Last week, we tried for the first time to live stream our podcast on Twitch. The whole session went pretty well and it wasn’t as bad as we thought. In the end, we managed to get 85 active viewers, which was pretty good considering we didn’t make any announcements about our broadcast times.
Before we could live stream and broadcast, we had to do some investigation on what to do, and how to do it. Believe it or not, using Twitch for our live stream broadcast wasn’t our first choice … it wasn’t until I spoke to a Twitch representative at Computex 2016, which he later convinced me that the Twitch platform can now live stream literally anything and everything. Obviously, the mainstay for Twitch are the gamers, streaming hundred of thousands of hours of gameplay everyday.
In this article, we’ll be showing you how to install OBS studio (free software) and live stream your broadcast via Twitch.tv (Twitch account needed).
What is Twitch?
Twitch is a live streaming video platform owned by Twitch Interactive, a subsidiary of Amazon.com Inc. Founded in June 2011, Twitch is the world’s leading social video platform and community for gamers. Each month, more than 100 million community members gather to watch and talk about video games with more than 1.7 million broadcasters. Twitch’s live and video on demand platform caters to the entire video game industry, including game developers, publishers, media outlets, events, casual content creators, and the entire Esports scene. More information.
Download OBS Studio (Open Broadcast Software)
Goto OBS website and download the latest version … https://obsproject.com/download
Once you have OBS installed, you can check and add the video capture device (usually a webcam) as circled on the left. Next, check the settings circled on the right. When you have fully configured your settings, you may select option 1 to start streaming, and/or option 2 to allow you to start recording to your desktop.
Select the Twitch streaming service
Select the Twitch service from the dropdown bar, and the closest server nearest you. Next you must insert the Stream Key. See below on how to get the Twitch stream key.
Extracting your Twitch Stream Key
Go to your Twitch account and select the “Dashboard”. Now select Stream key and click “Show”. Accept the warning message. Now copy the stream key and place it in the OBS stream settings.
OBS streaming output quality
Depending on your computer’s hardware and graphics card, you can select the type of output and streaming quality. If you have a decent graphics card, then you may select the encoder to “Hardware (QSV)” in the Streaming section. The same goes for the recording section as well. You can record in flv, mov, mkv or mp4.
Audio quality settings
I usually leave everything as default in the audio section. You may want to change from stereo to mono to save on bandwidth and disk space if you are recording.
Video resolution settings
The video section has options to adjust the Base (Canvas) resolution and also the Output (Scaled) resolution. As for the other settings, I would leave everything else as default.
Hot Keys options
If you’re a gamer, then these hot key options a must … you have a wide range of options including start/stop streaming, start/stop recording, mute/unmute, push-to-mute/push-to-unmute and many more.
Twitch is one of many streaming platforms out there, but we find it works well with our PC/laptop as it has all the options, including the ability to have multiple video capture inputs and audio inputs. Setting up OBS studio was simple and easy, and best of all its FREE! … and we were able to live stream on Twitch in no time.
https://youtu.be/N7QmUd_8yfg
For our live streaming broadcasts, we also use Periscope and Facebook Live. We actually prefer Periscope for its stability, ease of use and the immediate notification to all our Twitter followers. We created a live streaming home studio rig using some basic and easy to get hold of parts.
Check out the article below.
- How to Setup Your Own Live Streaming Home Studio (using 2 iPhones and/or other devices)
- Our Pericsope channel
- Our Twitch page
- Our Facebook page
