About half a year ago I decided to try something new (at least to me) on my YouTube channel - Live Streaming. This was not a new concept, many people have been live streaming on different social media platforms, more popularly on gaming channels, but I thought it would be a fun way to engage my existing audience, allowing them to interact with me in real time. I have talked about my initial challenges of doing live streams here (click). It has been more than half a year, and I have done dozens of weekly sessions now, and I want to pen down some thoughts on the experience I have encountered so far.
The idea of doing Live Streams was unfeasible to me at first, as I cannot imagine myself being in front of the camera, broadcasting live and speaking for an hour or more continuously. Who would want to listen to me babble about my obsessions on all thing's camera or my unpopular opinion on photography culture and practice? I could barely stand listening to my own voice as I was editing my own videos. My usual weekly uploads, pre-recorded videos are about 10 minutes in length, which was just the perfect mixture of talking heads mixed with plenty of photographs to back up my claims and I also threw in generous number of B-Rolls so things don't get too boring. On Live Streams however, the camera is locked to my face all the time, and I have to make myself entertaining, and I thought that was quite a challenge!
I also realized that I am getting increasing number of comments on both my new and older videos on the channel, and I can barely keep up with them these days. Things are getting busier, I am getting more shoots in real world (yes, I do have a real job as a full-time photographer, working for myself of course). Add video production to that, as I keep a rather consistent upload schedule, which I have not missed a single week of upload since mid 2019, I don't get a lot of time left. Suddenly Live Streaming makes sense, it helps with two problems: 1) I can answer questions from my audience on the spot, live, in real time, if they have anything important or urgent to ask, instead of waiting for me to reply to usual written comments below my videos and 2) Live streams do not require post-editing work, which frees up a huge chunk of my time in comparison to making another full length 10 minutes video.
I have so start from scratch. I have never used OBS Studio software before for streaming purposes. I have to set up the camera on a capture card device. I need to sort out audio issues - mounting a USB condenser microphone on a flexible arm, with pop filters and finding the right distance away from my mouth to mitigate handling noise and plosives from my speaking. I needed to figure out a lot of these things and I leaned them as I went along, one small step at a time. Took me dozens and dozens of streams to iron out some kinks there and here, and finally I am at a place I think things are working quite smoothly, and I have an efficient workflow that I stick to.
My current setup:
1) One square softbox LED main light from the top left of my seating position
2) Two LED RGB ambient lights panels, one behind me, one from my right
3) Super budget $25 USB condenser microphone, with add on metal grill pop filter, attached to a cheap microphone desk swing arm
4) OM System OM-1 as streaming camera and Panasonic 15mm F1.7 lens
5) $50 Ezcap 4K capable USB Capture Card device to allow video feed from camera to be piped into the computer graphics card
6) 4 Years old PC Setup - AMD Ryzen 5 3600 with 32GB Ram, low level budget graphics card GTX 1660 and a fast enough fibre internet connection.
There were many things I never had to think before, like how to properly treat the area of my room for better audio through the microphone.
It was the near year 2024 that I decided to stream in 4K. I found this rather affordable 4K capable capture card device for about $50, so I gave it a try nd it worked wonders! I see everyone streaming in Full HD (1080p), and I have been warned about how resource taxing and internet connection demanding a live stream session can be. I don't have the fastest internet speed, but I believe it is more than sufficient to get the job done. My PC is 4 Years old, but it has been running smoothly without a single hiccup, plowing through thousands and thousands of images edited for my clients, and also hundreds of videos produced week after week. My instinct was right, the 4K streaming worked perfectly fine, and I thought as a photography centric channel, where I do have to showcase my work from time to time, streaming in 4K is an added bonus!
I really do think that the live stream sessions add a new dimension to the channel, allowing the audience to directly engage with me. I willingly spend more than 2 hours, sometimes 3 hours in one long seating, and it has become more of a Q&A session. I'd normally have a placeholder topic about a camera, lens or photography issue to talk about, but the real session revolves mainly on me responding to live questions posted to me, and I think that is extremely important - as a creator, you have to find ways to connect more effectively with your audience, and what more intimate way there is than doing live streams, where you devote hours of your time, giving the audience undivided attention!
There is still so much to learn and improve on, and I am so new to this Live Stream thing, but hey, it has been enjoyable and fruitful so far. Do come in and join my weekly sessions, typically it will be at 10pm, Thursday evenings Malaysian time.
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