- Looking to livestream on Instagram from your computer?
In this video,
I'll walk you through how to do it, step by step.
All right? Let's get into it.
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My name is Jerry Potter.
Yes, it rhymes with the boy wizard.
And in this video,
I'm gonna show you how to stream live on Instagram,
but instead of doing it from your phone,
we can now do it from our computer.
All right? Let me share my screen,
and we'll walk through step by step.
Now, heads up,
it's a couple of extra steps
to go live on Instagram from your computer.
Like, it's not quite as simple as on the phone,
and you do have to use another tool as part of it.
But once you know this routine,
super simple,
and I'm gonna walk you through the entire thing.
So first thing,
I'm just in Instagram on a browser here.
So, I'm on my profile,
and over here on the left,
I'm gonna click Create,
and then I'm gonna click Live Video.
Now I believe,
as of this recording,
everybody has this ability to go live from your computer.
If you don't see Live Video here,
then you may not have this yet.
So I'm gonna click Live Video,
and then this first pop-up box
is going to tell us that we need to add some details.
So first thing is,
give your video a title.
So I'm just gonna call it Instagram Live from Computer.
And then down below that,
I'm gonna click Audience.
And you have the ability to just do a practice.
And if you haven't done this before,
I would make sure everything's working right,
and I would choose Practice.
But I'm gonna go ahead and choose Public.
Then I'm gonna hit Next.
This next screen here
is giving us all the information we need
to connect it to another tool.
So essentially,
you are streaming live on Instagram,
but you do need another tool,
and I'll show you what I use,
but I've linked to a few different options,
including free options,
in the description of this video.
So I use a tool called StreamYard.
There's also a link to that.
And I love this tool,
because I can go live
to YouTube, and Facebook, and LinkedIn, and now, Instagram,
all at the same time.
But right now,
we're just gonna walk through how to do it
to go live on Instagram.
This will be similar
to whatever streaming software
that you are using to connect.
So I'm gonna hit Create,
and then I'm gonna choose Live Stream.
And then down here,
I'm gonna choose Add a New Destination.
And I'm gonna choose Custom R-T-M-P.
Don't be intimidated by that
if you don't know what that is,
I don't know what it stands for either.
Just choose it in whatever your software is.
Like I said,
I'm using StreamYard.
And what we're gonna have to do is,
we're gonna have to give the information
that we want them to stream to,
and that is what Instagram was giving us on this page.
So it says Stream U-R-L.
I'm gonna copy that.
Come over here.
They call it the R-T-M-P Server U-R-L,
but same thing,
and we're gonna go ahead and paste that in.
And then they also need the Stream Key,
which is this other weird string of characters
that Instagram gives us.
I'm gonna copy that.
Come back over here.
Paste it in.
And then, you can give it a nickname.
This is just to kind of help you know what it is later.
So I'm gonna call it Instagram R-T-M-P.
Click Add R-T-M-P Server.
Now this is creating the livestream,
and there is a title box here.
And if you were streaming to YouTube, or Facebook,
or some of these other ones,
it would use the title,
but since you're just streaming
to this custom destination, as they call it,
which is that R-T-M-P thing,
whatever letter those orders are in.
The title doesn't really matter.
You can literally put in whatever if you want.
So we're gonna hit Create Broadcast.
On this screen,
StreamYard lets you make sure
you've got the right camera and microphone
and everything connected.
So you can just hit Enter Studio when you're ready.
And now I'm in the studio, as StreamYard calls it.
Your tool, if you're using something different,
might call it something else,
but here I am.
I'm not live yet,
but the next thing I'm gonna do,
is I'm gonna click Go Live,
but I'm still not gonna be live. Okay?
So don't get nervous
when you click this here in StreamYard.
Now a heads up,
if you are streaming in a tool like this,
or in StreamYard,
to multiple destinations,
so if I was going live to YouTube and LinkedIn, as well,
then I would go live on those other platforms.
So if you're trying to go live everywhere,
you just have to do this next part really quick.
I would definitely suggest doing just Instagram first,
so you can get a feel of for it.
So I'm here,
and I'm just going live on Instagram,
and I'm gonna go ahead and click Go Live.
There's a little standby screen there,
check your settings.
And now, this software, StreamYard,
is going to start streaming.
And now here, in Instagram,
we're seeing a preview of the stream.
We are not live on Instagram yet.
And by the way,
the reason my mouth
is not matching the words that you're hearing,
is because there is a slight delay
between when I start streaming,
and when it actually gets to Instagram.
So don't panic about that.
And, hopefully, don't get distracted by it.
I know it's weird when the sound doesn't sync up in a video.
Now when you click Go Live,
the blue letters
in the upper right corner of this pop-up window,
then you will go live on Instagram.
So let's go ahead and do that.
So I'm live here on Instagram testing this right now,
and for people that are coming in live,
I'm just doing a test going live on Instagram,
from my computer,
for a new tutorial that will be coming out here shortly.
But you can see, Rose hopped in there.
Hi, Rose.
And then it shows you how many people are watching
right there at the top,
your comments,
and then this other tab is the Event Log.
So it just kind of shows you status of things.
You know, when you started,
I assume if there are errors,
which I haven't run into yet,
it would show up there.
There's some other statistics down here
if you want to geek out over that.
But, this is what that looks like on your computer.
Now, I wanna show you what it looks like on the phone.
One thing you will notice,
is that over here in StreamYard,
I'm obviously on a webcam that's a wide screen webcam,
so, I've got all of this space,
but it gets cropped for Instagram.
And so when you're watching on this screen,
I am, you know, it's basically chopping off the side,
so I wanna stay in the middle.
This is what it looks like on Instagram
to somebody that's watching.
So obviously,
you can't see anything outside of just that center part.
You can't see anything
on either side of my head basically, right?
Because Instagram is a vertical format
when you are streaming live like this.
So back here in my streaming software,
obviously, it's got this big wide screen.
If I shared slides,
you know you can show slides and everything like that,
but anything you put on the screen,
even like some tools have like a banner tool,
you can add a banner at the bottom,
that will get cropped off
when you're streaming on Instagram.
So you just wanna keep everything in the center.
And then once you're done streaming,
all you have to do is click the End Live Video,
the red up here in the corner,
nice and easy to see.
Hit that.
And then it will, doesn't give you a prompt by the way.
It doesn't say, "Hey, are you sure?"
It just ends it.
So, when you're ready, hit that.
You can go back to your streaming software.
It may have its own place where you can end it, as well.
And that's it.
You're done with your Instagram Live.
Final step here,
it'll say,
"Hey, do you want to keep this video or discard it?"
If you want to download it,
you need to go to your Instagram app on your phone,
and go to your archive,
and you can download it there.
Otherwise, hit Discard Video.
It'll give you a prompt,
say, "Are you sure?"
I'm sure.
And just like that, it's gone.
And that is the basics
of how you stream to Instagram from your computer.
Like I said,
I'll link to a few different tools
you can use to connect to Instagram to do that.
That's how it works,
when it works.
If you're having trouble,
then definitely contact the company
that you're streaming to,
'cause I do not know all the platforms,
and nor am I tech support.
I do, I can tell you StreamYard has really good tech support
if you want to try them out.
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