In this video I’m going to show you how to connect multiple different streaming chat
rooms in to one easy to use program.
This will include Twitch, YouTube Gaming, Hitbox, BeamPro and more.
We’re also going to add this chat into OBS Studio for our viewers to see.
Let’s get right into it.
Arguably the most important part of being a streamer is interacting with your viewers
in some form.
In my latest video I showed how to stream to multiple platforms at the same time - so
let’s take time and see how to combine all of our chat rooms into one place, so that
we can easily interact with viewers across multiple platforms.
To strart we can head to Restream.io/chat - the link will be in the description.
We can see a brief preview of how our chat will look - where it shows the icon for the
platform our viewers are chatting on, their nickname, a timestamp, and the message.
By the way, all of this can be customized as well.
Let’s go ahead and download and install this program just like any other.
Before we actually launch this app - I’m going to go back to Restream.io and login
to my account.
Once I’m in, I’m going to make sure the channels I want to connect in chat are added
inside of my Restream dashboard.
If you need more help on how to do this, make sure to watch my last video about setting
up your account.
Anyways, let’s go ahead and launch the program, and login to our Restream account.
You might not see much, but let me walk you through its interface.
First, in the top left we’ll see an icon that shows how many services we’re connected
to, as well as how many people are in all the rooms.
If we click this area on the top left, it will show and hide our services - as well
as give us a better break down of what all is connected.
You can also clear history in the bottom left.
You’ll notice that some services show “read-only” - this is because the program is not able
to send chat messages to these services.
However, the other ones that show Online can have messages from our Account sent to the
chat rooms.
I’ll hide this section and show you more about how we can send messages.
First, I’ll just type a message to myself in my own Twitch and Hitbox chat , to show
you that things are connected.
Again, you’ll see the icons that represent where the message is from.
Already, I think this program is pretty awesome, but there’s much more.
At the bottom, there’s a dropdown and an area to “Write to chat…”.
This is where we can enter commands to various platforms.
If you click the drop down you’ll also be shown different channels that you can specify
your message to go to.
This will also filter your chat messages for each service, in case you want to check out
what’s happening on just Twitch, just YouTube, etc.
Leaving it on the all chats option will attempt to broadcast your message to any services
that are not marked as read only.
So far, I hope you’ll see how easy it is to communicate with your various users - but
it might be confusing to some if you’re streaming in one place and talking to another.
So, let’s go into the settings and I’ll show you in just a second how to add this
window into OBS Studio the right way.
First, we can check out the general settings - we can see some options here, but I want
to make sure that Force chat autoscroll is enabled.
Next, we have Chat Accounts - this allows us to double check which accounts are connected
- as I mentioned it will sync with our settings in our Restream dashboard, but if you’re
having issues with a chat room, you can always try to reconnect here.
Chat filters allow you to specify any words you’d liked not shown in either the app
window or the web UI.
Put the words you want to filter, separated by a comma, and enable both of these options.
One small quirk about the programs, is that it is space sensitive.
Meaning after the comma, don’t use a space - or else it might not filter out the words
you put.
In the window section we can disable “Always on top” if we’d like, as well as Enable
Window Background Transparency.
You can play around with the sliders for a look that you prefer.
For fonts, you can only specify sizes and visibility of each item - so hopefully they
add a bit more to this in the near future.
I’d love to add my own custom fonts and colors here.
Next is notifications, basically we can set a sound that’s played when we have a new
message, or a sound that plays when our nickname is mentioned.
I think it could be a bit annoying for all messages to have a sound - but I could definitely
see some use for the second option here… especially in busier chats.
With all those set up, we’re finally at the sections that allow us to add this chat
system into OBS Studio.
There’s 2 different ways to do this and they’re very easy!
Let’s start with the easiest way - Save Chat To Image.
After you enable the option, we can select where this image saves to.
You can see that this will be in my pictures folder with the name RestreamChat.png - this
seems fine to me, so I’ll hit save and open up OBS Studio.
In OBS I’ll simply add in an image source and browse to where that image is saved.
I’ll select it, and that’s pretty much it.
If you don’t see anything yet, it’s because a new image only generates when a chat message
is shown, so you might not have an image generated since you just installed this app.
Go ahead and type something into one of your chat rooms and you should see the image appear!
Feel free to use OBS Studio filters and cropping to further customize as needed.
I also recommend typing out a lot of lines slowly to see how everything looks and reacts.
Remember, you can change the font size and window appearance in the settings as well.
The second way we can add this into OBS Studio is through the Web Server.
If this is enabled you can go to the address localhost - colon - and then the port number
you have entered, in this case 8080.
You can change the port number if you need to, but hopefully this doesn’t cause you
any issues.
So, if I go to localhost:8080 in my browser, I should see some chat history, since I had
this enabled from the start.
If yours wasn’t enabled, you will need to type a few messages for something to show.
Let’s go ahead and copy this url and go to OBS Studio.
I’m going to add a browser source, specify a width and height, and hit Okay to add it
in.
I’ll now see my chat logs inside of OBS studio as a browser source.
If you know CSS, you can even override the CSS in the source properties to further customize
the appearance.
This is my preferred method, since I know CSS - but I still think the Image Source is
pretty great.
Okay, let’s go through the last options of these settings before we finish up this
video - which is to save chat to a file.
Basically, this option allows you to save your chat history to text files.
You can simply enable it, select the files where to save, and if you want a general log
and daily logs.
Basically, this will save different chat files for you that contains everything people say
in your different chat rooms.
The Restream account tab only allows us to logout and the About tab shows us the version
we’re using.
With that, you should know everything you’d need to, to properly communicate to your viewers
across many different streaming platforms.
I’m a huge fan of this program, and Restream in general, and I can’t wait to see how
it improves in the future.
As I mentioned, according to Restream’s Twitter, there will be a new way to add chat
into OBS soon, so keep an eye out for a video that walks you through the new process.
If you have any questions about this video, please leave them in the comments below.
If you liked the video, give it a like, and if you’d like to see more great streaming
and video game related content make sure to subscribe to Nerd or Die.
Thanks for watching.