Live Streaming

So when this whole lockdown situation began, Raquel and I started to research live streaming as we figured we’d be under quarantine for quite a while. We also wanted to make sure that our live broadcast sounded good and looked good. It quickly became apparent to us that getting high quality audio and video to stream was a bit challenging.

Instagram Live - Instagram probably has the worst streaming platform out there yet it is probably the most popular right now.. So my first thought was “how can I route good quality audio to my phone so it doesn’t sound like garbage on IG?” Well the quick fix for that was the iRig Stream. This basically lets you take a feed from a mixing board or from the headphone output of your audio interface directly to your phone through the lightening/charging port. So as long as you have a decent mix happening, this is a great way to get that audio to your phone. I use an 1/8” to RCA to get that audio from the interface to the iRig. In most cases you’ll probably need an 1/8” to 1/4” converter for the headphone port. Of course shortly after people caught on to this, the iRigs sold out everywhere and now they’re back in stock.. with a $20 price increase, now at listed online for $100.

Facebook, YouTube, Twitch - With other platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, etc.. the issue was video quality. For this we sprung for the Sling Studio system which is what I like to call a streaming interface. Not sure if that’s really a term.. but I feel it acts as that. It lets you take multiple cameras and connect them either hard-wired or wirelessly to a hub which sums the audio and video and sends it to whichever streaming service or custom RTMP of your choosing. It also gives you the option to plug in direct, line level audio to the hub.

Upload Speed - Your stream is only as good as your upload speed. You’ll have a much better chance at achieving high quality streams if you are connected directly to an ethernet cable. You can buy a ethernet to USB adapter and connect your internet directly to your computer or in our case, the Sling Studio hub. If you’re using your phone to stream Instagram live it’s best to be on WiFi. Check your speed: Speed Test

It’s all about RTMP - This stands for Real-Time Messaging Protocol or something.. it basically let’s you use software like OBS (Open Broadcasting Software) to create a custom live stream with more options like multiple cameras, direct/line-in audio, text overlays, graphics, screen sharing, etc.. you can get an RTMP address and a “Stream Key” from the platform you want to go live with and plug those into OBS, SlingStudio, Ecamm, etc.. and stream that way.

Multiple platform streaming - so to take this one step further, you can use third party sites like Restream.io or Loola.tv to go live on multiple platforms like YouTube, Twitch, TicTok, Twitter and Instagram. Yes, even Instagram! Unfortunately Loola.tv doesn’t let you stream to Facebook for some reason, even though they advertise that they can on their front page. The way to go live on the big 4: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter is by using Restream.io in conjunction with Yellow Duck.tv. YellowDuck is an app that let’s you pull the RTMP and Stream Key from you instagram channel. When you have that, you can choose to add a “Custom RTMP Channel” in Restream. That way you can log-in to your Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and more with Restream.io and then take the Instagram RTMP & Stream Key from YellowDuck and put it in as the “Custom RTMP Channel” Unfortunately this is a paid service ($16-20/month), but yellow duck is a free software so that’s cool. IMPORTANT: one thing to remember is when you get the RTMP combo from YellowDuck you’ll need to input it into restream.io immediately because that stream key will expire within a few minutes if you don’t use it to go live. Also keep in mind is that you will not be able to log-in to instagram on the channel you’re going live with and see your stream.. the best way to do this is to just create another instagram account that you use to monitor your page’s stream.

Issues - So technically this all works but the last detail that was bugging me was that my 16:9 ratio was coming across the IG Live format as basically a cropped portrait mode whereas Loola.tv is somehow able to crop the feed so that you can see more of it. I still have yet to figure out how to crop that insta live feed without using Loola. If anyone has any ideas, let me know!

Universal Audio Apollo Users - I quickly started to notice that a lot of people were streaming better quality audio but there was a weird problem.. If you used say, a Universal Audio Apollo Twin and plugged in your guitar on channel 1 and your microphone on channel 2, you would hear them on the live stream as guitar only on the left channel and vocal only on the right channel. Why is this? I’m not 100% sure how to explain it, but the quick fix is to go into your settings and change your I/O matrix so that your first two channels are MON L and MON R. To do that, go to your console settings > I/O MATRIX > and select the input of channel 1. For TYPE choose MONITOR and INPUT should be MON L. Do the same thing for channel 2 and make it MON R. This makes it so that whatever is coming out of your speakers or headphones is what people will hear, not separated audio. This also applies to things like Zoom if you are using your audio interface to send audio. I started to notice that whatever mic was connected, even if I had that mic muted in the console, the person on the other end could still hear me. That didn’t make sense at first. Basically what was happening is that it was taking every single input and summing them into 1 or 2 channels. So then if I took that channel off mute then there were two signals happening and it sounded phase-y and/or had a weird delay on it. Pretty sure I’ve lost you by now, but if you’ve made it this far it’s probably because you’re losing sleep over this shit like I am hahaha. If you want to dive in EVEN deeper, check out this episode of UA’s Office Hours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0vLm7q8iFE

What are your issues, problems, challenges with live streaming?

QUESTIONS/COMMENTS? POST BELOW>>>>