My First Live Stream Event on YouTube

Steve and I decided that we would take turns interviewing guests for the live stream.

Choosing a Platform

The Sunday before Microsoft Business Applications Summit, I was involved in Hack4Good and live streamed #TeamBlue (my team) on Twitch as we worked through the day building our app on the Power Platform.

For the event though, I decide to use YouTube as my live stream platform, as I felt it is more business focused than Twitch. The choice to go with YouTube was influenced by my recent increase in posting videos to YouTube and creating engagement with the community using this platform.

My Rig for the Live Stream

The following is the list of equipment broken into the key categories I considered when putting together my rig.

Set design

The style I was going for was similar to what I have seen in interviews conducted on TED talks.  Two comfortable armchairs, with a backdrop behind to avoid the distraction of people moving around on the expo floor.  Very simple, and good because it didn’t need to occupy much floor area. We had a table set up in front of the chairs for the computer and audio equipment.

The area needs to be cordoned off as you will be surprised how many people tried to walk through the set while recording.

Audio

For audio, I decided to use lap mics as I did not have an extra set of hands to run a boom mic.  The audio equipment was made up of the following:

Lighting

For recording training videos for Microsoft, I use what is called LED 3-point lighting and have added lights to illuminate my background. For this project, I wanted to take only a minimum and used the following:

Video

For the video, I used my Sony cameras as follows:

Computer
Other

A few other general items I used included:

Failure

We had one massive fail on the first day, and that was that we tried to stream over Wi-Fi. As soon as people started arriving the conference Wi-Fi died, which unfortunately meant the day one video was not of the best quality and we suffered for it. To solve this for day 2, we had a wired RJ45 internet connection installed overnight thanks to Ama and from then on everything worked perfectly. We tried running from a mobile hotspot as well, but it was no better than the Wi-Fi.

Post Event

For my next event, I am going to use different lights and cameras and plan to add a total of four cameras for better live streaming. I will also set up the way people can live chat from the stream on YouTube better. Next time all guests will be scheduled in advance to maximize the time.

Lessons Learned
  1. Know your equipment and all the connection cables needed
  2. You need everything operating on USB 3.0, and make sure your USB hubs have an external power supply
  3. Separate USB hubs to power your cameras than the USB hub used for HDMI
  4. Must have wired internet connection to do this justice

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them in the comments below.

ABOUT US

My wife, Meg, and I love visiting the world, we want to make sure we finish life empty and have experienced everything this world has to offer, we try and get away as often as possible and have spent the last seven years …

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