- Live streaming is a great way to have fun
and connect with your community,
but setting up a live stream that looks and sounds great
can be a little tricky.
(upbeat music)
- My name is Tom, this is the Enthusiasm Project.
And today I'm gonna walk you
through how we set up our live stream from start to finish,
because I've started streaming more on my channel
and my wife, Heather and I,
who she is filming this by the way,
do a weekly live stream podcast on her channel as well.
So I think we've got our system dialed in pretty well.
And now you can see why we're the live stream dream team.
We do most of our live streams here at my desk in the room
that I normally do everything.
The live streams are a little more cluttered
than a regular video
because everything is running all at once.
I do use my MacBook Pro to run the streams
and I do keep it closed just to save some space.
I have it connected to this external display over here.
If I didn't have this, I would just have the MacBook open.
The MacBook is plugged into power
because you gotta make sure the computer is having power
for the whole duration of the stream.
And then the camera that I use is actually not this camera,
but that camera,
which is the EOS R and the Sigma 24 millimeter 1.4,
as many of you know that's my camera and lens of choice
because I love them.
I use that camera for streaming because it looks great,
it has clean HDMI out and has terrific autofocus
so we just stay in focus,
we don't have to think about it the whole time,
because there's no one behind the camera.
For the sake of the setup though,
I'm gonna use the 6D with a different lens,
just as kind of an example.
The tripod setup is the edelkrone SliderONE
with the edelkrone HeadONE and then a Manfrotto tripod head.
And the camera just goes right on top of there.
And then typically what I actually do is open up the closet
and put the camera kind of back a little bit.
It gets a direct head-on shot of us sitting behind the desk.
And there's usually my chair and Heather's chair.
So it kinda gets cramped.
And then also our golden retrievers under the desk.
And usually our puppy is over here in his crate.
So it's really cramped when we're doing our live streams.
Obviously I have to use an adapter for the MacBook,
and that's just where the Cam Link 4K goes in.
This is really the heart of a live stream
'cause it's what takes the signal from the camera
and puts it into the computer.
And then we just use an HDMI cord to connect.
It's got full-size HDMI on one side,
and for the EOS R,
it has a mini HDMI connector on the other side.
Now the reason that we use the SliderOne and the HeadONE
is because we don't have a camera operator
and we realized there's a way
to add a little bit of dynamic movement to a live stream,
even though there's no one behind the camera.
Both of these things are app-controlled.
So all I have to do is connect the batteries,
which are the exact same batteries that my cameras take.
So this whole setup uses the same battery
and the same charger.
There's one battery for the slider,
one battery for the tripod head,
and it all gets connected through the app.
The app automatically detects
which Edelkrone components I have
and then gives me panning and tilting options.
So what I do
is set the camera where I want at this end,
marking that as a key pose,
move the camera to the other side,
where basically the camera's just going back and forth,
but it's staying focused on us
in the center of the frame.
And then I set that as key pose number two,
and then all I need to do once I have these two poses
is I don't have the speed too fast.
I just tap them both at the same time.
And now as long as my phone is just on over there,
the camera and the slider
will just keep going back and forth
until the batteries run out,
which we've never even had the batteries come close
to running out during a live stream.
And that's pretty much our whole camera setup.
But as you know, audio is half a video.
So what on earth do we do for audio?
I can't imagine what device I would use
for a live stream with audio.
Oh, wait, it's the RODECaster.
So you got the RODECaster and the two PodMics,
which by the way, Rode did send me this,
which is probably the coolest thing
I've ever gotten for free.
It's a pin that says the RODECaster Pro.
This is like one of my favorite possessions, pin sessions.
So then we just plug in the power to the RODECaster.
Of course, you could always just use a USB mic,
like a Yeti or something for a live stream,
which Heather and I have done a lot.
But since we also do record our live stream
and put it up as a podcast, the RODECaster just makes sense.
I did get these windscreens for my PodMics,
which are the Rode WS2 and they fit great.
They actually do improve the sound quality.
They just don't look as cool.
(chuckles)
So half the time we end up using them like this,
'cause these just look better on screen.
And then the other half kind of just depending
on the mood we're in, we use the windscreen.
Then we got cables.
I did go on Amazon and buy specific XLR cables.
Heather's hair color is purple.
So hers is purple to her mic.
My favorite color is blue.
So of course, my cable is blue.
And the different colors
actually do look really cool on camera.
It seems like a small detail,
but the number of people we've had comment on our cables
is kind of ridiculous.
So get some color cables, they really do make a difference.
Our lighting setup really doesn't change
for my normal videos or the studio tour video
that we did a while ago.
We've got the FalconEyes key light, that stays there.
We've got the Dracast fill light over there.
And then I did get
this little Intellytech Pocket Cannon Mini
as our backlight and our hair light.
And that has a soft box on it.
So those are our main lights.
And then there's little accent lights throughout.
That really hasn't changed since the studio tour video,
which you haven't seen that.
Check that out and it'll kinda tell you everything
that's in this room beyond just live streaming.
