Author: Luis Vigil

Virtual events are here to stay, even as the world returns to normal. The ability to keep costs low while hosting a more comprehensive range of speakers and guests from around the world is something that event organizers will want to take advantage of in the years to come. However, if you’re looking to make your event stand out from others, we have a few tips on how you can improve virtual events.

Rehearsing your virtual events

Nothing is worse for the viewer or producer than hearing “we’re having technical difficulties.” No matter how technically savvy your guests may be, it’s always essential to have a tech rehearsal before the event. Test that your guest knows how to use their camera and un-mute their microphone. With your virtual event, this will save you a lot of hassle in the long run.

Make sure everyone has a call time at least 15 minutes before they are live so you can do final checks. If they are displaying any materials like videos or slides, ask that they send these to you in advance so you can verify they are working correctly. They can always view these items in a preview window you can send them. Something you can learn more about here.

Controlling the scene

While your speakers might be the experts in their field, they may not know the basics of live stream production. This, after all, isn’t what they are there for. They are taking part in your virtual event to share their expertise.

I’m sure you’ve seen many events with chaos in the background or guests not centered in the frame. XSplit VCam solves both these problems. You can blur, remove or replace a guest’s background, and auto-framing will keep them perfectly centered in the frame.

Best of all, this doesn’t even require much setup. Using the team license manager, you can send your guests a license and standard backgrounds for all members you’ve invited to your team account. They just need to look out for the email. This will give everyone a unified look at your event.

Audience interaction

The beauty of virtual events is it is easier to moderate and incorporate the audience into the event. Now, of course, there is a live chat, but depending on the platform you are using, you will have access to tools like polls or be able to incorporate a chatbot for more interactive activities for the audience.

Polls can be done in a couple of different ways. Usually, there are integrated into the platform, or you can polls like the Facebook Polls source in XSplit Broadcaster to automatically count reactions from the audience. It’s good to encourage your speakers to incorporate multiple choice questions in their presentations to interact with the audience.

Depending on the type of show and audience, you can also encourage your speakers to watch the chat. Just remind them not to get too distracted by it. If you have an audience that may get a bit unruly or you are talking about a controversial topic, be sure to have proper moderation.

Bonus Virtual Events Tips

Here we have three smaller tips that should help run your virtual event successfully. First up, make sure your schedule is accessible to the audience. Put it up on the screen as a graphic, have a chatbot post a link to the schedule, and have it on your page of whatever platform you are broadcasting to. Trust me, your viewers will appreciate it.

Next, simplify your recoding process. If you are planning to upload VODs of your event, you can make your life easier if you automate your VOD recordings to split based on time so that you’ll have smaller files to upload, or you can upload while the event is still ongoing. This is easy to set in the local recording settings of XSplit Broadcaster. You can even split by file size as well.

Finally, make sure you get a good host! Something that is perhaps overlooked way too often in corporate events is not setting aside a budget for a good host. A good host can carry a bad show and vice versa. So if you are working with a client and they say one of their staff who has never been on camera will be a host, if the budget allows, do recommend bringing on a professional host. A good host will help keep the show moving and save you when technical issues crop up.

So those are the top tips I have for you today to help your virtual events run smoothly. What tips have you found? What challenges have you not found a solution for? Let us know in the comments section below!

VSTs are a great tool for improving the overall production quality of your stream. I mean, the people need to hear you! So today we’re going to discuss how you can use VSTs for live streaming! VST stands for Virtual Studio Technology and enables you to create a digital studio with various options. We’re going to take a look at EQ, a compressor, and a limiter which can all be used in XSplit Broadcaster to make your microphone sound better.

How to Set Up VSTs for Live Streaming

Using VSTs with XSplit Broadcaster is easy. Go into your audio mixer, and click on the settings for your microphone to open the audio DSP effects. You’ll need to set the location where your VSTs are located. Usually, they’re in program files, common files, and then in the VST3 folder.

Refresh the list then add your VSTs. The settings icon will open the interface for each VST. From there you can start diving deeper and making some tweaks so let’s have a look at each in turn!

EQ

The first VST you should use is an Equalizer or EQ. Basically, the EQ will be used to add or subtract certain frequencies that will improve the overall sound of your voice. This is of course, very subjective as everyone’s voice is different. However, here are some general suggestions that should get you started and you can change things from there.

