Category: Content Creation

Streaming is a fun way to meet new people and put yourself out there in the world, both literally and figuratively. But as you know, the internet isn’t always the safest place to be so it’s important to secure your privacy while streaming to sites like Twitch. As we’ve seen recently, especially with IRL streamers, they are subject to stream snipers and dangerous SWAT raids. So, we’re going to give some tips on maintaining your privacy online while you’re streaming.

So what things do you want to keep secure? Well, the most important thing is your location. Next are vital details, like your full name, birthday, email address, and phone number. People can use these details to hack into your various online accounts. Finally, you may want to keep certain accounts private, like your steam accounts, discord accounts, basically anything where someone could report your account and get it banned for illegitimate reasons.

Secure your Web Browser while Streaming to Twitch

If you’re doing a just chatting stream or watching some youtube videos, anything where you’d be showing a web browser on screen, be very careful. Many times, when you’ve signed in to your browser it will track your location data and show nearby restaurants when you search different terms, this is an easy way for people to find out your location.

Your address may also be auto-saved so it may pop up when you input some numbers your browser thinks is a text field. The best solution is to use private or incognito browsing on a separate browser. So if you’re always using Chrome, jump over to Edge or Firefox and don’t save any passwords there when you’re streaming. Also, be sure to turn off any location tracking or auto-fill to avoid revealing your location. Doing simple things like this can be key to securing your privacy while streaming to sites like Twitch.

IRL Stream Safety

If you think you’ll be IRL streaming, make sure to start your stream far away from where you live or are staying and end your stream before you are close to home. Also if you’re using a streaming backpack, add a stream delay to the cloud PC that’s running your streaming relay. 

Make sure to stream in public places if you anticipate that you might encounter stream snipers (people trying to find where you are can then track you down while you’re live). If you will be IRL streaming with others, be sure to let them know not to reveal any information about you or themselves, such as phone numbers, location, etc while you’re live or on social media.

Keeping Yourself Secure While Streaming Audio and Video

Always be aware when your webcam and microphone are on. If you’re ordering a pizza and leave your mic on, there’s your address given out on a stream. Fortunately, there are some handy tools in XSplit Broadcaster to help with this. For your microphone, you can enable a hotkey to toggle your microphone on and off.

For your webcam, use it with XSplit VCam. In XSplit VCam you can pause your camera feed and if you use the background replacement feature, once you’re out of frame, whatever you do in the background will be hidden, helping you secure your privacy while streaming to sites like Twitch.

Hide your screen to secure your privacy on Twitch!

Ideally, you never want to show your desktop on stream, and with XSplit Broadcaster just grabbing your gameplay source or Capture card alone is easy. If you’re using an intermission just chatting kind of scene, make sure it’s only your facecam with some graphics rather than just capturing your desktop so people see it when you quit out of a game

If you don’t like to switch scenes, set up a source you can toggle on and off with a macro that will cover your scene. This is mostly an issue for dual PC setups, but it’s good to take heed of this as well if you have to use desktop capture for a certain program or beta of a game that Broadcaster can’t capture yet but this is a rare instance.

Disable Notifications While Streaming

Turning off as many notifications as possible is pretty important if you don’t want to have the first few lines of an email or text come up on screen while you’re streaming. This can also apply to other people’s privacy, for example, Steam will let you know when someone has come online and what they’re playing. This also applies to consoles where you may not want everyone watching to know the usernames of all of your friends that you’re playing with. This can honestly be a big part of the day-to-day when it comes to securing your privacy for streaming to sites like Twitch.

Most instances of this can be combated by going into the Steam or console settings but there are a lot of games that have a streamer mode now which can remove a lot of these issues. Speaking of streamer mode, Apps like Discord are great for having one of these where they can detect if a streaming app is open and hide personal or sensitive information in the app. 

Finally, make sure to check what your streaming account is connected to. If you’ve been using your Twitch account to login into various websites, it’s good to double-check those sites and revoke access from time to time, as sometimes they lapse in security and your data can be exposed.

As always, it’s not fun to read the fine print, but it’s important if you value your privacy and want to maintain an online presence. Secure your online privacy on sites like Twitch and it will be one less thing you need to think about when you next go live! We hope you found this article helpful and if there is anything else you would like us to discuss, the comments section below is the place to let us know!

