Setting Up a Twitch Feed in Utah/Denver?

[mrnoble]

Some of the media students on our team are considering running a live feed on Twitch when we compete in Utah next week. Having never done anything like this before, I am interested in finding out the logistics.

• [/
• Is it even allowed? Are there restrictions (such as access to the internet through wifi) that would completely eliminate this possibility?
• If allowed, what equipment will we need to bring?
• What is the process for setting up a Twitch feed? Is it cumbersome? Expensive?

Anyway, any possible knowledge you have and can share would be most appreciated. Thanks!

[EricH]

First thing to do is to talk to the Regional Director and the Regional Planning Committee. If they don't have a webcast group already, they'll probably be all over your request. They will also know who to talk to and what sort of input from the field you can get. If they do have a webcast group, they'll point you to them (hopefully); talk with that group.

[mrnoble]

Will do. I just talked to the Colorado director and will email Utah. Thanks!

[Jay1986]

As for the twitch side of things, I would recommend learning OBS for streaming to twitch. You can photoshop your own overlays and update scenes during the broadcast.

Here is a guide for OBS on twitch:
http://help.twitch.tv/customer/porta...aster-software

[Sperkowsky]

Are you saying a twitch feed as in a camera up in the stands if so. It's illegal. In order to connect to the Internet you would need a hotshot and even then you need a crap ton of bandwidth for a twitch stream. Along with twitch shutting down audio due to copy righted songs (bound to be played). If there's no webcast team already they might let you break a few rules but I still think it's a bigger pain then it is worth.

[Jay1986]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Are you saying a twitch feed as in a camera up in the stands if so. It's illegal. In order to connect to the Internet you would need a hotshot and even then you need a crap ton of bandwidth for a twitch stream. Along with twitch shutting down audio due to copy righted songs (bound to be played). If there's no webcast team already they might let you break a few rules but I still think it's a bigger pain then it is worth.

Idk, in 2013 at Hub City we ran our own stream off a Hotspot and it seemed to work perfectly fine. You can tune the quality of your stream so it doesn't take much bandwidth and doesn't disrupt the quality that bad. Of course we had to go through all the same troubles of dealing with the FTA and allowing us to run the stream.

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by Jay1986

As for the twitch side of things, I would recommend learning OBS for streaming to twitch. You can photoshop your own overlays and update scenes during the broadcast.

Here is a guide for OBS on twitch:
http://help.twitch.tv/customer/porta...aster-software

Second OBS. Twitch is relatively simple to use as well, especially once you hook up the stream code to your software and setup your channel, you don't have to do a whole lot on the site itself.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Are you saying a twitch feed as in a camera up in the stands if so. It's illegal. In order to connect to the Internet you would need a hotshot and even then you need a crap ton of bandwidth for a twitch stream.

You like watching webcasts, no?

So then, let me ask you a simple question. How do YOU think those webcasts are produced?

Spoiler for Further Hints:

Hint #1: FIRST doesn't run them.
Hint #2: Smart teams talk to RDs, FTAs, and the "men in black" (A/V crew).
Hint #3: You're doing this WITH permission, good luck trying to argue it's illegal if you work WITH the crew previously mentioned.

[StevenB]

• Definitely allowed. But as others have said, talk with the regional coordinators, since they're the ones who will give you permission to set up next to the field and tap of the big screen display. They're also the ones who can give you a fast wired internet connection.
• Equipment: The easiest solution is to get a USB composite video dongle, such as this one (I've used this super-cheap one successfully on Linux, but YMMV on Windows 7/8). Then you just need a laptop that's at least kind of modern. My 7-year old machine struggles a bit, but anything newer than that should be fine.
  
  For better quality, you'll need an HDMI video capture device, which tend to cost about $200. I've used a Black Magic Design Intensity Pro with good results. You'll also need a much more powerful PC; I had an 8-core AMD something-something from a couple years ago and it was churning pretty hard.
  
  Talk to the AV people, I've usually found they're not talkative and are kind of doing their own thing, but are friendly enough and are happy to help give you the feed in the format you need.
  
• Twitch setup: It's quite easy - less than an hour of setup if you've never done it before (and aren't too unlucky). Basically you sign up, find your "stream key" from your profile, and then configure OBS or whatever software you're using (I've used ffmpeg/avconv) to broadcast with that stream key.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by EricH

You like watching webcasts, no?

So then, let me ask you a simple question. How do YOU think those webcasts are produced?

