Streamers with jobs

Absolutely, happy to help! If you have any questions, let me know! It's a bit daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's the bees knees.

Getting familiar with Voicemeeter Banana is a great option if you decide to have other voices on your streams as well, as you can set it up to pick up discord or skype or whatever through your desktop sounds.

Exactly. Also great if you have stuff like MIDI units using your sound card's line-in.

Any of you stream with a laptop ?

I used a desktop when I streamed correctly. But that PC is gone.

I could rebuild one, but it's the video card I'm missing, and won't invest in that just for streaming.

The laptop is as follow :

i5 -8300h
16g of ram
m2.ssd of 500g
1050 gtx 4g

Thanks for any input if that's still doable. I tried when I had 8g of Ram, but was laggy as hell.

Thanks again gentlemen! I'm going to dig into Voicemeter Banana over the weekend (or perhaps sooner).

Manach - Sorry, no clue. I'm using a desktop.
_____

The second part of audio quality that I want to improve is voice quality. I feel like this is a long term challenge that demands quite a bit of practice. Here are areas I'm trying to improve:

Fluency - Removing verbal fillers (uh's, etc.) and verbal hiccups (breaks in fluency where you stumble over content or a forgotten word, etc.). Once I'm warmed up I tend to have few issues with verbal fillers, but I find myself not doing so well with verbal hiccups, especially when I'm tired at all. I have a sense that reducing verbal hiccups is a long-term process and also an element of preparation.

Tempo - I feel like my tempo is jumpy and often too fast and hurried. When I slow down, however, sometimes I feel like things get tedious because of a tendency to recycle content. (See below.) Getting the tempo correct feels like something that's going to take a while.

Sincerity/Enthusiasm - Sometimes I feel like I switch into some weird voice that isn't really myself and can sound feigned or affected. I feel like my content is better when I'm just being myself and enjoying myself.

Recycling Content - I come from an educational background, and experienced educators rephrase and re-explain things. This is good for live learning, but not good for video content. I need to learn to say something once well and move on, rather than belaboring a point. At times when I go back and listen to videos I made a couple of weeks ago I can catch myself saying the same point in three different ways. Even I get frustrated listening to myself. "MOVE ON!" I feel like this is going to take me a lot of work to improve, as recycling content is a way to give yourself thinking time so you avoid verbal hiccups. So the better I get at not recycling content the more likely I am to increase verbal hiccups. I feel like I need to learn a whole new way of thinking while I talk, and habits die slowly.

Overall voice quality - I've enrolled in an online voice course and am considering working with a voice coach. (Voice improvement is connected to current work projects in a number of ways, so I'm not doing this part just for YouTube videos.)

Anyone else thinking about voice quality and/or doing stuff to improve it?

Yes, gosh, I need this. Have developed some bad habits.

Amoebic wrote:

Yes, gosh, I need this. Have developed some bad habits.

I've also noticed that I use the same words and phrases over and over. "That's a killer" and "abysmal" are two that I constantly use.

#needbiggervocabulary

Gorilla, those are all noble goals. I wish you the best of luck in them.

I've been told I sound like Norm Macdonald, which is the highest compliment anyone can receive, so I'm good.

Incoming ramble:

I've started streaming a little bit again. It was mostly spurred on by the fact that I blabber on and on to my partner while I play games, and most of it is talking at her, not with her. We both decided that it'd be healthier for the both of us if I just blabbered to the screen

And it's been...Nice? It's really weird and awkward at first because I know I'm not talking to anyone, then I get nervous when I see the viewer counter tick up. I'm not an entertainer, I don't even watch Twitch myself, but I wanted to give it a shot.

It's also been good branching out from the one genre. Previously, I just streamed shmups and it was SUPER stressful. Mostly because I'm totally average compared to the majority of shmup streamers, and a lot of video content in this genre is; elite plays, scoring, beating the game on one credit etc. While I try, it was upsetting me that I wasn't consistently amazing at them and would often avoid streaming if I felt I hadn't improved since the last time I went live. It was also deflating that it's a niche genre, and even my IRL friends who'd normally chill and game with me don't really care/know what's going on.

And y'know what? To hell with that. During my last 2 streams, I identified that I was getting frustrated and decided to stream something chill instead. I followed my 1CC attempts with some pinball day one, and some Slay the Spire day two. It was so much fun!

I've also been using photoshop to make some cool overlays. Here's the latest two:

Spoiler:

My main game:
IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EIUi6M9XYAAU7If?format=jpg&name=large)
And this old R-Type overlay I made last year and never got to use. I've been using it for misc. games I don't have overlays for. It doesn't really fit, but eh, better than no overlay!
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/ti6myGZ.png)

That's great man!

Awesome, glad you're having fun with it, and those overlays are slick.

Quick update...

1 - I decided to add a webcam video to the recordings, but wanted to green screen out the background. I picked up this nifty pop-up green screen on Amazon. It arrived yesterday and I gave it a go last night. Thing works great, although I had to add some front lighting in order to make my face look bright enough. I've still got to tweak some of the settings on the webcam levels in OBS, but for a first shot I'm happy with the results.