As live streaming has gotten more sophisticated, from sub alerts to IRL backpacks to surreal visual experiences, so have the platforms that host the content. YouTube, despite being the biggest video platform in the world, has still been playing catchup with its live streaming features. It does however still offer some key advantages and features over its rivals. So we’re going to talk about the important features YouTube Live Streaming has, and how and when you should use them.

Monetization features on YouTube Live

First things first let’s get to the part everyone cares about, making money! In order to monetize your content on YouTube, you need to be a part of the YouTube partner program. You can find out what is required to join the YouTube partner program right here, but basically, you’ll need at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the last 12 months. Once you’ve gotten your partnership, then you have access to all sorts of monetization tools for your stream.

First is the standard pre-roll and mid-roll ads, all you need to do to make use of these is enable monetization for your stream. Next is memberships which are similar to Twitch subscriptions where members unlock special badges and emotes. You can also add perks like member-only videos and live streams. Just make sure you don’t offer things like raffles or other services that would violate their policies or you will get your membership access removed. 

Finally, there are super chats and super stickers. Super chats allow people to have their messages pinned to the top of the chat, the length they stay there will be determined by the amount they’ve contributed. Super stickers work in a similar fashion but are an animated image instead. Super chats, stickers, and memberships all work with web-based alert services like those built into Gamecaster so you can display customized alerts whenever your viewers activate these. 

To summarize, make sure your viewers don’t have ad-block on and give incentives for them to join as members and send in super chats or stickers. Maybe make goals like X super chat amount will unlock a special cosplay or a big enough super sticker and you’ll do a backflip, whatever you think will entertain your audience! We don’t advise doing a backflip unless you’re a trained backflip pro – Ed

Customizing your Streaming Setup

One of the best aspects of YouTube is the amount of customization you can do with your streaming setup. You can set up a static stream key and just go live with whatever content you wish to. This is great if you’ll be streaming consistently on your channel. One recommendation is to add a thumbnail that stands out, so people will click on your live stream from the YouTube home page. 

Now you can also schedule your live streams. This is handy if you’re an event organizer as people can see the scheduled stream on their YouYube feeds and enable reminders. You also can set your YouTube streams to private and give people access via email. They will, however, need to have YouTube accounts for the emails you send them to but these are pretty easy to set up. Next, let’s take a look at some of the features YouTube has for its live streams.

YouTube Live Streaming Tech Features

First is the stream latency setting. This will affect the latency from when you encode the stream to when the viewer sees it. It also affects some of the settings we’ll cover in a bit. For the highest video quality and stream stability, set it to normal, but if your stream requires more viewer interaction, set it to low or ultra-low.

Next is the auto start and stop feature. Now each YouTube live stream is its own distinct event or URL. Generally, when you start streaming with your live streaming software, you also have to start the stream on YouTube. Auto starts and stops mean this is done automatically, but you may not want to enable this because if you don’t end your YouTube live steam, you can still keep streaming to it! Yes, if for some reason your encoding has stopped, you can still stream to that same stream key, and as long as the event hasn’t ended, the stream will continue where it left off. 

Next is DVR, and it’s pretty much in the name, you can scrub between the last four hours of a stream. You can’t enable DVR for ultra-low latency streaming. You can enable 360 videos, just make sure this is enabled for your source as well in XSplit Broadcaster. You can also add additional delay to your stream which can be useful if you’re taking part in a tournament.

You can also add captions to your stream, this can either be the embedded captions in your stream, or you can send them to a specific URL. Some YouTube accounts will have access to automatic captions as well, but this will require normal latency streaming. Finally, ultra-low latency does not allow for streams above 1080p.

XSplit Broadcaster & YouTube

After you’ve configured your live stream, broadcasting is easy with XSplit Broadcaster. You could simply copy the stream key and RTMP URL to a custom RTMP output, however, XSplit has a more streamlined integration. Add a YouTube live output and then log in to your YouTube account, make sure to select the right channel if you have access to multiple YouTube pages.

Broadcaster will automatically configure your streaming settings depending on your resolution and frame rate. Once you go live a window will pop up, here you have the choice to go live to a new event or select the event you have already set up. Then just hit start! XSplit Broadcaster also has sources for alerts built-in for new members, super chats, subscribers, and a live chat display so it’s all there in one package!

