reflectionsonthebytespace

[reflectionsonthebytespace]

There are many tutorials out there which can help! In my opinion many of them are unclear. I have compiled my own process for what has worked. I am using a PC, but the process should be the same on a Mac. If any of the steps don’t work, let me know. This is for PRERECORDED videos. The process for streaming using live video is super easy to do and would be best for something like a daily video series. 

Prerequisites: 

High-speed internet (>3 Mbps).

Install or have on your computer the following programs:

A web browser such as Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, or others.

Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) program. The download link can be found here.

Step One: Prepare picture and video files

First, put your video and any picture files in an easy-to-find file location on your computer. At this stage, check the video audio and make sure it is clear. The files you have in the folder will be what is shown live, so finalize them beforehand. If you have a preliminary picture, you can add the text “The livestream will begin soon” at this point.

Step Two: Set-up OBS

After you have downloaded and installed OBS software, you should see this screen, which is the OBS interface:

I have labeled the important parts below, which I will refer to by (1), (2), (3), etc. in the tutorial.

In section (1), press the “+” at the bottom to add a second scene. Click “OK.” The scenes are like folders. The preliminary slideshow/pictures will go in “Scene 1,” the video will go in “Scene 2.” If you have an additional picture for the end, then you can add a third scene.

Select “Scene 1.” Now, in Sources (2), click the “+” at the bottom.

If you have a single image to show: Click “Image,” then click “OK,” then click “Browse.” Find the image and select it, then click “OK.” The image should then appear something like this.

Most likely, it will not be centered. You can either use the red dots to manually resize the image until it fills in all the black or use keyboard shortcuts, which is easier. The keyboard shortcut to do this is Ctrl+F to fill or Ctrl+D to center. The most important thing is to have the image centered. When I pressed Ctrl+F for the above image, it centered the image like this:

You can find all the options in the top bar (6) under Edit/Transform. For instance, in today’s stream, when I opened the video, it came up sideways like this:

To fix this, look at the top left of the above picture, where I went to Edit/Transform/Rotate 90 degrees CW. When I pressed that, I got this, which still wasn’t satisfactory:

After that, I just pressed “Ctrl+D” to center the video like this:

The Edit/Transform buttons and Ctrl+F and Ctrl+D should work for any image or video. If it doesn’t work, click on the image to make sure that the red borders appear.

If you have more than one image you want to present in an automatic slideshow: 

Setting up a slideshow is easy. In Sources (2), click “+” but this time choose “Image Slide Show.” Click “OK,” then this “Properties” box should open up.

First, change the “Time Between Slides” to at least 10000 (ten thousand milliseconds = ten seconds). If you want thirty seconds between the slides, make it 30000, etc. Double check to make sure the “Loop” is checked. Next, scroll down within the Properties box until you see this section:

Click the “+” in the “Image Files” box and add each of the images you want to appear in the slideshow. Usually it’s just two or three images. Then Click “OK.” The images will appear inside the red box. Press Ctrl+D or Ctrl+F to make sure they are centered and fill the frame. The slideshow will start playing within OBS automatically. You can always go back to the properties box by right-clicking “Image Slide Show” in “Sources.”

Once you have added your image or image slide show in “Scene 1,” then click “Scene 2” in “Scenes” (1). In “Sources” (2), click the “+” at the bottom, but this time select “Media Source” to add the video. Click OK, then click Browse, and find and select the video.

Make sure “Local File” is checked, “Loop” is unchecked, “Restart playback when source becomes active” is checked, and leave the others as they are. Click OK. The video will start playing immediately. For now, just resize the video as you did the pictures so it fits the frame, and then click “Scene 1” to go back again.

Make sure desktop and microphone audio are turned off. 

In Audio Mixer (3), make sure the Desktop audio and Mic/Aux are off and that the speaker indicator is “red” for muted, otherwise, your voice and ambient noise will appear on the stream.

