Streamers with jobs

OBS = The best.

I tried XSplit Gamecaster, and it is nice and simple, but whenever I plug in my webcam, it adds a real annoying high-pitched hum to the background.

So, I am trying OBS. It looks nice and simple to use, but is there any way to have the twitch chat overlaid on my stream so that I can see people asking me questions and chatting when I am playing on my PC? I only have one monitor, and my Googling just gives the options of "get a second monitor" or "play windowed".

I find the second monitor (or alternatively, a tablet) is incredibly useful to keep an eye on your dashboard. That way, you can keep an eye on your stream health, not just your chat. That being said, there are a bunch of overlays around that are super easy to customize and plug into OBS. you only have to Google and you’ll find tons of articles and suggestions. Personally, I use an overlay found at Player.me, it’s fully customizable.

mudbunny wrote:

I tried XSplit Gamecaster, and it is nice and simple, but whenever I plug in my webcam, it adds a real annoying high-pitched hum to the background.

So, I am trying OBS. It looks nice and simple to use, but is there any way to have the twitch chat overlaid on my stream so that I can see people asking me questions and chatting when I am playing on my PC? I only have one monitor, and my Googling just gives the options of "get a second monitor" or "play windowed".

A second monitor is life-changing, dude. Seriously. I was like " Why do I need one?!" Then I got one and was like "Oohhh this is why." Having stuff of a second screen, like OBS and a chat window, is amazingly helpful.

Yeah, my pauper’s setup is gaming on the 22” monitor - gaming and streaming from the same (aged) PC, with my phone in front of me, so I can see “chat” (I would need viewers for actual chat ;P )

So, because a second monitor is just not possible, I played around a bit with my setup.

I am playing is a slightly shrunken window, with Twitch chat and health on the right-hand side of my screen. So far, it seems to work well.

Speaking of two-screen set-ups, got myself set up in a new work station. At some point this week I'm going to start experimenting with streaming. I updated my Twitch username to RamblePak64, so it's twitch.tv/ramblepak64 now. Better for the sake of simplicity.

I'm either going to run a test stream tonight of Bloodstained or a test stream sometime later this week. I think I'll primarily focus on SNES Classic titles, be it replaying old favorites or games I hadn't done a full playthrough of in a while. Mega Man X, Super Metroid, Link to the Past, maybe even do Donkey Kong Country as I haven't played the game proper since I was... a kid, really.

I'm also hoping to start streaming my friends and I playing Smash Bros. Ultimate every so often. Elgato can grab the sound from Discord and pump it into the Stream so everyone's chat would be heard.

This also means I might actually do Extra Life again. Not going to lead it, though. I'm an awful leader. But I'll join the team if someone else wants to head it up.

So it took until this morning for me to do a test stream. Honestly, I might want to do morning streams anyway. I have a good amount of time to myself where it's quiet and all that junk. Would make more sense for me to stream in the morning.

In any event, I had to replay a bunch of Darksiders since I flubbed a recording session, and decided streaming the Twilight Cathedral would be the perfect opportunity to test things out. I'm hoping to do Extra Life again this year, so this is a way to test the set-up and settings and get used to the whole narration thing again.

Here's the archive of the stream. Any feedback is appreciated. I was originally going to share it in the Darksiders game club thread since everyone's negative reaction to the game and their insistence on dropping it to easy helped spark the desire to make a video about the game in the first place, but I don't exactly have a lot of great examples of not sucking at combat. Took me a while to get into the flow.

Well I hate to triple-post, but just noting that I've decided that, even though it's probably the worst hour if your aim is to gain a following, I'll be streaming 8am to 9am EST starting tomorrow. First game will be Super Metroid. Going to see if I want to do every day or only select days of the week.

Friends, hope you don't mind a bit of spam, but this is a big deal for me.

Starting next week, I'll be able to start working on SGJ full-time. This means daily streams, more written content, and more of the content we already do. Read about it here (https://www.spacegamejunkie.com/misc...) or watch the announcement here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACWh...) for more information, and if you could, please help me spread the word. Thank you so much!

Wow, that IS big, Veloxi!! Congrats!!!

Anyone have any success streaming No Man's Sky recently? I read that after the last update you can't use OBS full screen because of something called Vulkan and its tricky to get the game to start in windowed mode.

--edit--

Solved. I edited the TKGRAPHICSSETTINGS.MXML file and set windowed and borderless to false.

I’ve been wondering why my OBS always showed a black screen.... (only for NMS, of course)

My next task is to work out how to fix the terrible audio.

strangederby wrote:

My next task is to work out how to fix the terrible audio.

What's going on with your audio?

So, you guys on my end, I've got a green screen thing going now. I thought I'd hate being on camera, but it really does help with fun and engagement.

Veloxi wrote:
strangederby wrote:

My next task is to work out how to fix the terrible audio.

What's going on with your audio?

Sounds fairly good when I listen with my headphones but very tinny without.

Holy crap, is that your mic? Which mic are you using? Are you using any separate mixer program of any sort?