Moderation features of YouTube Live

One thing that is important to know is the moderation tools you have available to you on YouTube Live. First, in the live control room, click edit and go to the customization tab. Here you can enable/disable chat and if you want the chat replay to appear on the archive. This basically means that you can decide if you want people to see a replay, as if it were live, of the chat window when people watch you VOD or not.

You can also limit messages to channel subscribers, you can enable a slow mode and set the interval in which people can send messages. Much like other streaming sites, you can add moderators for your chat, hide/ban users, blacklist words, and block links from appearing. 

Streaming to YouTube can be a bit more involved than something like Twitch, but the algorithm is more advanced which means getting people to see your content can be easier, even if the monetization options don’t have something as enticing as free subscriptions with Twitch Prime. It could more valuable for your brand to centralize your VOD and live streaming audiences into one channel, just as long as you don’t forget to spread your content to other social media platforms.

YouTube’s event-focused tools for scheduling and private access make it a very useful platform for event broadcasters for things like corporate events, webinars, product launches, and sporting events. This means that you could hold your all-hands meeting and host a private link, that is scheduled, that only people within your company can see!

Have you tried streaming on YouTube? What do you think of the experience? Let me know in the comments and let me know if this guide is helpful and you’d like similar guides for other platforms, the comment section below is the best place to do that!

Figuring out what to stream can be one of the hardest parts of planning your content as a creator. It’s not always easy to determine what the best games to stream are. Once you start thinking about what you like, what’s coming out soon, what’s popular right now, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by choice. So let’s take a look at some of the top games on Twitch right now and consider if they’re right for you and your audience!

The golden rule of content creation

Perhaps it’s not officially the golden rule of live-streaming, but we must stress that the best game for you to stream is one you love to play. It doesn’t matter if you’re streaming one of the top games on Twitch if you don’t actually enjoy it. Audiences respond to authenticity and will notice if it’s not there. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try new games or formats as you develop your channel, but you’re going to be spending a lot of time on your games as a live-streamer so make sure they’re ones you like. And of course, if you’re not into video games, check out our fantastic guide to streaming things that aren’t games!

The heavyweights in the best games to stream category

It’s hard to ignore what Grand Theft Auto V has achieved on Twitch. This is a relatively old game that has grabbed interest from streamers over the last year thanks to the explosive popularity of its role-playing (RP) servers. Though the game is still very popular, it is important to note that its viewership is now on a downward trend (at the time of writing) according to places like sullygnome. That said, GTA V remains one of the biggest games on the platform in terms of viewership by a wide margin, so it’s not too late to try and get into the world yourself, especially if you have a passion for online role-playing. We also saw a similar trend at the beginning of the year with Among Us, a game that completely blew up, and has now fallen off the charts. 

If you are looking to jump in and stream some of the most popular games, here’s a list of just a few to try.

The Top Games to stream on Twitch Currently (by Viewership):

Updated 10/29/2021

• League of Legends
• Grand Theft Auto 5
• New World
• DOTA 2
• Minecraft
• CS:GO

Don’t overlook the draw of alphas and betas

You love new games, right? Then it will not come as a surprise to you that other gamers really like new games as well. A quick ticket to getting views on Twitch is streaming a game that’s in alpha or beta, as it’s one of the first places for people to see the game in action. There is also the added bonus that the game’s community is in its infancy at this point, so it can be easier to connect with others who are interested and make a name for yourself while the pool of creators is still relatively small. So if you grab an alpha or beta key, get online and don’t keep it to yourself.

One title that’s in exactly this phase is New World, a brand new Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMO) published by Amazon Game Studios. Currently, in beta, it racked up nearly 5.2 million hours viewed in its first few days on Twitch. Another one to watch out for is Back 4 Blood with the chance to earn a beta key actually available by watching other streamers play the game.

Once you’ve picked your game, remember that you’re not locked into it for life. Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins started as a Halo player but became famous for Fortnite. Balancing meeting your audience’s needs while still playing games you love is ultimately the key to success.

When you think of streaming games, your mind turns immediately to video games, but streaming services like Twitch have a healthy Tabletop RPG community that will let you stream Dungeons & Dragons as well as other classic tabletop titles. This quick guide covers how you can organize a tabletop stream, which software you might want to use, and some great examples from the genre for you to watch on Twitch.