Connect OBS to Facebook or YouTube using a stream key

At this point, to connect the OBS program to the streaming service, we’ll need a stream key. You can get the stream key from Facebook when you select “Live” in the “Create” section under post, or on YouTube under “stream key.” Copy the stream key. Make sure nobody else sees the stream key (otherwise it is possible to be hacked).

Back in OBS, go to Controls (4) and hit “Settings.” Click on “Stream” in the left sidebar, and paste the stream key there.

Now, you’re ready to stream. Hit “Start Streaming” in “Controls” (4). This will start sending video to Facebook/YouTube. Double check “Scenes” (1) to make sure that you have selected Scene 1 and the screen (5) is showing the slideshow, not the video.

Post the live video to start the livestream

Go back to Facebook/YouTube. Make sure you edit the title and description of the video before posting. Hit “Go Live,” and it will start playing the slideshow.

Switch to the prerecorded video

When you are ready to start playing the video, go to OBS and click “Scene 2” (1). As soon as you click it, the video will start playing.

Once the video has stopped playing in OBS, then press “Stop Streaming” in Controls (4). This will end the stream on Facebook. On Facebook, you will have the option to “rate the broadcast” from one to five stars. After this, click “View Post” to save the video to the timeline. If you click “delete video” then you won’t be able to recover it and the post won’t be saved.

Warnings

There is some delay between OBS and Facebook/YouTube, so just pay attention to OBS. 

Once you have started the video, don’t touch the “Scenes” panel again, otherwise you will have to restart the video. 

You can check for video sound by looking at the Audio Mixer (3). However, OBS doesn’t play the sound out loud your computer, it sends the sound straight to Facebook. So if the video is silent when it starts, don’t worry, the sound is still going through. 

  Step-by-step guide to stream prerecorded videos live on Facebook using OBS. There are many tutorials out there which can help! In my opinion many of them are unclear.

[reflectionsonthebytespace]

Coding is hard.

Coding is hard. So is developing an Android app… …wait, that’s the same thing. So is solving problems with python on Project Euler… …wait that’s also coding. So is designing websites. Wait. So is placing fragments within my second activity to display code that I’ve written in the Clock class by instantiating an instance of the Clock class and specifying the necessary variables and creating…

[reflectionsonthebytespace]

Das erste Blogs

Ich habe in meiner Zeit im St. John’s College ein bisschen Deutch gelernt in meinen Gesprachen mit verschiedenen anderen Studenten. Obwohl mein Kenntnisse der Grammatik und der Vokabeln ist minimal, Dank der Hilfe des Online-Worterbuchs, ich habe eine kurze Blog-post geschrieben konnte, welchem zweifellos viele Fehler hat. In der Tat, ohne die Hilfe von eine solche Worterbuch, was bequem ein…

[reflectionsonthebytespace]

On the upcoming academic year

On the upcoming academic year

This post will require a commentary soon after. Concerning the upcoming academic year, I feel a mixture of apprehension and excitement. Apprehension, because how will I have time? There’s class, then there’s everything else; when do you have time to do all the “other stuff?” All things considered, I do feel that the sense of excitement threatens to overpower the apprehension every minute that…

[reflectionsonthebytespace]

Visualizing time managment I have decided to plot out all of my hours on a spreadsheet, in an attempt to improve my time management in the upcoming school year.

[reflectionsonthebytespace]

On writing as marketing, and writing as a liberal, freeing art

On writing as marketing, and writing as a liberal, freeing art

I have always had the desire to write; when I was younger that desire manifested itself in the form of short stories, novels never completed, about strange lands and dragons and wild adventures. That desire to write, though it was always there, nonetheless evolved over time, and eventually it transformed into an attitude of precision, perfectionism, and factuality. As a result of this change, I…

[reflectionsonthebytespace]

On the creative impulse

On the creative impulse

The creative impulse is often unexpected. Sometimes it is expected. The creative impulse will escape, if not captured down, which is why the writers always keep a notebook handy. The creative impulse is like a valuable metal, but one that needs to be refined. Here is where writing comes in. Anyone can have creative impulses, in the form of expression. Fewer write it down, to make sure it isn’t…

