Awesome Live Streaming Using Wirecast on Blab

one of the students asked for this so once i've finished the course i'm working on i'll get about doing this as soon as i can. i think this is a great question and i can step through my process pipeline for it.

in this video lecture i'll be quickly showing you around the interface of wirecast so you can jump straight into the program and get something up and running in around ten minutes. you'll be able to setup cameras and audio streams and even take a look at overlays. if you have never touched wirecast before you'll want to at least watch this from the course.

virtual camera out is the main way that you can capture all of the video output that wirecast creates. all of the switching of shots will be broadcast to blab. this the easy bit. but that's also when it stops being easy and you have to consider a number of things when broadcasting shots and content.

so you'll notice that on blab the broadcasting view of your stream is a square 4:3 - i tend to use wirecast in full hd mode with my cameras input at full hd (1920x1080) which is a 16:9 format so it cuts the sides of the output when you finally get on blab.

how to get a video with audio to play in your streaming show.

wirecast has some amazing features - one of the features is the playlist feature, it's absolutely brilliant. you can put things back to back and they play unattended. you can even jump into another playlist. you can time things and you can put any content you want in them. shots, video etc.

online web chats are difficult. latency, and the lagging you can get from issues with your internet connection can cause problems with your video chat. dropping frames and techno sounds audio from the people you are talking too. all the things that can effect your experience. i'll be talking about latency, what it is and how you can make sure that what you have is enough.

you might not realise it but your computer has all kinds of junk potentially installed that is 'polling' the internet for data. updaters, scanners, background processes and just general things that ping and shout out for information to the internet. all of these things can cause disruption to your live stream. might be an idea to shut down as much as that as possible when your doing any kind of online video chatting.

i got your back. i've got some tools for you to check out that connection of yours. see how it's doing, see what speeds your getting and how using these tools can help you over time get an idea of how good your connection is, peak times and other important stuff like it.

urls of some great tools to help with checking your connection, latency etc.

if you can be wired, always be wired. seriously. wireless brings together all kinds of problems. lots of other people over your network, interference, unpredictable situations. wired is so much better unless you have one of those new and fancy stupid fasted access points. check your router and make sure your the only ninja on the line!

i've used many sites over the last ten year to do live streaming. many die out, service is poor or just hanging on by a thread of a support team. i wish live web streaming services would have a package out the gate to maintain the service instead of the usual take money, burn rate approach. everyone gets excited about being able to do live streaming and then a few years later company sells out or the focus goes to another product leaving the community high and dry. let's work on changing that.

i've been a focused and committed community member to a number of services over the years. the script runs the same. i get interested, i help and promote, i take part. years later the company is acquired and on the majority the service is kept alive for a year and then either phased out or merged with another product without the original premise and offer of the original. as the community that helps build up the numbers of users that make these startups get attention of investment we need to also protect our collective community interest so that can travel once that happens. this is my suggestion how we might be able to achieve that. run with it. if you make a website SaaS to do this for all startups worldwide give me props.

it's great to get sent an email with your download links in for you to grab and process but having your content sent to an external location would be even better. i'd love for my audio sample to go to soundcloud (unlisted until i was ready to process it) and my video to go to a dropbox (for my editor to pick it up and work on it) when i'm on the ground at an event. i'm thinking that even services like transcribing would be useful as well.

i think blab has been doing a great job so far but we could do with some more powerful features to make regular shows a breeze. adding a voting system, timed boxes, dynamic polls and timed topics would be brilliant. also makes it easier when a new person joins a room if they can get at a glance an idea of where people are in a conversation. i realise that everyone doesn't want to to run a blab like that so maybe it can be a feature that is switched on. co-admins would be a nice feature as well. like moderators or admins for a regular blab show.

i wrote down a list of things i've done in the hope it might give you a bit of a background about me. i really hope you get a lot of value out of this course and i hope your excited for the next massive one about being a brand advocate.

using a number of social platforms we are constantly telling our day to day story of what it is like to be a digital creative working in the cloud. our group works together using our social reach to bring a lens on the projects we do and we often use micro crowdfunding to bring in donations for those projects. recently we have been using blab sessions as an online telethon approach so we can react in real time to those putting money in.

i made you a set of three full HD (1920x1080) wallpapers (for free) just drop your email into gumroad and off you go. all yours for free. unless you want to leave me a tip of course! :)