Organizing a tabletop stream

Unlike traditional game streaming where you’re streaming your own gameplay in a single or multiplayer game, tabletop streaming involves a certain amount of pre-planning to organize multiple guests and participants. If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to stream a video game version of D&D to Twitch, check out D&D Online, an MMO based on the original tabletop game.

However, for that traditional tabletop experience, you’ll need other people either gathered physically together or, perhaps more practically, in a video chat. If you want to organize a game and need more people, why not advertise your event on social media, or check out conversations on Reddit and Discord?

Which software should you use to stream Dungeons & Dragons?

Assuming your game is organized as an online video call, you need a way to arrange those different calls and stream them too. One of the easiest solutions is to use XSplit Broadcaster and Skype along with NewTek’s Network Device Interface (NDI). This allows you to bring each person in the Skype call into XSplit Broadcaster as an individual source which you can then easily place and resize. This saves having to capture parts of a call window as you would with something like Zoom.

With XSplit Broadcaster, you can easily organize and customize your layout and theme to give it an epic D&D makeover. You can even add your own overlays for further customization, helping to bring your game to life and capture your audience’s attention. If you browse through some channels on Twitch, for instance, you’ll see it’s common for the Dungeon Master to appear in a larger window than the players as an easy visual reference for someone joining the stream.

Put yourself in the action as you stream Dungeons and Dragons

Another tool that can improve the look of your tabletop stream is XSplit VCam. It allows you to remove and replace your background, or simply blur it so the focus is on the person – and it’s all possible without a green screen. This can provide an extra layer of fun to D&D gameplay, by changing backgrounds to suit the action of the game as you go along streaming Dungeons and Dragons.

For example, if players were to find themselves wandering through the Forgotten Realms or trapped in Castle Darkhold, their background could change to represent that location. Check out royalty-free image sites such as Pixabay for inspiration.

How to visually represent the game

People watching the stream will be focused on the players and their choices. However, they’ll also want to keep up with where the players are, so you want to visualize it somehow as you stream dungeons and dragons.

Perhaps the simplest way to represent a tabletop game is to film it. You can set up an additional camera as a source over the board and move the pieces yourselves. However, this approach can be slow and not very clear on a stream. One alternative is to create custom maps to help your audience visualize your gameplay. If you’re not an artist, there are many map tools listed on D&D Compendium to explore.

Some tabletop streams to watch

Before creating your own stream, you may find it helpful to watch some others to get a good idea of how game masters have perfected their multi-cam tabletop streams to stream dungeons and dragons. Helpfully, Twitch has its own dedicated Dungeons & Dragons area, and, with over 450,000 followers, there are usually lots of games to view. One of the more popular D&D streams is High Rollers DND, showcasing a smart and engaging layout for D&D games. There’s also Rivals of Waterdeep, a D&D actual play stream brought to you by the official D&D Twitch channel.

Beyond D&D, there are a few other areas of Twitch you might like to explore to get more ideas and inspiration. These include Tabletop RPGs and Board Games.

For a more in-depth look at how XSplit Broadcaster can help your stream, check out this interview with tabletop gaming aficionado and member of Rivals of Waterdeep, Tanya De Pass.

Automation makes life easier, so why not make your streaming life easier as well with macros! Live stream automation with macros means you can do all sorts of things! From your camera zooming in when you scream playing a horror game to triggering a timed scene change. So let’s discuss how macros and automation can make your streams easier and more powerful!

What are Macros?

Macros are an extension built into XSplit Broadcaster, if you don’t have macros installed, you can go into the plugins store (which can be found by going to the Tools menu and selecting Plugin Store), search for macros, and install it easily. The first time running macros you will need to give permissions so be sure to click OK. This is the first step to full live streaming automation!

Macros are basically scripts or a series of commands that are run when a basic condition is met. So the condition is when something happens, it can be on pressing a key when the audio is at a certain level, when a video stops playing at a specific time, there are really tons of possible event types and you can write your own custom scripts.

So when you set an event type, you can then select an action to happen. This could be switching to a scene, starting a stream, opening a projector, or event running another macro. You can have multiple actions happen after an event. You can even have multiple macros running simultaneously, which really means if you timed everything right you could add automation to almost all of your stream!

