Hey there it's Mel here.
I've got a really fun and creative way for you to bring some extra engagement to
your live streams using custom overlays inside StreamYard.
Now you may be aware that you can upload transparent PNG files to add a little
extra branding to your live videos, but did you know that you can also upload
an animated GIF file even better,
an animated GIF of yourself? Let's dive in. Now, I'm going
to show you how to create one of these,
but first let's make sure we all know what the heck I'm talking about.
So here we are inside of the StreamYard Studio, and
here's what an overlay looks like.
So you ca n create your own custom overlays using whatever design tools you want
to use and upload a transparent PNG file. Here's an example of a custom one.
Here's another one, right?
But you can also upload animated GIF files as long
as they're below three megabytes. So I always say,
why not add a little extra you into your streams?
So here's an example of what I'm talking about.
When I say add a custom animated GIF of yourself.
There, I am looking a little bit confused. So this
is a great way to add extra engagement,
but also add a little custom excitement to your streams that will be
unforgettable for your audience.
So now let me show you how you can create your very own custom animated,
transparent GIF of yourself. Now, before we go too much further,
I want to make sure that you understand that the process I'm going to show you
is very much for the DIYer.
You can absolutely hire somebody to do this for you or use the high-end Adobe
creative suite products to actually do this as well.
But I'm going to show you how to do this in some very simple apps,
such as Canva and Unscreen to create your transparent GIF file.
Now really quick.
One of the things that you're going to want to do is when you record your video,
try to make it so that the beginning of your animation is similar to
the end of your animation,
because these are going to be played on loop and you aren't going to get it
perfect, but you can get it pretty close. So you see here,
I'm starting out in one position and then at the end of my video,
it pretty much ends in the same position.
And that's ideally what we're going for. Now.
You're going to be able to trim your video,
so the beginning and the end of it out,
but just make sure that you are trying to accomplish this particular type of
scene.
Alright, now that we have your video,
now let's talk about using Canva and Unscreen Pro to create the
layout file,
as well as remove the background from your final animated GIF and uploading it
into StreamYard.
Okay. So we're in Canva because that's just the application that I use,
but you could use any video creation application essentially to do this.
So I'm in a video, uh, design,
the dimensions are 1280 by 720,
and we're going to go to my uploads where I have uploaded my project that I want
to have, which is me looking confused.
So I'm actually going to put this in the location that I want,
which is going to be for me in this lower right-hand corner.
That's just kind of where I like to have my personal GIFs show up. Uh,
obviously as you know,
you want to leave a little margin at the bottom for banners and such.
So here's my file. Here is my video. Now watch,
I start out, I'm going to trim this video because I want it to,
it's going to be on loop.
And so I want to make sure the beginning and the end are as closely matched as
possible. And so I'm actually going to trim this video right now.
So I'm going to trim out.
I love canvas because it actually gives me a little bit of a preview where I'm
trimming. I'm going to go right to where I'm looking to the left, right there,
because that's what I look like.
That's kinda what I look like in the beginning of this video clip.
So that's what we're gonna do is we're gonna say done. We're good.
I'm actually going to export this video as an MP4,
and then I'm going to go to Unscreen and I'll show you how to make it an actual
GIF. Now we're over here in this application called Unscreen.
Now this application has its imperfections,
but you definitely want to be on the paid plan in order to create the type of
files that we need. So we're going to upload our video that we just created,
and we're going to let it do its magic.
It tends to take a few minutes sometimes, and it's going to give us a preview.
Now the preview is really important because as I mentioned,
this application is not perfect.
And sometimes the removal of the background is not correct.
So we're going to watch this preview a little bit.
This file looks like it did it correctly because you don't pay for the file or
you're not,
I guess it doesn't go against your credits until you actually process it. Now,
one thing I want to point out here is it's showing us the original and I want a
transparent background. However,
you can also use the application to pick an image in the back a video.
This is great for other types of social media uses,
but for the use that we're using, we want to pull this into our stream.
And so now we're just going to process the file.
And so we're going to click next and it's going to give us some options about
how we want to download it. We want an animated GIF.
We want that to be a GIF because that's how we're going to be able to upload it
into StreamYard as a transparent file,
which is exactly what we're going to show you next. And now, as you can see,
the file has processed. Now it does take a little bit of time sometimes,
but as you can see here, we get a preview,
an actual preview of the final file and it looks like we're good to go. Now,
one thing I want to point out is this file has processed at 3.3 megabytes.
So sometimes your file size will actually increase through all of the stuff
that's happening.
I have a little bit of a trick for us to downsize that file because StreamYard
will not let us upload at this time a file that is over three megabytes
for a GIF. Now we're going to download this file. We're going to save it.
And then I'm going to show you how a little trick on getting that resolution
down. If you don't have a video optimizer that will do it for you.
So we're going to download our file and save it
to our desktop.
So next I'm actually going to go to Giphy and I'm going to
upload my file that I just created. And so we're going to select that file.
It's actually this one, there's our file. And we're going to go ahead and say,
yep, we're good to go. We like it. We're going to upload that to Giphy,
which is going to make it available for yourself, but also to others,
depending on your account of course. So once this file is here,
we're going to keep it. Okay.
So now our animated file is in our account.
We're going to go right here to media,
and then it's going to let you download your actual source file,
which we don't need to do that because we already have it on our computer.
However, if we look at the social one,
it actually is going to be a bit optimized. You can see here.
There's one that's even smaller. This typically res's it way down,
just depending on the actual original file that you're working with.
I like to try social first to see if I can get it under three megabytes. Uh,
if that doesn't work, then I sometimes will go to the small.
So then you just click download here and we're going to download again.
I'm just going to honestly save over my original because I don't need it.
And we're going to have that file.
Now we're going to check that file size and it looks like it is perfect.
It's only, it's not even a megabyte, so we're good to go.
So the next step is you're going to upload this to StreamYard and put it in your
stream. And now here we are in StreamYard where we're going to add this animated
GIF file or GIF file to our overlays. We're going to upload the overlay,
pick it right here. We're going to upload it, let it, it takes a few seconds.
Again, the file has to process.
So you want to make sure you prepare these in advance,
not right before you get ready to go live. Okay?
Our animation has now been added and here's what it looks like on screen.
And this is going to loop. So it's always going to loop until you turn it off.
And so that's one of the reasons why it's important to try to create your
animation. The beginning of your animation,
you should have the similar look on your face in a similar position as the end
of your animation. Now I have a couple of other ones that I use all the time.
They're really fun. They're not quite like that.
Like this one little me dancing around,
And those are fun and these add so much engagement and so that's how you create
your own personalized GIF that you can add to your stream. There you have it,
now you know how to go DIY and create your own animated
transparent GIF
file of yourself to add into StreamYard for your streams. Now,
sometimes people say, well, what should I, what should I do? What ideas,
how do I get ideas? Honestly,
I would recommend you pay attention to some of the GIF files that show up when
you're using them on social media and replicate some of them as you saw the
mind-blowing one.
That is one that I simply replicated and just use myself and make my own.
So go get some ideas, be creative, write down a list and then have a day,
pick a day and have a lot of fun and create some transparent GIF files so you
can get more engagement for your streams.