Live Video Production or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Broken Brain
In 2014, I started a little gaming show with my friend Tim. Originally it was going to be just a little series about this obscure game that had little-to-no YouTube presence named Vangers.
Cut to a few years later and I was running thin on patience having to edit every episode we put up. It was still fun recording, but the laundry list of things I was responsible for outside the show had now accrued to a point where sustainability was now a concern.
Streaming was not a new technology or phenomenon, but I still was ignorant of it beyond watching GDQ whenever that came around. The thought process behind a switch to streaming was that it would save me time, as the show wouldn’t need any time in post. The key point being that it was an effort to save time, a thing we should keep in mind for later. After doing a little research, it was apparent people seemed to be coalescing around Twitch as the platform de jour for Gamers™️. In addition, almost every streamer seemed to use a program called Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) to do it. Equipped with these two pieces of knowledge I set out to transform Tim and Matt Play from a slickly edited package into anything goes, live, beacon of chaos.
Our quinceañera was on Jan 11, 2018.
An inauspicious start if there ever were one. The template was basic, dimensions were off, and our capture card was not fantastic. But we were out there baby!
And that very well could have been the boring end of the story, however, much like this post, I couldn’t leave well-enough alone. I started doing what I always do, messing with stuff. My bedtime prayer is always the same one, “Lord, forgive me, for I have tinkered.” It always starts innocently enough, just some light tweaking, maybe adjusting a dial here or there. A sprucing up, shaving off the rough edges, then you have so many cables going to so many things you look like you are the protagonist in Serial Experiments Lain.
(Here is a little warning to skip this next paragraph if you find it too much)
First it was being able to hook up multiple consoles without having to mess with hooking and unhooking cables. Well, I needed switching gear for that. I wanted to move my main PC to another room, a dedicated office, so those cable runs would be a little too long, so I’ll need a dedicated streaming PC. I know where there are cheap PCs, Purdue Salvage. Great, great this is so much easier. And while I’m at it, I’ll have to transfer all the templates I made for OBS to the machine. Well, I’m going to have to rearrange and re-cable the entertainment center to accommodate the streaming PC. Truth be told, it’s not big enough so I’ll really have to upgrade that, and wire racks would work well. But wire racks can’t hold a TV, so I’ll have to build a custom TV mount for the rack. Ok great, great, this is really coming together, this is so it. But the audio quality is kind of butt, I wonder how much it would be to get our own mics. Oh, my cousin has some USB mics, these will work great. Wow, this is really something, sound quality has really increased. However, these mics keep disconnecting. I think we are hitting the limits on these USB ports. No, it’s a power issue, I need a powered USB hub. Why does OBS keep changing the mic inputs on every Windows update? Well, with these additions the computer is kind of chugging with the graphics card it has. I wonder how much a new one would cost. Oh nice like $50 and it can encode on the card, that should free up the CPU. Well, it could really use some more RAM, too. Oh, 4k is coming out, I should make sure I can support capturing that. Well, I’ll need new switching equipment and a capture card for that. That’s going to be pricey, I wonder how I can do this cheaply. Oh, this is looking crispy. Fuck, Covid, what the fuck is Covid? Well, let’s make this work remotely. How are Tim and I going to be able to play together and capture it all live on Twitch. Well, I rigged something together. Well, now we wait it out. Wait, there is a cheap old capture card that some eBay sellers are getting rid of at bargain basement prices that can capture RGB 444 for multiple input sources. Well, I would be stupid to pass this up. Wow, this is a big visual upgrade. But I need to figure out how to extract HDMI audio and capture it digitally. Well, there are some expensive options, I wonder if this USB card from AliExpress would work. No, that’s no good. Wait, this old card I can order from the middle east might work. Welp, the first one got chewed up in shipping. I hope the next one works. Well, they don’t make drivers for it anymore, I wonder if these Windows 7 drivers work on Windows 10. Alright, they do! Audio has been solved. Well, this CPU is being pinned at 100% now, I wonder if I can upgrade it, wow for $30 I can swap it for a 4 core 8 thread one. Ok, let’s do it. Well, that leaves more headroom to do more. Wow, this cool video shows how there are HD standards for analog cameras, but they exist for security cameras. How could I incorporate this? This might be my key to multi-cam and longer cable runs. Coax cable is dirt cheap. I wonder if I could capture this over HDMI, oh there is a converter perfect. I bet if I get an old piece of broadcast equipment with serial, I could reverse engineer it and control it via software. That would give me a way to automate the camera switching. Oh, it totally works, this is so sick. I want people to be able to join the show if they want. How can I route this audio correctly? Voicemeeter potato looks really complicated. I wonder if I bash my head against it enough, I’ll get it. Ok, ok, it’s not too bad, just a steep initial learning curve. Wow, we can have people “call-in” to the show if they join the discord and we can talk to them. This is great. But when I mention to people “call-in” they think with a phone. I wonder if I could do that. Oh, I bet using VoIP stuff I could actually make a real call-in show, too. But I want everyone to hear each other regardless of what they are using to call in. Voicemeeter can probably handle this, but I need to get creative with it. I also want to easily answer and hang up using my stream deck knockoff. Oh, this software can handle telnet, I bet I can make a simple web server that translates it to telnet commands. Oh, hell yeah, I can’t believe it works. Well, now OBS keeps crashing, I think I’m overloading it, but I don’t want to give any of it up. I’ve been looking into tv production and vMix looks pretty solid, but its workflow is pretty different. A learning curve, but I think I’m getting the hang of it. Now I have to port all my automations to work with it. Wow, that’s really working well, but my CPU is still spiking. I probably need to start looking into upgrading my stream PC as it’s starting to show its age. Maybe multiple PCs to handle different tasks.
Here is where we are today, something that was OSTENSIBLY supposed to save me time has now ballooned into something that is legitimately starting to resemble a real live production space. Something I had no intention of happening. The previous paragraph has been left tedious and disjointed on purpose. At the risk of being overwrought, I tried to capture what the slide felt like looking back, and what it’s like to exist in this mortal coil. It’s absurd to the point of comedy.
It’s not done either. I know this. It’s a challenge to put something down. My brain runs rampant with alterations and ways to improve the final product. I feel like I’m constantly racing against myself to put something out. If I ruminate too much on a project, it will grow to such complexity as to render its implementation approach the impossible. If I can finish it before my addled brain catches me, I can slip one past the guards as it were.
This post is a prime example of what I’m talking about. This was supposed to be about the first full game I finished on my solo stream, and how it was neat. HOW DID WE GET HERE?! I can’t tell you exactly how we got here, but I can say that it’s where we are now, and how it’s exhausting dealing with this.
Firstly, check out the playlist. It was a lot of fun, and I think it really turned out well. You can really see the progression of solving problems as they come up across the episodes.
Really, I tricked you, the point of this whole damn thing is a reminder to myself to stop trying to fight against how you process information and how your brain works. I’ve spent my whole life trying to cage and tame this; mash it into a box it will never fit. I will never be someone who can just plan things and let them be how they are. I will always try to make it better and get lost on a tangent while making that happen which will lead me somewhere else. In the process I’ll learn how RGB color works, how TV production works, how a video codec functions, and how VoIP telephones work.
That is cool. That, actually, rules, in fact, and is sick.
Also, I tricked you again, this is actually about why Tim and Matt Play is constantly plagued with audio issues.