2 - I'm still trying to get rid of the random crackling sound in the videos. Switching the mic to Cardiod and putting it on a boom stand helped remove the background noise from the PC. Reducing the gain on the mic helped make the crackling fainter, but it's still there. I've narrowed it down to something that happens when I import the video into Final Cut Pro. Apparently it's a thing and it has to do with some sort of audio incompatibility with AAC audio recorded with OBS that's brought into FCP. I've got a couple of ideas to try on the next video, and I'm going to give them a go when I record tomorrow's video.

3. I haven't messed with Voicemeter Banana yet.

4. I haven't started on the voice course yet, but should make time to do that tomorrow.

YES! Thank the gods above!

After three evenings, several dozen test videos, endless frustration, and more hours than I'd like to admit, I solved the crackling audio problem.

Turns out importing mp4 video (from OBS only maybe) into Apple software (iMovie and Final Cut Pro) can have issues. I finally fixed it by recording in OBS as .mov instead of .mkv. I realize mkv is more reliable, but the static is a no go.

Upside to this is that I think I understand every damn setting in OBS now.

I switched to FLV my own self recently, really liking it.

Quick update...

1 - Big day yesterday! I got my first DISLIKE. I feel like I'm growing up.

2 - I'm liking the green screen results, and finally am happy with the audio. Here's the latest video, where I think those things are starting to come together.

3 - I feel like with regards to content/voice I'm making progress but still have a long way to go. I listen to the first videos a month ago I made and cringe, and I'm hoping that in a month I'll listen to the ones I'm making now and cringe too. Getting content, tone, voice all right feels like a long-term skill for sure. Just got to keep making more and more to get better.

4 - I'm liking the voice course I'm taking. I'm learning quite a bit already (Day 3) and the exercises are silly fun.

Veloxi wrote:

I switched to FLV my own self recently, really liking it.

Heh, I would have never anticipated that, but FLV is even the default for OBS, isn't it? If I wanted to record in FLV, I could convert it to MP4 or MOV quickly in HandBrake for importing into Final Cut Pro. Are there particular reasons you prefer FLV?

Better quality and if somehow OBS crashes or some such, the video is salvageable.

Plus they basically told me on the OBS discord to "Stop using MP4 and switch to FLV you dumb sh*t." Basically.

Veloxi wrote:

Better quality and if somehow OBS crashes or some such, the video is salvageable.

Plus they basically told me on the OBS discord to "Stop using MP4 and switch to FLV you dumb sh*t." Basically.

That's the reason I was recording in MKV, then remuxing to MP4. But I could probably record in FLV or MKV, then convert to MOV, so Final Cut Pro likes it. Food for thought. I might give that a shot. Thanks.

About to go live, streaming Fire Emblem: Three Houses:

https://twitch.tv/nsmichael

Hey Brian, can I ask why you have your PC specs on your YouTube channel "about" page?

Because I have been regularly asked what my specs are.

Veloxi wrote:

Because I have been regularly asked what my specs are.

Ah, I see. Thanks.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:
Veloxi wrote:

Because I have been regularly asked what my specs are.

Ah, I see. Thanks. :)

Any time.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:
Veloxi wrote:

Because I have been regularly asked what my specs are.

Ah, I see. Thanks. :)

Yeah.... I see that question, asked of gamers, all the time. I don’t see it on “Just Chatting” or “Art” streams, nearly as often.

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:
Godzilla Blitz wrote:
Veloxi wrote:

Because I have been regularly asked what my specs are.

Ah, I see. Thanks. :)

Yeah.... I see that question, asked of gamers, all the time. I don’t see it on “Just Chatting” or “Art” streams, nearly as often.

Interesting.

With a grand total of 14 subscribers at this point, I don't have any "getting asked regularly" thingies yet.

Give it time. Our latest ban was a guy who repeatedly came into my stream chat and demanded I play Minecraft.

It'll happen for you too.

Veloxi wrote:

Give it time. Our latest ban was a guy who repeatedly came into my stream chat and demanded I play Minecraft.

It'll happen for you too.

Honestly... That's pretty tame, in my experience.

Eleima wrote:
Veloxi wrote:

Give it time. Our latest ban was a guy who repeatedly came into my stream chat and demanded I play Minecraft.

It'll happen for you too.

Honestly... That's pretty tame, in my experience.

Oh I know it'll get worse as I get more subscribers.

Also, to be sadly honest, I am a guy, so.........

Haha, that's awesome. There's nothing remotely spacey about that.

Well since I stream five days a week now, it's not all space games, but still, there's a polite way to do things.

Veloxi wrote:

Oh I know it'll get worse as I get more subscribers.
Also, to be sadly honest, I am a guy, so......... :(

I don't have that many subscribers or viewers, to tell the truth, subscribers maybe 7-12 depending on the time of year. Viewers... Average of 5, maybe?
So yeah... Abso-freakin-lutely a gender thing.