Live streaming live music performances

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Lunkhead
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Live streaming live music performances

Post by Lunkhead »

If we're going to have an online Song Fight Live this year, there are probably a lot of us, myself included, who have a lot to learn about how to set up to live stream themselves performing music in a way that looks and sounds ok. There's the whole local A/V setup to capture the performance, and then there's also the software and computer setup to stream it. That involves possibly using some local tools, as well as one or more of a bevy of streaming sites/services. If you've got experience please share, or, if you've got questions, please ask.
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fluffy
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Re: Live streaming live music performances

Post by fluffy »

Gonna keep it brief because I want to share a high-level overview without doing TOO much of an information dump.

First thing: obsproject.com is the streaming software to look at. It'll work with a bunch of streaming services including youtube, twitch, and facebook out of the box, and you can also set it up to work with restreamer etc. How this is configured will depend on what platform we decide to actually run the stream on.

You'll need a camera. If you have a laptop or an iMac, the camera that's built in to your screen is an okay starting point. Any USB webcam is fine too. If you want to go fancier and already have an HDMI camcorder or a DSLR that can put out a clean (UI-free) signal over HDMI, you can use that in conjunction with a cheap video capture device like a Mirabox.

Sound-wise you'll need to think about how the audio gets in. Since you're here you probably already have an audio interface of some sort; you can tell OBS to capture live audio from that. If you're also going to be playing backing tracks from your computer, you'll need a way of capturing that back in. If you have a Scarlett audio interface it already provides a "loopback" device which you can add to the mix. If you're on Windows, OBS can be set with "desktop audio capture" (setting that up is fiddly and there's usually some lag). On Mac you can use a virtual audio device like BlackHole. However, if you have multiple computers (like a desktop and a laptop) really the easiest thing to do is to use one computer for your sound, and then capture its output on the other (which handles video and the streaming). That's pretty much what I do on my streaming setup, where I have my Windows laptop capture the audio from my Mac and the video from my cameras.

Think of it less as a one-size-fits-all thing and more like Lego bricks you can put together based on your need.

If you have specific constraints or gear I can try to come up with some ideas that might be worth trying.
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Lunkhead
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Re: Live streaming live music performances

Post by Lunkhead »

Thanks fluffy! That's a really great starting point.

How specifically are you capturing the audio from one computer into the other? Is it just via having an audio interface on both and plugging the outs of the audio interface on the "music" computer into the ins of the audio interface on the "video" computer? Or something else?
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Re: Live streaming live music performances

Post by fluffy »

That's exactly it. Monitor output on my iMac goes to the audio input on the streaming machine. The audio interface on the streaming machine isn't great but it doesn't make a noticeable difference on an Internet stream anyway.
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Re: Live streaming live music performances

Post by Lunkhead »

The two-computer setup with OBS makes sense but seems maybe a bit "advanced". fluffy do you have any thoughts on a more "beginner" friendly setup? Some folks may be ok with sacrificing some quality/control to have something simpler to set up.
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Re: Live streaming live music performances

Post by fluffy »

The reason I mentioned the two-computer setup is because it's easier to get your computer audio into the stream than a one-computer setup. One-computer setup requires a lot of fiddling and sometimes installing special software, or at the very least having a second audio interface to feed back into. Although I guess if people are using a recording interface they'll probably have an on-board audio input that they can use for that, hmm.

Anyway that's only necessary if you want your computer to play audio onto the stream. If you're just doing live instruments/G&G/whatever there's no need for it.
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Re: Live streaming live music performances

Post by fluffy »

Oh also if you just want to play backing tracks it's easiest to plug in a separate mp3 player/phone/etc. into your mixer.
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