You can test your macros and they will only be active when the event listener is enabled. Now the possibilities are endless with macros, but I’d like to talk through some cool examples of how you can use them. For all the samples I show here, I’ll leave a link below each section to download the macros so you can import them into your own presentation and try them out.

Automate Live Stream Commercial Breaks

So if you’re producing a live show, timing is everything, and live stream automation can help! You don’t want to miss a cue and cut back to talent too early or too late, so why not set a macro to automate your ad break? As Forbes said, streaming is presenting more opportunities for brands so getting this right could be important! If your ad break is running a series of videos in a playlist, it’s simple to automate this.

First set up your ad break scene. If you have a series of video and image ads, I recommend using your video editing software to stitch these together into a single file. Then in macros set up a macro for on key down. Then just set the key. Then set the action to switch to a scene, and select the scene with the ad break video. Enable the event listener and then set up another macro. This time the event is when a media source stops. Select your ad break video file then set the action to switch the scene to whichever scene you go to after an ad break.

You can add more macros to make this more complex like cutting to the ads intro video after a break or implementing custom stinger transitions.

Download this macro here

Starting a stream on time

If you need to start a stream at an exact time, regardless if you’re ready or not for a client, then this is a useful macro!

For the event, set the scheduled time and select the time your stream needs to start. Then set the switch to the scene and select a scene with a standby graphic that’s safe to start the stream with. Then set an action to start the stream. Make sure the event listener is on and you’re ready to go!

Download this macro here.

Always stream and record

So one of the mistakes I always make when doing an event is not starting the recording when I start the stream. Depending on the format of your show, this can be an absolutely devastating error if you promised your client a high-quality archive or if your internet goes out and you want to keep capturing a live event for later upload.

So, you use macros to set a hotkey that will activate your stream and recording. This is especially useful if you’re planning to stream to many different platforms or record multiple scenes.

Download this macro here.

IRL Live Streaming Automation

A lot of IRL streamers actually relay the stream from their IRL backpack to a cloud PC running broadcasting software. This is to keep their stream live when they go into an area where their cell reception is cut off. This can also be managed by macros.

Set an event for when a stream source is online, this is the RTMP feed source you’ve added to your IRL backpack. Set the action to switch to the scene with the RTMP feed. Then set up a macro for when an RTMP source goes offline. Have it switch to a standby screen for whenever your stream feed re-connects.

This solution can also be used as a backup system for always keeping a stream online if you’re doing a project for a client, you would just need to set up an RTMP server to output an RTMP to this relay system.

Download these macros here.

There are really endless ways you can use macros for live stream automation, this is only a small sample of use cases. The possibilities are endless so play around with the extension and see what you come up with! What’s the most inventive use you’ve found for our macro system? Or if you’ve never used it before, what do you think this might be helpful for? Let us know in the comments below!

Back in the day streaming sites were their own niche, sites like justin.tv, livestream.com and ustream all specializing in different types of streaming content. Now every social media site has to have some form of live streaming functionality, but which site is the best place to stream your content? Also, quick disclaimer, we’re not going to say what is the best streaming site, because there isn’t one. It all depends on where your audience is, for you or for your client if you’re doing some corporate streaming work. This is also going to be focused on sites for western audiences, as viewers in Southeast Asia, or China have other sites where the viewership is centralized like Douyu TV or Bigo Live.

Where should you stream gaming content?

For gaming, Twitch still theoretically sits on top, as it was at the forefront of the gaming revolution when it comes to streaming. However, it still lags behind its competition in terms of discoverability. For brands, in terms of digital marketing, Twitch does have its own advertising sales team, but you need to contact them directly to get started.

If discoverability and digital marketing opportunities are important, traditional social media marketing sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have the advantage. The best options, in this case, are YouTube and Facebook, both of which have cultivated a large gaming audience and allow broadcasters to promote live streams to their existing fanbase created on their pages.

YouTube allows display ads to be run to promote live streams, Facebook does not allow direct boosting of live streams, but you can boost a post promoting the live stream and cross-post your live stream on pages that have given you permission.

Finally, there’s reporting to consider, and in this case, lord Google wins with absurdly detailed analytics reporting on all your content. Trust me, when it comes to growth knowing who your audience is and how they found you can be key!