Spoiler for Further Hints:

Hint #1: FIRST doesn't run them.
Hint #2: Smart teams talk to RDs, FTAs, and the "men in black" (A/V crew).
Hint #3: You're doing this WITH permission, good luck trying to argue it's illegal if you work WITH the crew previously mentioned.

I meant setting up the hotspot is illegal. In the NYC a team asked to livestream the event and they said no.

I do like watching the webcast (really just the finals) but as someone who has many hours livestreaming on twitch I wouldn't want to.

If they let you though I would buy the one month of xsplit. No matter what people say it's much better then obs other then that it costs money. I can get you a free code somewhere I would just have to dig around for it.

[robert1356]

Does Twitch play nice with all mobile devices? NASA is providing live feeds for some (most? all?) of the regionals, if the the regional wants it, but they are only doing Flash streaming - laptops and desktops only for viewing, no mobile devices.

I spoke with someone from RobotsRUs who used UStream at the Georgia Southern Classic Regional (Perry, GA) this past weekend. It worked but they (RobotsRUs) were only mildly supportive of the approach of using UStream for various legitimate reasons. UStream also randomly inserted commercials in the stream at some of the most inopportune times. They're looking for another way of doing it in the future.

I want to stay away from Flash and any of the streaming services that tie me to Flash are not my top options.

One thing going for Ustream, and it looks like possibly Twitch also is that, while they seem to be Flash based, they will fall back to H.264 and play in an iOS mobile browser. I don't have an Android device to test on. Is that a true statement for Android devices also?

I've been thinking about rolling my own - using Darwin Streaming Server and just spitting out a live rtsp stream. You only need one good connection to a remotely hosted "cloud server" which could then serve to the end viewer. Dealing with the bandwidth limit imposed by the cloud service would be the main concern. RobotsRUs said their peak viewing was about 400 users. Not huge and any decent server these days should be able to handle this.

[IronicDeadBird]

Originally Posted by robert1356

Does Twitch play nice with all mobile devices? NASA is providing live feeds for some (most? all?) of the regionals, if the the regional wants it, but they are only doing Flash streaming - laptops and desktops only for viewing, no mobile devices.

I spoke with someone from RobotsRUs who used UStream at the Georgia Southern Classic Regional (Perry, GA) this past weekend. It worked but they (RobotsRUs) were only mildly supportive of the approach of using UStream for various legitimate reasons. UStream also randomly inserted commercials in the stream at some of the most inopportune times. They're looking for another way of doing it in the future.

I want to stay away from Flash and any of the streaming services that tie me to Flash are not my top options.

One thing going for Ustream, and it looks like possibly Twitch also is that, while they seem to be Flash based, they will fall back to H.264 and play in an iOS mobile browser. I don't have an Android device to test on. Is that a true statement for Android devices also?

I've been thinking about rolling my own - using Darwin Streaming Server and just spitting out a live rtsp stream. You only need one good connection to a remotely hosted "cloud server" which could then serve to the end viewer. Dealing with the bandwidth limit imposed by the cloud service would be the main concern. RobotsRUs said their peak viewing was about 400 users. Not huge and any decent server these days should be able to handle this.

Twitch mobile is a mess imo.
We are going to look into another service to stream, its pretty obscure though.
Its definitely not youtube... Nope not youtube at all

[dodar]

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

Twitch mobile is a mess imo.
We are going to look into another service to stream, its pretty obscure though.
Its definitely not youtube... Nope not youtube at all

Twitch mobile works perfectly fine. And South Florida and Orlando have both been streamed on YT I believe for the past 2(maybe 3) years and they have worked pretty flawlessly. Plus a bonus for streaming on YT is that you can almost immediately archive live footage.

[IronicDeadBird]

Originally Posted by dodar

Twitch mobile works perfectly fine. And South Florida and Orlando have both been streamed on YT I believe for the past 2(maybe 3) years and they have worked pretty flawlessly. Plus a bonus for streaming on YT is that you can almost immediately archive live footage.

Sorry I meant to say twitch can be a mess IMO. It works perfectly fine from a viewer standpoint but I have had some struggles with it from the streaming side. Turns out our youtube channel is in good enough standing that we can work through youtube live.

[dcarr]

Originally Posted by robert1356

Does Twitch play nice with all mobile devices?

Twitch has apps for Android and iOS that work very well. Not to mention, support for Chromecast and Amazon Fire TV.