game source but certain game applications seem to handle it better than others.

I wanted to take a similar approach to you Xeknos but I honestly wonder if rebuilding at Hitbox is even possible. The last time I did a lengthy double stream, I had a text element displaying telling people that I only had chat at Hitbox and that they should come and watch there instead. No one chatted at Hitbox and I got like four subscribers during the show...all on Twitch. The mass exodus that people seemed to think would happen just doesn't appear to have. This is the problem of these pseudo-monopolies in this space like Twitch and YouTube. People just don't want to lose their subs, even to vastly superior services. It sucks so much.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:
Delerat wrote:

Do you think it may have bugged out because of a bandwidth transfer limit? Streaming to two places must be hard on your connection.

I've got 10Mbps up and only pump 3.5Mbps to each stream so I've got room to spare. The problem is that things like my webcam get the driver locked when it's activated so because each OBS instance is a separate process, the camera can only be in one place at once. The same restriction also applies to a game source but certain game applications seem to handle it better than others.

I wanted to take a similar approach to you Xeknos but I honestly wonder if rebuilding at Hitbox is even possible. The last time I did a lengthy double stream, I had a text element displaying telling people that I only had chat at Hitbox and that they should come and watch there instead. No one chatted at Hitbox and I got like four subscribers during the show...all on Twitch. The mass exodus that people seemed to think would happen just doesn't appear to have. This is the problem of these pseudo-monopolies in this space like Twitch and YouTube. People just don't want to lose their subs, even to vastly superior services. It sucks so much.

Well, I think it's just because the problem hasn't arrived yet. The issue gamers will have is having video game music blocked out. That part hasn't actually happened yet, but it's most likely coming.

Delerat wrote:
Parallax Abstraction wrote:
Delerat wrote:

Do you think it may have bugged out because of a bandwidth transfer limit? Streaming to two places must be hard on your connection.

I've got 10Mbps up and only pump 3.5Mbps to each stream so I've got room to spare. The problem is that things like my webcam get the driver locked when it's activated so because each OBS instance is a separate process, the camera can only be in one place at once. The same restriction also applies to a game source but certain game applications seem to handle it better than others.

I wanted to take a similar approach to you Xeknos but I honestly wonder if rebuilding at Hitbox is even possible. The last time I did a lengthy double stream, I had a text element displaying telling people that I only had chat at Hitbox and that they should come and watch there instead. No one chatted at Hitbox and I got like four subscribers during the show...all on Twitch. The mass exodus that people seemed to think would happen just doesn't appear to have. This is the problem of these pseudo-monopolies in this space like Twitch and YouTube. People just don't want to lose their subs, even to vastly superior services. It sucks so much.

Well, I think it's just because the problem hasn't arrived yet. The issue gamers will have is having video game music blocked out. That part hasn't actually happened yet, but it's most likely coming.

I think the back pedaling Twitch did after the announcement saved them a fair bit, because they were hemorraging users that first day.

Is there any way to automatically tell Twitch/HitBox what game I am streaming? I've started with using either OBS or nVidia's GeForce Experience to stream but it looks like I have to go to my dashboard first and set the game to what I'm about to play. Since GeForce especially is pushbutton streaming (literally; I just hit Alt-F8 and I go live) it would be nice to not have to remember that step.

Though I guess I need to have the dashboard up anyway in order to see my chat window, so...

Also, what do you do if you have a game that they don't recognize? I've been playing around with World of Diving lately and HitBox has no idea what that game is.

Deadmonkeys wrote:

What are you folks on windows using to edit your videos? I'm trying to find a decent free editing suite.

I specifically grabbed Windows Movie Maker 6. It has done pretty well for me, and while it is lacking some fancy features, it has most of what I really need to get done. You can do simple scene changes, speed up or slow down footage, zoom in and out, so on and so forth. All of these have proven fine with my RamblePak videos.

The only flaw I'd really say it has is that it begins to really eat up memory. After about an hour of use I typically have to close out for a few minutes and open back up to get it to run swiftly again. Otherwise, again, it's absolutely fine for my needs and I actually prefer it to most video editors that are completely focused on trimming.

I'm using Adobe Premier pro since I have access to the Adobe cloud stuff.

tanstaafl wrote:

Is there any way to automatically tell Twitch/HitBox what game I am streaming? I've started with using either OBS or nVidia's GeForce Experience to stream but it looks like I have to go to my dashboard first and set the game to what I'm about to play. Since GeForce especially is pushbutton streaming (literally; I just hit Alt-F8 and I go live) it would be nice to not have to remember that step.

Though I guess I need to have the dashboard up anyway in order to see my chat window, so...

Also, what do you do if you have a game that they don't recognize? I've been playing around with World of Diving lately and HitBox has no idea what that game is.

I think you can still manually specify a game, even if it's not in their database. I know I used to be able to do this with Twitch. There is no way to automatically title and set the game for your broadcasts. I'm dying to find a new Twitch dashboard that makes that easier to do without having to open a browser on my second screen. I used to use Twitch Dashboard Lite but it broke recently and the author is no longer updating it.

I used mIRC for chat functionality for a while. There were ways to update your title and game, but I never figured it out.

The plot thickens.

According to The Information (paywall), Amazon is in "late-stage talks" with Twitch over a possible acquisition. This is particularly shocking since it's been previously reported that a YouTube and Twitch team-up for $1 billion was pretty much a done deal.

But now it seems Amazon is making a play to steal Google's live stream dreams. The Information says that details are still pretty spotty but that the deal "could be announced shortly," according to someone close to the transaction.