As you may or may not know; my live streams on the streaming channel are pretty much a Patreon perk. I usually don't particularly like doing it when I'm doing it, but I'm usually happy I did it when it's done.
You also may have noticed that it's been a technical disaster for a whopping 200 episodes now. π But it's not for lack of effort!
What I really want to do is, at least twice a month, have streams that could be edited into the format of my older Benn And Gear videos, but with the added benefit of the community. Simple enough, right? All I need is an additional camera, a table, and some audio inputs. Wrong. Things I've tried that were...well...dumpster fires.Atem Mini ProThis was my first foray into multicam setups. Blackmagic Design went hard into creator-stuff during the pandemic and sent me one for free. It's absurdly powerful for the money, but the process of actually using it while streaming is a bit of a nightmare. A lot of the setting changes, even simple ones, require logging in via LAN, which is always a hit or miss. It's very Japanese, which should make sense to anyone who has worked for/with the likes of Yamaha or Kawaii. I promise I'm not being racist, it's just a different set of UI design principles. Maybe I am being racist. Roland SR-20HDI didn't expect amazing video features from Roland's video mixers, as they're typically made for worship and more formal streams. What I did expect was solid audio performance and quality. Welp. I've tried a whole lot of mixers in my day, from one-of-kind vintage Neve boards valued in real estate numbers to $20 mixers I got on Amazon Vine. And I'm pleased to announce that the Roland SR-20HD is the noisiest mixer I've ever used. It also doesn't output video directly to PC and would require running a 3rd party server to transcode to OBS. FFS!Yolobox ProThe Yolobox(es) are like thick Android tablets that are meant to do one thing: Stream video. They do a LOT and have loads of capture inputs and options. If you search for one, you'll find a bunch of YouTubers raving about how incredible they are. Late last year I took the bait, and while the box is alright. The features are legit, but the video animations and output can be choppy at times. The nightmare is the actual streaming part. If you want to use the majority of the features, you'll have to subscribe to YoloLive, which feels like a UI prototype where nothing seems to work as intended. What's worse, is you have to buy a license to try specific things that are included with the product (like network streaming protocols).
4th time is a charm! I've ordered a MINISFORUM Venus UM790 Pro Mini PC with an AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS. That's a fancy way of saying "mini gaming PC". I've also ordered a multi HDMI capture card, and an Elgato Streamdeck Mini. All of the audio will run through a trusty old Mackie 1402 outputting into a simple line-in input. The stream will be broadcast from OBS into Restream, which will send it to YouTube, Twitch, and maybe Kick or something. This should cost me something like $30/mo unless I find that Restream has one essential feature behind a $100/mo paywall or something (this is common for these services). The idea, of course, is to spend a few minutes setting up, then be able to focus on the audio hardware device and audience rather than laying defeated on the floor covered in cables, which is how most of my previous hardware streams went. I guess I just wanted to let y'all know how the streams are going, why they're not great, and what I'm going to try to do to make them great. They're basically THE Patreon perk when it comes to time and investment from me, and the goal is to pump out audio content on the side-channel, hire an editor, and keep it real with the music production stuff!
I will try #200 again. In the meantime, you can listen to me complain about streaming and talk about NAMM here: https://youtube.com/live/t0mYCh6Nu-Q?feature=share