IRL/LifeCasting

Now if you’re lifecasting or streaming IRL content, it will really depend on where your audience is. The aforementioned sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch all support just chatting content including things like talk shows and travel/vlogging which they have categories for. However, if your fans are on Instagram or Tiktok, things are a bit more limited.

In the video below we discussed how you can get set up to stream on Instagram, though it’s not quite as straightforward as you might hope. For now, TikTok only offers live streaming access to some accounts, however, it likely will soon roll out access to more accounts, and all you have to do is pull a stream key from the app and use XSplit’s custom RTMP to broadcast.

Influencer or Affiliate Sales content?

If you’re looking to be your own home shopping network, the traditional live streaming site of choice was Facebook, however, their pivot towards gaming means your content will be hard to find on the site outside your usual fans. One platform you may want to consider, depending on your region, is Amazon live.

Yes, Amazon.com has its own streaming service outside of Twitch and it’s purely focused on e-commerce. All you need to be is an Amazon store or affiliate and you can download their Amazon Live App which will allow you to generate a stream key to go live on their site via a custom RTMP.

The great thing about Amazon is you can set up a carousel of products on your live page that people can purchase from your store or you earn a commission via affiliate sales! You can even create promo codes for your products to share on stream to further influence sales. Now if you’re in other regions, such as Southeast Asia, many of the e-commerce platforms like Shopee have integrated live streaming in a similar manner on their site.

Corporate Live Streaming

Now perhaps the audience is your client, be it a wedding, corporate event, or amateur sporting event. Usually, the client’s major concerns are reliability, ease of use, and security, and in this case, I believe YouTube is the best solution.

In terms of reliability, well you can’t beat YouTube, it works well everywhere and if your client anticipates viewers in areas with spotty internet connections, every stream is transcoded and you can even stream up to 4k while people watch you as low as 140p! For ease of use, well it’s YouTube, everyone should know how to watch a YouTube video and have an account. Finally, in terms of security, you can make your YouTube streams private and invite people via email.

If your YouTube account is a company account you can actually create events and enable them to be visible to only those within the organization, which saves time on adding potentially hundreds of emails. Now, of course, there are options like dacast and wowza which will give you white label solutions, password-protected streams, and embeddable players, but these get expensive. If you’d like to know about these solutions though, do leave a comment below.

Should I stream to everywhere at once?

If you’re still not quite sure where you want to stream, then stream to as many places as you want! XSplit Broadcaster supports multi-streaming, which means you can broadcast to as many platforms as you’d like, but you will need a license. You can find out how to set that up right here! The big advantage to this is you can pull from multiple places you have audiences at once and find where your best platform for live streaming is, catering your content more to one place over time. You may also find that you do well streaming in multiple places as is!

But I want to know from you! What sites do you use? And Where have you had to most success? What are some key features you need from a streaming site? Let me know in the comments and if there’s anything else you would like us to discuss, that’s the place to let us know as well!

Hello fellow TikTokkers! So you’ve decided to expand your social media empire to the realm of TikTok. It’s a great place for putting out day-to-day moments of your life, but what if you want to put out TikToks of your gameplay or short interviews, this isn’t so simple. So right here we’re going to take a look at how to record gameplay for TikTok and how you can quickly produce gaming-focused content!

Setup Your Gameplay for TikTok

We’ll be using XSplit Broadcaster for recording gameplay for TikTok so first let’s do some quick setup.

Tiktok videos are in a 9:16 resolution, so basically set your resolution in XSplit to 1080×1920 and frame rate to 29.97. This is easily done by clicking the dropdown menu in the top left of Broadcaster.

Next, let’s set up the recording settings. Click on the Record drop-down menu and click the cog next to it to open the recording settings. Set standard as the quality setting as with TikTok there is a file size limit on recordings. If you will be editing this gameplay recording for TikTok in a program like Adobe Premiere Pro make sure to enable multi-track audio and force constant frame rate.

Capturing Gameplay for TikTok

If you want to record your PC games for TikTok it’s easy, just add the game source to your scene and position it accordingly. You can do this by clicking Add Source > Game Capture if you’re capturing a PC game natively, or if you’re getting a second PC/Console through a capture card you can click Add Source > Devices > Video > [the name of your capture card]. You can also add your webcam and position it in the same menu!