If we wanna play audio from the computer,
we need a TRS cable.
So this plugs into the smartphone channel of the RODECaster,
and then into the headphone jack of the MacBook.
And now I can bring in sounds from the MacBook
into the RODECaster.
And then also I use this little tiny speaker
plugged into one of the headphone monitoring outputs,
and this is turned down usually very low.
So if we get something like a super chat
or somebody makes a joke and we wanna make a sound effect,
we can hear the sound effects
and things that are happening
without it interfering with the recording.
Usually I do have my headphones plugged into the RODECaster
and sometimes I'll wear them during the stream to monitor.
And sometimes I kind of just check
and then keep them under the desk.
So we do have ways to monitor our audio.
It's just, we'd like to just have conversations
and keep things natural.
So, paying attention to monitoring all this stuff.
I know that's the technically correct way to do it,
but it's not always the most conducive way
to an organic conversation.
And that's really what we wanna do.
We wanna talk to each other during our streams.
We wanna talk to people who are watching the streams,
and we want that to be the priority
over making sure every level is perfect at every second.
Once we have all this set up,
the software that I used to stream used to be OBS,
which is great and it's free,
but it can be a little complicated and a little clunky.
And I was finding myself getting bogged down
in all of the settings to get the stream,
to look the way that I wanted it,
that it just kinda became a burden.
And so Heather introduced me to StreamYard.
This is not an ad but StreamYard is terrific.
It's really simple.
So once everything is hooked up,
all I have to do is set up my stream,
which you just click add a new stream.
You can select which camera you wanna use.
I just select Cam Link and then audio.
Oh, got to plug in the RODECaster.
So I just use a USB-C cable.
I knew there was an extra port here that wasn't being used.
And I was like, hmm, what's that for?
It's for the RODECaster .
So plug it in
and now you can see how plug and play it actually is
'cause it does show up immediately, RODECaster a mic.
I can see that these mics are getting inputs.
And then speaker, we'll just do the headphones.
And then there we go, we're all set.
on our camera right now, since I'm using the 6D,
which I don't normally, it has all the info on screen.
6D doesn't have clean HDMI out.
And then we enter our broadcast studio.
From there, we're just a source in the bottom.
I click to add it to the stream
and then we pop up right here.
And then if I,
there we go.
And then I'm here and I'm ready to stream
and I can talk into the mic
and then I can be like, hey, Heather, how are you doing?
And she'll be like, I'm doing super great.
You're the best has been in the world.
I'm like, thanks for listening, that's our show.
And then from this point of view,
you can actually see the movement of this camera
sort of just adding in a little bit of parallax,
adding in a little visual interest
if we're streaming for one, one and 1/2, two hours.
It's nice not to just have the camera in one spot.
Sometimes, though I should also mention,
Heather usually has her laptop open
and she's logged into StreamYard just wirelessly.
And she's usually the one who's moderating all the comments
and handling that
because one of the best things about StreamYard
is when there are comments,
you can click the comment
and it will pop up on screen just like this,
with the person's avatar and their name.
It's a great way to just be interactive.
I had no easy way of just doing it that freely within OBS.
And then you click the comment again and it disappears.
There are other options besides StreamYard,
but it really has been working great for us.
And we haven't done this yet,
but the way that we added ourselves down here in the bottom,
you can get 10 other people or nine other people,
maybe 10 total.
You can give them a link almost like a Zoom meeting,
and then they will pop up here and you can add them
and like split screen and all these different shots
and ways of incorporating other people live
into your stream.
I think that is really cool
and we're excited to play with that a bit more
in the future.
So this is pretty much everything for our stream.
It works really well for us.
It sort of seems complicated
when you see this whole mess of cables here,
but it's not too complex when you break it down
and piece by piece understand that it's really quite simple.
It gives us great results.
Oh, the last thing I forgot to mention though,
we do actually hit record on the RODECaster
during our live stream.
So even though we don't need to,
because it's just working as an interface,
this is now recording the high quality audio.
And then afterwards we take that and upload it as a podcast,
the Couple's Table, on all podcast platforms
where people can download and listen
at that super high quality
that doesn't sound like it was just ripped
from a download off the Internet.
So that is one way that we use this setup
to essentially create two pieces of content
from one amount of work, from one instance of working.
And ultimately, most importantly,
the whole reason, like I said,
that you're doing a live stream in the first place
is to interact with and engage
and connect with your community.
And this setup lets us do that really well.
And that's the most important thing
is to have those conversations,
build that sense of belonging
and have a lot of fun while you do it along the way.
And hey, Heather,
do you know why the ghost couldn't get his Twitch channel
off the ground?
- [Heather] No.
- Because it was for live streaming only.
I need to come up with a joke
'cause I can be like, oh, hey, Heather,
did you know like there's something about a live stream?
Where do you find a,
why couldn't the skeleton be on Twitch?
Because it was a live stream or the ghost,
like why can't the ghost
get his Twitch audience off the ground?
Because it was for live streaming only.
Something like that, that's a good one, that's okay.