What's up fam, it's your boy, Kirk Nugent, the geek speaker, preacher,
and we're going to be chatting in this video about audio only
versus audio avatar. It's a battle for the ages, right?
This is one of those features that for me,
was a game changer when they first put it out.
But you kind of need to know where it is, how to activate it,
in what scenarios you would activate it, and,
and you know what the definitions are. So let's dive into all of those things.
Like all of the things in this video,
In terms of definitions, audio avatar. The definition of that, in my opinion,
Kirk's definition is a guest in StreamYard studio turns off their camera or
doesn't connect their camera at all,
so a placeholder called an avatar is displayed in place of their
camera. Visible audio waves are shown when that person is speaking, right?
So that is my definition of what an audio avatar is.
And I'm going to show you this in just a second in StreamYard. Audio only, the
way I would define audio only is when the audio avatar
option is unchecked, right? So your host goes into settings,
unchecks audio avatars,
any guests in the StreamYard studio in the broadcast whose camera is off,
or they didn't connect their camera, is not seen on screen at all,
but their audio, their voice can be heard in the broadcast.
This is referred to in the voiceover world as the voice of God.
We're not calling it that, okay, that's them in their world.
We're not calling it that. In this world and StreamYard world,
the feature is called audio only.
I'm going to show you exactly what that looks like right now.
So here we are on my desktop looking at StreamYard.
I've got four cameras in the system from different parts of my studio
here. And you can see uh, this is just me, right? And,
and then we can switch to the Pixelbook. We can switch to the Mac Mini.
We can switch to my webcam. And if I want, I can go back to this scene,
and this is generally speaking, let's say you had a four-person stream.
I'm trying to mimic that for you. And this is what it looks like. Okay.
So if I go and turn off my camera, just like this,
you'll see already that right there on the screen is an audio avatar.
Now I have uploaded my own little caricature,
my own little avatar into the system.
And you do that by clicking the three dots, click on edit audio avatar,
and you see that you can upload it right here, hit the plus sign of load,
whatever picture you want, go to town. And it's cool because again,
the audio avatar mode can be used in several instances.
If a guest has unstable Internet, this is a great way of cutting down.
The amount of bandwidth is going to be required because they're only in your
stream with audio only.
So having them turn off their camera and still have an avatar there,
but people can hear them and still kind of have a visible representation of when
they're speaking, you can see those waves going out from my avatar,
as I'm speaking, that is a great way to be able to do that.
Another thing of course,
we've been in this pandemic for awhile and everybody's had to turn off their
camera to deal with a child that's come in or something that,
so being able to turn off your camera and still be in the stream,
still be able to respond and interact with a little bit of privacy.
It can be critical.
So those are two of the ways that you would use audio avatar. Now,
if we go to a different scene, right,
I'm actually showing you a incoginto window where my webcam is added on this
same system , and so you're able to see here that again,
my camera is on, this is the camera here. If I turn that camera off,
you'll see that, that, that camera is now an audio avatar.
And this is what it looks like default, right?
I showed you one where I've added my own audio avatar. I'm showing you another,
this is how it looks as default. If you've never uploaded an audio avatar,
then this is how it will look for you as well. So,
and I'm just showing you here again,
how you would get in to be able to edit that.
So we've got two in the studio that have audio avatars,
two in the studio that don't,
I'm going to go back to our main StreamYard host view, right?
The host view where I'm at right now, and I'm going to go into settings.
There's a couple of ways you can get here. Settings is one,
and it's right here in the general tab, under settings, you have audio avatars.
The other way of getting here, just so you know,
you click on cam/mic and click on general. Now it is two clicks,
but cam/mic is closer. So, but you go to general and again, audio avatars.
If you uncheck this. All right, well, look,
let's just hover our mouse real quick and read,
show an avatar when users camera's off.
Uncheck this if you want users to be completely hidden when their camera is
off. So be sure uncheck it.
Users are hidden when their cameras are off, keep it checked,
audio avatars are displayed when their cameras are off,
but either way camera is off, right? So I've unchecked it.
And you can see here right at the top,
you and one other are in the stream with audio only. This is audio only mode.
So you still have four people in the stream, right?
If you're looking here at the bottom,
you can see there's four people in the stream,
but two of them have their cameras off and they're still in the stream with
audio only. And this is useful for, let's say a producer like myself.
And this is one of the reasons why I was so excited about this feature who needs
to speak to the guest, right? On-screen talent.
You want to say something to them? Let's say they're muted.
They've just come out of your intro video,
they're full screen and they're talking, they're animated,
but nobody can hear them. They don't know that they're on mute.
You cannot unmute them as the host.
Just being able to add yourself to the stream with your camera off,
and you make sure you uncheck audio avatars.
You can come in without disturbing the scene and just say very softly
you're muted.
I've done this multiple times and that will allow them to just unmute
themselves. Or if you need to get a message to someone on screen,
and they're just not checking the private chat, this is one of the ways,
another way that you can use this audio only mode is as host narration.
If you want people on screen to be able to be interacting,
and you have a host who is not on screen,
you want them to be able to speak and narrate something,
that could be used as well.
Another way to use this could be for playing background music.
You want the audio in the stream, but you don't want the camera in the stream.
Let's say you find a way to do that. And you guys are very creative.
I'm certain, you will figure out those ways. In fact, if you want,
you can check out the Loopback video that StreamYard has,
and you can use that actual method to be able to bring in music.
But if you want,
you can bring in audio with one person that's in the studio and
have their camera off, but still have them added to the broadcast.
And in that way, the audio is being heard.
But no one's seeing that person.
So that's three different ways that you can use audio only.
And I'm interested to hear what you guys are going to do with it and how you
might use this feature in the comments. So leave a comment below.
So there you have it.
That is the audio only versus audio avatars
discussion or challenge or battle.
I'm hoping that you found some value in this video.
I'm excited about being able to share content like this on the StreamYard
channel.
It is amazing the lengths to which they are going to not only give us this
platform, but also give us tools, tips, tricks, techniques,
to be able to level up for us all,
to be able to use this in the best way possible. Again,
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Kirk Nugent, the geek speaker preacher.
I'm excited about this partnership with StreamYard,
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