Now if you want to fill up the video of the gameplay you recorded for TikTok, you can use a color matte to add a background and add text using the text source. This is easily done by clicking Add Source > General Widgets > Colour Matte and Add Source > Text.

Recording Interviews

If you’re planning to collaborate with other creators or do some short interviews, it’s easy to set this up as well. Just add your webcam, then use your video chat app of choice, and screen capture the call window. We’ve detailed how you can easily set this up before on the blog.

You can hold alt to crop the video so you can position it nicely to fit the video area. This is a really useful feature on any source in XSplit Broadcaster, the alt key on your keyboard will enable you to do this! You can even add filters to your face as well by right-clicking on the camera source > Effects > Filters!

Make sure to select your microphone in the audio settings menu (Tools > Settings > Audio) and use the audio mixer to set the levels for you and your guest properly. You can get to the Audio Mixer in the Tools menu as well! If you enabled multitrack audio, you can also adjust these levels in your video editor. This can be very helpful when you’re going to record gameplay for TikTok.

When your file is ready you can just upload it directly to your TikTok account via the web. I would say that you don’t need masterful editing, the important part is getting the content out there and keep improving as you go! As Forbes mentioned, TikTok is constantly seeing massive growth with one in six people in the US actively using the app in September 2020 so it’s a good time to get involved! With that being said, what’s your favorite gaming content on Tiktok? What social media sites do you feel have helped build your audience?

We’re interested in what you have to say in the comments about this one, be sure to let us know if this guide was useful and if you want more content like this about TikTok or anything we should be discussing here for that matter!

This year crypto and the global chip shortage have dramatically inflated prices on PC components, specifically CPUs and GPUs. In fact, if you took a look at the video we published earlier this year about building a streaming PC, most of the builds we’ve looked at have doubled in price! These are the centerpieces of any new PC build and are especially important for determining the performance of your streaming PC. So what is an amazing streamer to do? Well, if you don’t mind some compromises, in this post we’re going to take a look at how you can snag yourself a cheap live streaming PC in 2021.

Criteria

One of the first things I’d like to point out is that no brands were involved in this, which is the case with all our content unless otherwise stated, the opinions here are purely subjective! – Ed

Our goal is to find a cheap live streaming PC that can encode a decent quality 60fps 1080p stream, on the GPU side, it will mean we lean toward NVIDIA since NVENC is such a powerful encoding tool for gaming and event streamers. On the CPU side, it’s basically dead even between Intel and AMD, all that matters is whichever gives the most cores at the cheapest price. Also, the focus will be people using these machines as dedicated streaming PCs rather than your primary gaming machine, so keep that in mind.

Custom Build

First up, this one is for all the diehard PC enthusiasts that only build their own machines. Now, if you’re planning to game and stream on the same PC, this isn’t going to be the build for you. You either have to eat the scalper’s tax to get a decent GPU or take a look at some of the laptop options we’ll discuss later on. But if you’re just building a cheap living streaming PC dedicated purely to encoding, then you have some choices.

Basically, you’re going for the CPU that will give you the best value. So, you’ll have to go back a couple of generations and go for a 10th Gen i7 or a 1st GEN AMD Threadripper, both of which clock in under $300 USD. Get the thread ripper if you’ll have a lot of capture card inputs and go for the i7 if it will just be your streaming PC. Both will allow encoding a solid 1080p stream.

I’ve linked some potential builds below, but you can make this even cheaper if you can use any spare parts you may have available.

PC 1 (AMD): https://pcpartpicker.com/list/pNgNt8
PC 2 (Intel): https://pcpartpicker.com/list/WqBYsX

Pre-built

If you’re going to want the latest and greatest components for your streaming PC, well you’re going to have to go to the land of pre-builds. These are the only options for getting access to the latest AMD and NVIDIA GPUS for reasonable prices. For some of the more boutique stores, you’re likely going to get the best prices from iBUYPOWER and Cyberpower, Linus Tech Tips actually did an amazing video where they go through the buying experience from different PC manufacturers.

Of the big boys like Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, etc it really depends on your region. I have to say that going back to Linus’ video, I would be inclined to give HP a try, especially their Omen series. They have 10th gen Intel PCs with 20 series GPUs that are great starting points for any game and event streamers looking for a cheap live streaming PC.

