Advanced Live Streaming

This tutorial was originally created by Timothy Daniel in March 2015. If you have any comment or question, feel free to contact him at [email protected].

---

 

First, you need to focus on the needs of the viewers. What do they want?

• They want to know what's happening. Who is talking? About what?
• They want to see the speakers
• …and their presentations
• And, most of all, they want to clearly hear both the speakers and the questions from the audience.

What you need to show on the screen depends on what is happening. Is someone showing a PowerPoint? Then you should probably show that. Have we moved on to the question round? Then it's likely better to show a full screen video rather than have two thirds of the screen occupied by a "thank you for listening" slide. Has everybody left the room for the coffee break? Then viewers don't want to contemplate a bunch of empty chairs; they want to know where people went, and when they'll be back.

 

Scenes

 

OBS allows to have multiple "scenes" with different layouts and elements.

 

 

I usually define three:

 

Video view

 

 

This view is meant to be used when the emphasis is on the speaker, with no presentation or supporting material. Here for instance, it's composed of three different items:

1. The video from the main camera, in full screen;

2. Logos and other decorative elements. If possible and admissible by the logo's owner, have it in semi-transparent to avoid obscuring the image (in this case, the ESN logo should not be transparent, unlike what is show in the screen);

3. A summary of the speaker and topic

Both 1 and 2 can be set up once at the beginning of the event and left as is (in the streaming software, that is. You might need to adjust the camera position). However, the 3rd element needs to be updated for each presentation.

 

This is where we hit one of the limitation of OBS and other similar software (such as FFSplit): there is no "staging area" where you could prepare the scene or text beforehand. It needs to be done live, where viewers can see you typing the new content directly on the screen. Not very professional. However, there is a solution: the text in those text boxes can be entered manually, or it can be sourced from a file (with each change to this file refreshing the text). This is the best way to do this:

1. In a folder, create a series of text files, one for each text element in your stream. Also, create a staging text file where you prepare each text;

2. In the text field, instead of "Enter text", click on "Use text from file" and select the file;

3. When needed, replace the content of each file by the prepared text.

 

Additional tip: if you're going to reuse an element, for instance the logos, in every scene, you can define a "global source". Global sources can be imported multiple times, and any change to them (except their position and size on the scene) will be reflected on all the scenes they are on.

 

 

 

Presentation view

 

 

This view is used when there is a presentation to show. The 4:3 presentation takes up most of the screen, with the remaining space being occupied by a picture-in-picture video, and various logo or other information. Here, I used:

1. The video;

2. The presentation, sourced from TeamViewer or Hangouts (see below);

3. A schedule, sourced from a file;

4. Logos to fill the remaining space

To display the presentation, we stream the second monitor (the one which is being projected) of the presentation computer.

If the presentation computer is also the streaming computer, it's simple: just add a "monitor capture" view to the scene, selecting the second monitor.

 

 

If, however, you are streaming from another computer, there are two ways to get the presentation. Note that the presentation computer needs to have internet access.

 

If you have admin access on the computers

Download and install Teamviewer on both computers, then open a connection on the presentation computer. Write down the id and password of the stream. Start Teamviewer on the streaming computer and connect to the stream.

When the screen of the other computer appear, go to "video" on the top bar, switch to screen 2, and hide the top bar. You can then add this window in the stream by using add -> window capture.

 

If you don't have admin access on the computers

You can use Google Hangouts to achieve the same effect without having to install anything. You will however need two Google+ accounts. Go to https://plus.google.com/hangouts, log in the first account, then start a hangout and select "screenshare" on the sidebar, selecting the second monitor view (the one showing the presentation), the invite the second account.

On the streaming computer, log in on the second account, and join the video call. You should now see the presentation computer's second screen. Again, add it to the stream with add -> window capture.

 

Break view

Quite simply, this screen appears when there is nothing else to see. Occasions include:

• Coffee breaks

• Lunch

• End of plenaries

• Confidential sessions where the chairing team wants the stream turned off

During that time, turning the stream off is an option, but it's rather brutal and confusing for the viewer. Likewise, any new viewer will just be treated to an empty screen, with no indication that the stream is working. It's much better to keep the stream on, but to cut off the sound and replace the image with a waiting screen.

 

Here, I have two elements: the reason for break, and an ETA that indicates when the stream will be back on. This is an excellent occasion to have text fields sourced from files, as explained above.

 

In OBS, the sound is linked to the element on the screen. Since there are only pictures and text in this scene, no sound will be streamed.

 

Sound