- Live streaming is a
great way to have fun and connect with your community, but setting up a live stream
that looks and sounds great can be a little tricky. (upbeat music) - My name is Tom, this is
the Enthusiasm Project. And today I'm gonna walk you through how we set up our live
stream from start to finish, because I've started
streaming more on my channel and my wife, Heather and I, who she is filming this by the way, do a weekly live stream
podcast on her channel as well. So I think we've got our
system dialed in pretty well. And now you can see why we're
the live stream dream team. We do most of our live streams
here at my desk in the room that I normally do everything. The live streams are a
little more cluttered than a regular video because everything is running all at once. I do use my MacBook Pro to run the streams and I do keep it closed
just to save some space. I have it connected to this
external display over here. If I didn't have this, I would
just have the MacBook open. The MacBook is plugged into power because you gotta make sure
the computer is having power for the whole duration of the stream. And then the camera that I use
is actually not this camera, but that camera, which is the EOS R and the
Sigma 24 millimeter 1.4, as many of you know that's
my camera and lens of choice because I love them. I use that camera for streaming
because it looks great, it has clean HDMI out and
has terrific autofocus so we just stay in focus, we don't have to think
about it the whole time, because there's no one behind the camera. For the sake of the setup though, I'm gonna use the 6D
with a different lens, just as kind of an example. The tripod setup is
the edelkrone SliderONE with the edelkrone HeadONE and
then a Manfrotto tripod head. And the camera just goes
right on top of there. And then typically what I
actually do is open up the closet and put the camera kind
of back a little bit. It gets a direct head-on shot
of us sitting behind the desk. And there's usually my
chair and Heather's chair. So it kinda gets cramped. And then also our golden
retrievers under the desk. And usually our puppy is
over here in his crate. So it's really cramped when
we're doing our live streams. Obviously I have to use an
adapter for the MacBook, and that's just where
the Cam Link 4K goes in. This is really the heart of a live stream 'cause it's what takes
the signal from the camera and puts it into the computer. And then we just use an
HDMI cord to connect. It's got full-size HDMI on one side, and for the EOS R, it has a mini HDMI
connector on the other side. Now the reason that we use
the SliderOne and the HeadONE is because we don't have a camera operator and we realized there's a way to add a little bit of dynamic
movement to a live stream, even though there's no
one behind the camera. Both of these things are app-controlled. So all I have to do is
connect the batteries, which are the exact same
batteries that my cameras take. So this whole setup uses the same battery and the same charger. There's one battery for the slider, one battery for the tripod head, and it all gets connected through the app. The app automatically detects which Edelkrone components I have and then gives me panning
and tilting options. So what I do is set the camera where
I want at this end, marking that as a key pose, move the camera to the other side, where basically the camera's
just going back and forth, but it's staying focused on us in the center of the frame. And then I set that as
key pose number two, and then all I need to do
once I have these two poses is I don't have the speed too fast. I just tap them both at the same time. And now as long as my phone
is just on over there, the camera and the slider will just keep going back and forth until the batteries run out, which we've never even had
the batteries come close to running out during a live stream. And that's pretty much
our whole camera setup. But as you know, audio is half a video. So what on earth do we do for audio? I can't imagine what device I would use for a live stream with audio. Oh, wait, it's the RODECaster. So you got the RODECaster
and the two PodMics, which by the way, Rode did send me this, which is probably the coolest thing I've ever gotten for free. It's a pin that says the RODECaster Pro. This is like one of my favorite
possessions, pin sessions. So then we just plug in the
power to the RODECaster. Of course, you could
always just use a USB mic, like a Yeti or something
for a live stream, which Heather and I have done a lot. But since we also do
record our live stream and put it up as a podcast, the
RODECaster just makes sense. I did get these
windscreens for my PodMics, which are the Rode WS2 and they fit great. They actually do improve
the sound quality. They just don't look as cool. (chuckles) So half the time we end
up using them like this, 'cause these just look better on screen. And then the other half
kind of just depending on the mood we're in,
we use the windscreen. Then we got cables. I did go on Amazon and
buy specific XLR cables. Heather's hair color is purple. So hers is purple to her mic. My favorite color is blue. So of course, my cable is blue. And the different colors actually do look really cool on camera. It seems like a small detail, but the number of people we've
had comment on our cables is kind of ridiculous. So get some color cables, they
really do make a difference. Our lighting setup really doesn't change for my normal videos or
the studio tour video that we did a while ago. We've got the FalconEyes
key light, that stays there. We've got the Dracast
fill light over there. And then I did get this little Intellytech Pocket Cannon Mini as our backlight and our hair light. And that has a soft box on it. So those are our main lights. And then there's little
accent lights throughout. That really hasn't changed
since the studio tour video, which you haven't seen that. Check that out and it'll
kinda tell you everything that's in this room beyond
just live streaming. If we wanna play audio from the computer, we need a TRS cable. So this plugs into the smartphone