Laptops

Finally, chances are one of the best places you’ll find a deal on streaming PCs are laptops. Mainly because retailers constantly have to clear out supplies every year to make space for all the new toys that get announced at CES, Computex, and the like. So for a laptop, we’re primarily looking for two things, at least a 1660 GPU and thunderbolt ports.

MSI makes great gaming laptops with both, and it’s a thin and light laptop which means you’ll be able to take it with you to events or just keep it tucked away at home. The 1660 means you’ll have access to the best version of NVENC and the thunderbolt port means you can add an enclosure to install multiple capture cards.

Now if for some reason you need a gaming monster, Gigabyte’s aero line is usually a good bet, but with the 30 series cards one important thing to note is that the cards will have different wattages which will affect their performance, so be sure to check that if that is important to you for gaming.

Finally, there’s always a ton of refurbished laptops on the larger manufacturer’s sites, so be sure to check these sections as you can get an amazing deal on a like-new laptop.

We hope we have saved you a few bucks and got you up and streaming with this blog, but be sure to let us know the cheap live streaming setups you’ve made in the comments!

Having a dedicated gaming mouse can make all the difference when playing and streaming games but finding a cheap one can be tough. They often feature more buttons than a standard mouse, allowing for full control customization. They also tend to be more accurate and reactive when you need to make those precision shots. If you’re engaging in long gaming sessions through the night, then you might also want to consider how ergonomic your mouse is. Let’s have a look at what features you can expect in an affordable gaming mouse in 2021.

How many buttons do you need?

Extra mouse buttons allow for quicker input, which can make the difference between life and death in a gaming situation. In addition to the two standard buttons, an affordable gaming mouse will hopefully offer some side buttons or even trigger buttons. The Razer Basilisk X HyperSpeed, for example, features six buttons, which can be customized further by creating macros to offer secondary use functionality.

For MMO players, check out the Redragon M908 Impact. You’re unlikely to find another cheap gaming mouse with 18 programmable buttons plus LED backlighting – it’s perfect for casting different spells or activating a vast range of abilities in a MOBA.

The comfort of ergonomics

If you plan on spending long sessions streaming or gaming, you need an affordable gaming mouse that’s comfortable in your hand. The Razer Basilisk V2 has a longer, angular shape, textured rubber grip, and thumb rest that allow for comfortable use over extended periods.

The other option you could look at is a vertical mouse like the DELUX M618 Plus. It looks like a hybrid between a joystick and a regular mouse. The vertical form of the mouse might take some getting used to, but it’s designed to fit your natural grip better. Its unusual shape should help prevent hand fatigue and reduce muscular strain.

Wired or wireless?

When you’re streaming games, it’s highly recommended that you use a wired Ethernet cable rather than rely on Wi-Fi, which can drop and affect the quality of your stream. However, the same rule does not necessarily apply to wireless mice.

The wireless Corsair Harpoon, for instance, is a relatively affordable gaming mouse, especially from this high-end brand, and removes the need for wires cluttering your desk. It comes packed with Corsair’s Slipstream wireless technology, which means you could reach latency speeds of under 1ms. The battery will last for 30 hours in Slipstream mode or 60 hours if you switch to the power-saving Bluetooth mode. For a wireless mouse with longer battery life, check out the aforementioned Razer Basilisk X HyperSpeed, which offers ultra-fast wireless performance for up to 285 hours on a single charge.

Pinpoint accuracy for FPS sniper shots

For some games, the DPI of your mouse may not matter considerably, but for FPS games like the Counter-Strike or Call of Duty series, you need pinpoint accuracy to pull off game-winning shots. The Corsair Sabre RBG Pro has been designed and tested by esport professionals for this very purpose, with an 18,000 DPI optical sensor and 450 IPS tracking at up to 50G acceleration.

An alternative is the aforementioned ergonomic Razer Basilisk V2, with a 20,000 DPI optical sensor designed to detect the slightest movement. Similarly, the wireless Basilisk X HyperSpeed features a 5G advanced optical sensor with 16,000 DPI to track your every move with ultra-fine precision.

Finding the right affordable gaming mouse can reduce your input lag and make for better streams thanks to some better gaming skills on display. You also want to make sure you have a gaming keyboard that is just as durable and as fast as your mouse, something we will cover in a future post so be sure to head back to the blog for more on that! What mouse do you use? Be sure to let us know your favorite gaming mouse in the comments below!