[reflectionsonthebytespace]

الأول المكتوب

في الحقيقة انا في بداية الدراستي باللغة العربية ولذلك لازم ان أكتب كثيرا. انا في صف الأول, لكن احتاج ان ��كتب كل يوم لانني سأصبح متجصص بالعربية. الضرورة كتاب و قراء كل يوم. الان انا تعبان جدا. الليل سهرت بعد لعبت كرة القدم مع أطفال الشارع بعد العشاء. سنمت, انشاء الله. أريد ان سأكتب مرة اخر, غدا انشاء الله

[reflectionsonthebytespace]

On vocabulary acquisition and writing in other languages

On vocabulary acquisition and writing in other languages

Writing in another language is good practice, because it makes you aware of your ignorance about the rules and syntax of the secondary language you are writing in. When I wrote in Latin, I realized just how much of my vocabulary had become passive, or how much of it I was unable to recall. A question I have often wondered is, what is the best way to increase your active vocabulary? At a certain…

[reflectionsonthebytespace]

Haec in Latina est

Haec in Latina est

Haec est in Latina, quod nunc multi lingui permovere (permoverunt) mentem meum. In unum anum, sine loquenti aut scribenti Latinam, in verbis meis passus sum. Verbi multi loquendi sunt, ut dicam et legem bene; in futurum, fortasse hui momento, hui rei respiciam, et si deus volet, felix ero. Eram discipulus in ludum librorum Graecorum et lingui Graeci, sed linguus Graecus difficulus est. Illud est…

[reflectionsonthebytespace]

Critical response to previous post

The last post suffered a little from a metaphor pileup, as much of my writing does. Some don’t mind it, but real writers do, a lot. You can’t “parse” a river anymore than you can “swim” in words. Some might argue that all writing that is sincere has all the other virtues, but still, they may be harder to recognize, and then we measure eloquence as the writer’s skill in aiding the process of…

[reflectionsonthebytespace]

Parsing the flow of consciousness (1)

When writing is genuine, words, sentences, and paragraphs lose their individualism in the stream of consciousness that is a part of the life of the mind of the writer forever fossilized in their written words.  Though every word not yet written has the potential to be sincere, not every written word will live up to a high standard of purity and elegance of expression– A high standard purity in…

[reflectionsonthebytespace]

Reflection on the process of the improvement of writing

Reflection on the process of the improvement of writing

If there is any truth to the saying, “repetitio est mater studiorum,” or “repetition is the mother of endeavored pursuits,” it follows that a diligent implementation of this principle is the means of improving any skill that requires rigorous training. However, the statement cannot be taken in isolation. Indeed, “practice makes permanent,” is an oft-cited adage in response to “practice makes…

[reflectionsonthebytespace]

Temptingly ironical facts, etc.

Temptingly ironical facts, etc.

As I have started writing every day for the past several days and have walked through the door of consistency, I have come to several realizations. Perhaps the most apparent in my mind is the temptingly ironical fact that expending words on the regular has made me only more aware of the limitations of my vocabulary. This might seem obvious, now that I’ve put it down, but when consistency starts…

[reflectionsonthebytespace]

On learning multiple languages

On learning multiple languages

I am currently learning multiple languages at the same time; this has meant I have had a language learning experience that feels rich, and has felt more in its whole than the respective sums of the parts of learning each respective language. Learning Latin first was a life-changing experience. After Latin, and my four great teachers in public high school, for the first time I had a solid idea of…

[reflectionsonthebytespace]

Today, no blog. Homework.

Today, no blog. Homework.

[No blog]

[reflectionsonthebytespace]

...encompassing the incidentals of inflection...

…encompassing the incidentals of inflection…

Writing for the sake of writing, giving writing its own space; for writing too is an oral art, and it must be passed down, to be continued. When similes come, they come, when metaphors bite they bite, but there’s never a blank space by default that asks what something is “like.” Language, alone, is not the optimum form of communication, i.e., the words themselves. Not enough. This is seen with…