channel of the RODECaster, and then into the headphone
jack of the MacBook. And now I can bring in
sounds from the MacBook into the RODECaster. And then also I use
this little tiny speaker plugged into one of the
headphone monitoring outputs, and this is turned down usually very low. So if we get something like a super chat or somebody makes a joke and
we wanna make a sound effect, we can hear the sound effects and things that are happening without it interfering with the recording. Usually I do have my headphones
plugged into the RODECaster and sometimes I'll wear them
during the stream to monitor. And sometimes I kind of just check and then keep them under the desk. So we do have ways to monitor our audio. It's just, we'd like to
just have conversations and keep things natural. So, paying attention to
monitoring all this stuff. I know that's the technically
correct way to do it, but it's not always the most conducive way to an organic conversation. And that's really what we wanna do. We wanna talk to each
other during our streams. We wanna talk to people who
are watching the streams, and we want that to be the priority over making sure every level
is perfect at every second. Once we have all this set up, the software that I used
to stream used to be OBS, which is great and it's free, but it can be a little
complicated and a little clunky. And I was finding myself
getting bogged down in all of the settings to get the stream, to look the way that I wanted it, that it just kinda became a burden. And so Heather introduced
me to StreamYard. This is not an ad but
StreamYard is terrific. It's really simple. So once everything is hooked up, all I have to do is set up my stream, which you just click add a new stream. You can select which camera you wanna use. I just select Cam Link and then audio. Oh, got to plug in the RODECaster. So I just use a USB-C cable. I knew there was an extra port
here that wasn't being used. And I was like, hmm, what's that for? It's for the RODECaster . So plug it in and now you can see how
plug and play it actually is 'cause it does show up
immediately, RODECaster a mic. I can see that these
mics are getting inputs. And then speaker, we'll
just do the headphones. And then there we go, we're all set. on our camera right now,
since I'm using the 6D, which I don't normally, it
has all the info on screen. 6D doesn't have clean HDMI out. And then we enter our broadcast studio. From there, we're just
a source in the bottom. I click to add it to the stream and then we pop up right here. And then if I, there we go. And then I'm here and I'm ready to stream and I can talk into the mic and then I can be like, hey,
Heather, how are you doing? And she'll be like, I'm doing super great. You're the best has been in the world. I'm like, thanks for
listening, that's our show. And then from this point of view, you can actually see the
movement of this camera sort of just adding in a
little bit of parallax, adding in a little visual interest if we're streaming for one,
one and 1/2, two hours. It's nice not to just have
the camera in one spot. Sometimes, though I should also mention, Heather usually has her laptop open and she's logged into
StreamYard just wirelessly. And she's usually the one who's
moderating all the comments and handling that because one of the best
things about StreamYard is when there are comments, you can click the comment and it will pop up on
screen just like this, with the person's avatar and their name. It's a great way to just be interactive. I had no easy way of just doing
it that freely within OBS. And then you click the comment
again and it disappears. There are other options
besides StreamYard, but it really has been
working great for us. And we haven't done this yet, but the way that we added
ourselves down here in the bottom, you can get 10 other people
or nine other people, maybe 10 total. You can give them a link
almost like a Zoom meeting, and then they will pop up
here and you can add them and like split screen and
all these different shots and ways of incorporating
other people live into your stream. I think that is really cool and we're excited to
play with that a bit more in the future. So this is pretty much
everything for our stream. It works really well for us. It sort of seems complicated when you see this whole
mess of cables here, but it's not too complex
when you break it down and piece by piece understand
that it's really quite simple. It gives us great results. Oh, the last thing I
forgot to mention though, we do actually hit
record on the RODECaster during our live stream. So even though we don't need to, because it's just working as an interface, this is now recording
the high quality audio. And then afterwards we take
that and upload it as a podcast, the Couple's Table, on
all podcast platforms where people can download and listen at that super high quality that doesn't sound like it was just ripped from a download off the Internet. So that is one way that we use this setup to essentially create
two pieces of content from one amount of work,
from one instance of working. And ultimately, most importantly, the whole reason, like I said, that you're doing a live
stream in the first place is to interact with and engage and connect with your community. And this setup lets us
do that really well. And that's the most important thing is to have those conversations, build that sense of belonging and have a lot of fun while
you do it along the way. And hey, Heather, do you know why the ghost
couldn't get his Twitch channel off the ground? - [Heather] No. - Because it was for live streaming only. I need to come up with a joke 'cause I can be like, oh, hey, Heather, did you know like there's
something about a live stream? Where do you find a, why couldn't the skeleton be on Twitch? Because it was a live stream or the ghost, like why can't the ghost get his Twitch audience off the ground? Because it was for live streaming only. Something like that, that's
a good one, that's okay.