First, apply a high pass filter around 70hz to remove any unwanted low frequencies like air conditioning. Then do the same for a low pass filter around 15khz. Then you’ll want to find the frequencies to remove. This differs from person to person, but you can start around the 1khz range and use a boosted bell curve until you find the frequency you want to remove.

Then you want to boost the frequencies you like, such as the 100-200 range to add more bass to your voice or the 4000-5000 and 9-10k range to add more clarity to your voice.

I’m using the Fabfilter Pro-Q3 eq which is paid but has a free trial. There are a ton of free EQ plugins that you can find. They really do make a bunch of great VSTs for live streaming that we’re going to be checking out.

Compressor

Compressors are always a tricky one to explain, but if you like to shout or whisper, they essentially help your viewers hear you clearly. Basically, any compressor will have you set a threshold, this is the level your audio will need to hit to trigger the compressor. This will be the highs lower and the lows higher.

You then set a compression ratio, safe ratios to start with are 2:1 or 3:1 for vocals. Then you’ll set an attack and release. You’ll want a fast attack and slightly slow release to start, you can adjust these over time. Finally, you’ll need to set the makeup gain. This is to make up for the overall loudness you’ve lost from compressing your audio. I wouldn’t set this too high, as this is something you can adjust with the next tool we’ll discuss.

That’ll get you started, but tweet the settings to your liking over time. There is a great compressor built into XSplit Broadcaster which should cover everything you need but you can, again, add different ones. There really are a lot of great VSTs for live streaming!

Limiter VSTs for Live Streaming

We all have hype moments when gaming, I mean that’s the whole fun of streaming right? However, nothing ruins the moment more than distorted, clipped audio. You can minimize this with a limiter. Unlike a compressor, a limiter is specifically focused on the higher audio levels.

So you basically set a threshold, something right before the audio will clip, like -2 or -3 DB. The limiter will then reduce the level anytime the audio hits that threshold, saving you from clipping.

More advanced limiters will also allow you to raise your overall audio level, so you make sure you’re hitting levels where you are just barely triggering the limiter from time to time. This really can be an essential VST for live streaming as you’ll have clear audio without worrying about clipping.

So those are the main VSTs you’ll want to get started with for live streaming.  They’ll greatly enhance your audio and if you look around you can find high-quality free versions. If you have any questions about how to use these VSTs be sure to let us know in the comments.

Have you ever wanted to stream with your friends? And I don’t mean streaming with them coming in on a Discord call. I mean actually pulling in your friend’s face cam and gameplay feed in as separate sources and with low latency. This is the kind of thing that can make running an online tournament viable or having live head to heads between your friends streamed. Well, we’re here to talk about co-streaming so let’s get into it!

Co-Streaming with VDO.Ninja

We will be using VDO.Ninja, which is a free open source tool that uses webRTC to send low latency video and audio via your web browser. We created a guide on how to get started with VDO.Ninja, check out the video below to watch it. You’ll want to share it with your friends as well as they’ll need to understand the basics.

You’ll want to set up a room as you’ll need to manage multiple VDO.Ninja feeds. I recommend enabling pro-audio mode and up to 1080/60 video. This will require a lot of bandwidth, so make sure both you and your friends have good internet connections. 

After that is done copy the guest link and make sure to let your friends know they will be using this URL twice. One for their face cam and one for their gameplay.

Getting your guests set up

We will be using XSplit Broadcaster as a sort of video mixer and splitter to get everything to work. First, your guests will need to set up two scenes, one with their Facecam and one with their gameplay capture. This can be console via a capture card or game source captured directly on PC. Then they’ll want to set a virtual camera output to a face cam scene.

Then they’ll want to use the invite link and when asked set their camera to the XSplit Virtual Camera and set the microphone input as whatever microphone they’re using. Now for the gameplay, they’ll need to make sure the microphone source is muted and the system sound is set to the default device so that the gameplay audio is captured.

Next, they’ll need to create a projector output as a window. Then, go to another VDO.Ninja window, but this time instead of a video source they’ll be sharing a window. They can then share that projector window with you. Then in the audio input set XSplit Broadcaster as the microphone. Now your guest will be sending gameplay video and audio!

Setting up the host

So as the host, you’ll have an easier time. You’ll see the feeds coming in from the director video feed in VDO.Ninja. Simply copy those links and add them as browser sources in XSplit Broadcaster. Arrange the sources however you like and adjust the audio levels.