Its a playstation gaming headset and mike plugged into my laptop. That could be the problem as it looks like a cheap mike.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/A4OtD30.png)

If I don't increase the microphone boost in windows sound settings as above you can hardly hear me.

Yeah, sounds like a crap mic, to be honest. Can you invest in a better one?

Absolutely.

IMAGE(https://media1.giphy.com/media/3o84sw9CmwYpAnRRni/giphy.gif)

Streamed a thing!
(i forgot to hit record to record it offline though, so it'll vanish whenever twitch bins VOD stuff for freeloaders. WELP).

Played some Warlock of Firetop Mountain for an hour and a half. Narrating it all. It's A LOT.
Also I do dumb voices (aside from my own dumb voice).

What i'm planning to do also is try streaming my DM prep stuff (currently consisting of the Mines of Phandelver game i'm trying to sort out a regular group for, my online Euro GWJ game, and some early work sorting out my thoughts on possibly running Curse of Strahd after that). Not sure if that'll be of massive interest to anyone, but you never know, and it'll be mostly for Staygold's Wedsnesday creator thread anyway.

Nice work pyxi! I'm just taking a quick break from work so I only listened for minute or so, but at a glance I like your set up and voice.

Would this thread be a good place for discussion on creating Lets Play videos for YouTube as well? Is that similar enough to streaming?

I ask because I've been having great fun messing about with a YouTube Lets Play (for Football Manager) but it needs lots of improvement to be, like, not totally sucky. I've got wonderings on voice/pace/tone, seem to constantly be running into new technical questions, and am wondering about ways to respectfully promote the work should I feel like its good enough.

Ask away, fine with me!

Cool, most excellent!

I've got lots of things I'm wondering about, but my main interest at the moment is improving audio quality, both from a technical quality angle and from a pure voice angle (pacing, enthusiasm, tone, language quality, etc.)

I'll start with the technical angle...

I started with just recording audio from my computer's mic and realized that blows chunks. So I bought a Blue Yeti, installed it, and noticed a huge jump in audio quality. I kind of forgot about it after that, until last night, when I listened to one of my recent episodes after watching a couple of other YouTube videos. I immediately noticed that the audio has some background noise and a noticeable crackling to it.

I'm trying to fix this now and have taken a few steps...

First, idiot that I am, I didn't realize the mic had specific settings for various types of recordings. I switched the mic to Cardiod mode to reduce ambient noise from the computer.

Second, I ordered a stand for the mic to position the mic off the desk.

Third, I was too far away from the mic. I'm going to position the mic 6-10 inches from my mouth going forward.

Lastly, I'm going to play with the gain setting to see if that helps, and check the general audio level settings in OBS.

I'm wondering if these make good sense and if there are any other tips for improving audio from a technical point?

I will most likely make a new episode tomorrow evening and hope to test these things then.

(Yes, I've got a pop filter on the mic.)

Those all make perfect sense. I too have a Yeti. Turn the gain down super low both on the mic and in Windows. The damned thing is SUPER sensitive. Also if OBS has an audio gate, use it so it only picks up your voice and nothing else.

Or you could be like me and start using VoiceMeeter Banana, which will make stuff sound even better.

Veloxi wrote:

Those all make perfect sense. I too have a Yeti. Turn the gain down super low both on the mic and in Windows. The damned thing is SUPER sensitive. Also if OBS has an audio gate, use it so it only picks up your voice and nothing else.

Or you could be like me and start using VoiceMeeter Banana, which will make stuff sound even better.

Cool, thanks. It looks like OBS has some fairly easy noise suppression adjustments that can be done with a couple of plugins. I'm going to see how things sound with the stand and the Cardiod setting first, but I'll keep that in my back pocket if I'm still hearing the background hum of the computer. I have a fairly quiet spot to record, with pretty much the only ambient noise being the unidirectional sound from the computer.

That's also good to know about the Gain setting on the Yeti. I've seen conflicting advice on gain settings on mics, and the Yeti's sensitivity may be the reason for it. I wonder if the gain setting has been creating the crackling/hotness of the sound.

VoiceMeeter Banana looks interesting, and it looks like you can use it with OBS? Does it require manually syncing the audio and video post-production? I'd like to avoid that.

Nope. Basically it installs another audio device in Windows, and you select that device in OBS. Then all of your sound, such as mics and the desktop itself (i.e. the game) go through the mixer, so you basically use the mixer to set your levels and such in VMB rather than OBS. I use it all the time, and because it can save settings as XML files, I have different settings for local recording, streaming with voice chat in Discord and podcasting, for example. I freaking love it.

Veloxi wrote:

Nope. Basically it installs another audio device in Windows, and you select that device in OBS. Then all of your sound, such as mics and the desktop itself (i.e. the game) go through the mixer, so you basically use the mixer to set your levels and such in VMB rather than OBS. I use it all the time, and because it can save settings as XML files, I have different settings for local recording, streaming with voice chat in Discord and podcasting, for example. I freaking love it.

I am all over this like Elmer’s Glue on a kid’s art project. Thanks so much!