Last Friday, for the first time in my life, after doing YouTube for so many years, I was hosting guests remotely and have them on my Live Stream. It was a nerve-racking experience. I knew I was a bad multi-tasker, doing solo Live Streams was already stressful enough, and this time I had to bring in not one, but two important guests, all being broadcasted Live on YouTube. So many things could have gone wrong, me dealing with new software, and having to keep the conversations going was not an easy feat, at least not for me. All things considered, minus the small hiccups there and here, I think the Live Stream went as well as can be, and I was grateful as things could have been a lot worse. I call this achievement unlocked!
There were many reasons why I never hosted any guests on my Live Streams before. Mainly it was the thought of having to deal with the anxiety, and the pressure to be able to perform and meet the guest's expectations. When it comes to technical execution, there were also a lot more factors to consider - will my Internet connection be fast and reliable enough to handle multiple connections (uploads and downloads simultaneously, with guests from across the globe)? Will my 6 years old, budget PC computer setup be able to handle so many different scenes on OBS Software, without the software glitching or worse, crashing mid-stream? And I had to push myself to learn so many new things, for example, using Video Ninja for OBS as a platform to bring in guests, and pumping in video feed from VDO Ninja into OBS Software before redirecting all that to YouTube for the Live Stream. Anything could go wrong at any point, and I was just so nervous.
I guess, if I never took the first step, I would never have gone anywhere. Even if it was a failure, even if I made mistakes, it will be a good learning experience, and I need to take this plunge to move forward. There is no progress if I stay stagnant, and I must dare myself to explore new skills and knowledge.
The excuse to do this was simple, Peter Forsgard, Matti Sulanto and I are conducting a photography workshop together in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia next year (20206), and Matti suggested we have a Live Stream together to just talk about stuff, and at the same time promote the workshop to our audience. It was a great idea, we all immediately agreed, but the only issue was me having to learn and prepare for the Live Stream to be able to host two guests. There were so many unknowns in the beginning. After doing a bit of research, I decided to use VDO Ninja, which is a free platform for streaming with multiple users, and minimal lag and this solution seems to be the most efficient for our use case scenario. I watched several tutorials on how to use VDO Ninja, and off we went for our test stream, 24 hours before show time.
Special thanks to Van, Jojo and Kristiina for coming into the test Live Stream. Boy oh boy, was it a disaster! At first, we could not get Peter Forsgard to join, and I had to recreate the room a few times before he made it in. Honestly until now I still could not figure out why there was difficulty of Peter joining, Matti almost joined in immediately each and every time with no problem. Then there was the issue figuring out how to pump the audio into OBS, Matti's stream had audio, Peter's did not, took us half an hour to find out that I accidentally, or unknowingly disabled the audio for Peter's feed. Right from the start, there were serious hiccups, and it was truly a necessity to do a trial run before the real thing, to iron out all these kinks.
On the actual day, Peter also had difficulty joining into the room, I had to recreate the room at least 4 times, before he was able to come in. Still a puzzle at this point, but he managed to come in just before the stream started, and we were not late, we managed to start the stream on the dot.
I think the biggest challenge for me was to multitask, as I have mentioned earlier. I had to look at VDO Ninja site and the OBS Software, to make sure there were no issues with the incoming streams from Peter and Matti. I have to monitor the audio levels, looking at the individual meters and make sure there was sound. I can monitor audio from the VDO Ninja site, but as I pumped the stream into OBS, and then to YouTube, things could easily get lost somewhere, and I was not monitoring directly on Live YouTube itself. I had to read the Live Chats from the audience; in case there was some issues that needed immediate attention. All this while I must also moderate the live discussion with two guests, as I was the host, listening to their responses and summarize their key points, keeping the conversations going. Easily, I had to deal with more than 10 things at the same time.
There were small issues there and here - my microphone for whatever reasons went too hot on that day, maybe I was overly excited, and I spoke too loudly compared to my normal solo live streams, there were distortions on my voice, a bit of cracking, but nothing too serious. The volume levels were not even - Matti was a bit louder than the rest, and my voice was fluctuating, I need to look into the filters I was using on my microphone. The general Live Stream is in 4K, Matti and Peter's individual video slots were less than a quarter of the full screen area, so having full HD (1080 resolution) from their streams was sufficient for a good looking 4K stream setup. However, there were different scenes where I switched over to their "full screen", either for close ups when they were speaking, or screen sharing, these were not at the best as they were streaming at mere 1080p, something I must take note of to improve in the future, if I want to continue to maintain 4K streaming quality.
The connection was smooth throughout the stream, no one disconnected, and having to reconnect, we went Live for 2 and a half hours, and overall, I believe the conversation was quite coherent as well. It was in a Q&A interview format, I allowed my guests to speak more in this stream, focusing attention on them. Both Peter and Matti shared many useful tips and tricks, as well as knowledge and experience on street photography, they also shared plenty of amazing and inspiring images.
There are many things I need to learn and improve, I acknowledge that, but hey, for the first time, I think the Live Stream with Peter and Matti went really well. Now that I have done this once, I can start hosting other people on my YouTube! What exciting times ahead.
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