You may want to set the audio to stream only, so you don’t hear your friend’s microphone and gameplay audio over your own. You can add as many of your friends as your internet connection can support as these are basically streams feeding into your PC.

If you have any questions on how this co-streaming setup works, be sure to leave them in the comments!

We’ve been working in the streaming industry for over ten years now here at XSplit. Consequently, we’ve seen and helped solve a lot of problems over the years. Here, we run down common issues streamers run into and the solutions for them to help you fix your gaming stream!

How to fix your gaming stream with laggy video

If you or your viewers are seeing a choppy or laggy stream, check your encoding stats. If you see dropped frames, it means you may have set your bitrate too high for your internet connection. You can adjust your bitrate while you are live, but it’s good to do an internet bandwidth test beforehand, especially if your connection is throttled from time to time. This is always a sure-fire way to fix your gaming stream.

Now if your stream is pixelated, this means the bitrate is too low. If you have the bandwidth you can increase the bitrate, but if you don’t you will have to reduce your streaming resolution and frame rate. Changing your bitrate in XSplit Broadcaster is simple, just click the gear next to your output in the Broadcast menu and move the bitrate higher. There are limits, for example, you can’t go higher than 6000 kbps on Twitch so it’s best to check with wherever you’re streaming.

Gameplay feeling sluggish?

When many start streaming, their gameplay can begin to feel sluggish or laggy. Streaming in full HD/60fps does require a fair bit of resources. This can affect the performance of your games if you’re playing them on the same PC you’re streaming from. There’s a variety of solutions to this depending on your priorities that can help fix your gaming stream.

If you don’t want to sacrifice your gaming experience, you will need to reduce the resources required for encoding. One way is to lower the resolution and frame rate of your stream. 1280×720 30fps is generally a safe setting for most modern systems. In XSplit Broadcaster you can do this but clicking the resolution drop-down menu in the top right-hand corner. Remember, however, that you’ll need to do this offline.

Next is using hardware encoders like AMD VCE, NVIDIA NVENC, or Intel Quicksync. These are generally present on all the latest devices, but NVIDIA NVENC will give you good stream quality if you have an NVIDIA graphics card that supports it. Intel also recently introduced Intel Arc AV1 encoding which shows some very exciting results! If you don’t want to sacrifice stream quality or gameplay quality, you’ll likely need to get an additional PC that is dedicated to streaming.

Noisy Microphone?

The first thing to check on your microphone is if you’ve set the gain too high. I know we all want to tune it to 11, but setting the gain higher raises the noise floor. Basically, it makes the mic more sensitive to sounds besides your voice. Changing this can really help fix your gaming stream. Target around -18 to -12 DB for your voice when setting your microphone input level. You’ll be able to use plugins to raise this level, which we’ve covered in the video below.

If you’re still getting noise it could be environmental noises like from an air conditioner, or your PC. You can remove this noise with noise removal and/or a noise gate. These are both available in XSplit Broadcaster‘s DSP settings. You can use Broadcaster’s built-in noise removal, or NVIDIA’s if you have an RTX GPU.

A noise gate lets you set the threshold that needs to be passed to activate your microphone. This is useful for consistent low noises like keyboard clicks, but once the gate is open, these noises will come through. Finally, if you’re still having issues, I highly recommend getting a dynamic microphone, we have a guide on picking the right microphone for streaming here.

How to fix your gaming stream alert sounds

We all like our donation, follower, subscriber alerts right? Nothing like the sound of progress, until you’ve heard it a million times. Sending your alert sounds to only your viewers is easy in XSplit Broadcaster! Right-click on the browser source and set the audio to stream only. You can adjust the level as well and see it in the audio mixer. Now you’re all set, you’ll still see the on-screen graphics you just won’t hear the sound yourself!

My camera looks grainy

So you’ve just picked up a Facecam, but oh no, it’s super grainy! Cranking up the ISO or gain just makes it worse! What your camera needs is light! Any lighting will help, even a room light, but it’s best to get a dedicated light for your streaming area.

Now if you can try to diffuse the light a bit, this will help with harsh shadows. Many lights come with their own modifiers for diffusion, but if you’re going with the DIY method, you can use things like wax paper. Though make sure it isn’t a bulb that produces heat if you’re going to put something over it because fire is a real factor!

These are some common things we’ve found that can help fix your gaming stream. We hope you’ve found these useful! What common issues have your encountered? Or maybe just something you hear a lot from your streaming friends? Let us know in the comments!