Zoom and YouTube streaming set-up for performances
Over the past few weeks due to the Covid-19 crisis, a regular performance night that would normally occur weekly at a local venue has moved to performing and streaming online. There was some desire from the community involved to want to keep going with these regular performance nights in an online format, so I started to investigate what the best options would be. At first I thought that something like zoom would not really be appropriate due to audio quality, the inability to control latency, and the high demand from using video etc, However after a discussion with Sarah Weaver (a leader in the network performance community around the world), she suggested that most people were moving towards Zoom in the present climate, as it was the most accessible and easiest to use for people as some of the more specific applications used in network performance require a bit more set up and could inhibit having a range of people perform.
After this discussion, and with her suggestions we have settled on using a combination of Zoom, OBS, and YouTube (I will go into more detail about all of these applications and platforms in another post). Although zoom is not ideal, something I will elaborate on (I will list my observations of pros and cons with this set up in my next blog entry), it does provide the accessibility across the community that makes it easy for everybody who wants to to be involved. Zoom does have some sound settings that help the quality of the sound, I will also go into those in my next blog, but this does not solve some of the issues we have discovered.
We have kept the regular day and time slot of every Monday at 8 pm (NZ standard Time).
My role is to coordinate performers, coordinate them to get connected to perform in the zoom environment together, and then connect the zoom meeting to all the software applications on the evening to create the live stream. I also introduced the performers, as currently it is easiest for me to do so.
Below is a diagram showing the set up I am using. It shows that the performers connect on Zoom, the sound from that is 'soft patched' into logic, where my microphone input is also coming in. This audio is then sent to a scene in the OBS, which mixes that audio with the video from zoom on my desktop on a second monitor. OBS then streams this scene to YouTube when I am ready to fade across to it.
After this discussion, and with her suggestions we have settled on using a combination of Zoom, OBS, and YouTube (I will go into more detail about all of these applications and platforms in another post). Although zoom is not ideal, something I will elaborate on (I will list my observations of pros and cons with this set up in my next blog entry), it does provide the accessibility across the community that makes it easy for everybody who wants to to be involved. Zoom does have some sound settings that help the quality of the sound, I will also go into those in my next blog, but this does not solve some of the issues we have discovered.
We have kept the regular day and time slot of every Monday at 8 pm (NZ standard Time).
My role is to coordinate performers, coordinate them to get connected to perform in the zoom environment together, and then connect the zoom meeting to all the software applications on the evening to create the live stream. I also introduced the performers, as currently it is easiest for me to do so.
Below is a diagram showing the set up I am using. It shows that the performers connect on Zoom, the sound from that is 'soft patched' into logic, where my microphone input is also coming in. This audio is then sent to a scene in the OBS, which mixes that audio with the video from zoom on my desktop on a second monitor. OBS then streams this scene to YouTube when I am ready to fade across to it.
Below is a link to the YouTube channel. You can navigate through the performancs and see for yourself how it evolved. The adding of scenes, and being able to cross fade from one to the other in OBS creates a way to work behind the scenes with the performers, yet have something still streaming while we got ready. This in my mind has been invaluable to creating two separate spaces before the performance. One where the performers connect and get ready, and the other where the streaming takes place to an online audience.
This means the audience don't have to sit through the musicians and administrator getting set up and ready to perform. It also means if there are any technical issues that need to be addressed, and we need to start late, we can keep something streaming and even fade to a scene informing that we have a slight technical issue, and will be performing as soon as possible
This means the audience don't have to sit through the musicians and administrator getting set up and ready to perform. It also means if there are any technical issues that need to be addressed, and we need to start late, we can keep something streaming and even fade to a scene informing that we have a slight technical issue, and will be performing as soon as possible
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You will notice that in the later streaming performances there is crowd noise at the beginning, and music in between the two sets. This was to help create an ambience similar to that of being at a venue, and gave us the chance to work on any technical issues behind the scenes, yet still have some ambience with a live stream happening at the scheduled time
In the next blog, I will go into the observations around developing and using this system. And elaborate on the pros and cons, what works and what has not worked so well