Live streaming an event - technical help and advice required.

OK, so I have an idea about a videogame / achievement themed event that I'd like to do for charity. Firstly it'd be great to raise a load of cash for charity, but I'm also doing it in the slight hope of reinventing myself as some sort of internet achievement guru. I've recently been made redundant, and it would be nice to attempt to do something that I love with my time rather than just a job. I'm not expecting to suddenly make millions, in fact cash isn't really a major factor.

Problem is, I literally have no idea where to start. I know Xbox One has Twitch built in, but I'd really rather make a more professional looking show, maybe including a ticker bar with ways to donate etc. I'm probably getting ideas way above my station, but I'd like this to be the sort of thing that reaches a really big audience, so any advice to start me off would be really welcome.

you want a capture card for your pc, the tickers and gooseberry fool are done by some app that all of the streamers use - but I forget the name

google twitch ticker bar or something and it'll appear

Thanks man. I had a feeling that might be the answer, unfortunately the only thing I own which even remotely resembles a PC is a Surface RT. Time to do a little shopping methinks.

if you are just getting started using the built in twitch apps might not be so bad

just to see if you take to it and build a viewerbase before dropping wedge

you can add a donate link and all that onto your twitch channel and that all appears below your video

Ah, excellent. I've been meaning to dip my toe in anyway, so I'll have a bit of a play around before my big event.

You're going to eventually want a PC and a good microphone, capture card, webcam/camera etc if you want to do it well, but the built in Twitch streaming stuff is fine, focus on content first. Good person to ask about this sort of stuff is Andrew Mills. You should participate in Sick Kid's Save Point here.

On the job side, make sure you have a regular schedule that you keep to firstly. It will be hard to get an audience on games that aren't usually in the top ten viewed though (moba trash, CSGO, Diablo etc). Like you said you will have to build on what you're good at to stand out. I think you'd be a lot better off focusing on youtube and trying to build that. Your audience there would follow you over to twitch and it'll be then that you'll start to earn cash from subs and donations. That is certainly how a lot of the top diablo streamers work. They always have something to bring people into their videos whether they are a high rank on the leaderboards or have devised a new build using the latest gear. It's never just "Hey watch me because I'm friendly". The people who do that have been around years before the money. You definitely need that immediate audience boost to get noticed on twitch.
Off the top of my head, you could create a narrative around a gamerscore goal. Make it an "adventure" that people can follow. It's going to need that kind of hook. Informative and rage achievement videos are already well covered. Have people rooting for you to get to the main goal and then have mini daily goals that will keep people coming back daily. But you have to be aiming semi-high to make people care. I have no idea if there any achievement leaderboards but you could aim for top ten in the UK or something similar. With this spine to your work it won't matter if your video that day is a bit gooseberry fool. With twitch you can easily chop up your stream into a video to export for youtube. Have them both feeding each other. Definitely need a built audience on youtube to shoot your views up on twitch rankings to get noticed, especially with the variety of games.

Yeah have a content plan laid out and stick to it. You really have to persist with putting out content on a regular basis so that people have something to anticipate and follow, just like any kind of Website, forum, TV series, magazine etc, the thing that brings people back is forming a narrative, it's a distraction from their everyday lives. That's a key part of entertainment. If you can't follow through on your own schedule people will notice, it's also important for your motivation to keep putting out content and trying new things.

First of all I'd like to say good luck with your charity endeavors. It's great to combine something you love with something that does some good in the world!

Streaming wise it all depends on what you plan to stream. With consoles, while the built in streaming stuff is good, it's very limited in terms of being able to customise. These are all things I looked at when I was preparing my Sick Kids Save Point stream last year.

If you want to stream console games with all the bells and whistles you get from a PC based stream then you will need a capture device of some kind. I don't have one myself but I'm led to believe that the Elgato HD60 is a good choice.

Once you have that you need a piece of software to take the video from the capture card and then send it out to twitch.
I use OBS (Open Broadcaster Software). It's fairly powerful, very customisable and has a vast array of plugins. It's also free, which is a massive plus point.

Then you'll want to look at making your overlays and installing any plugins you want.
Overlays are simple graphics elements that are displayed along with the video.
This video from my SKSP run gives you some idea of what I did.


I used a couple of different plugins. Don't have links at the moment I'm afraid.
SMG - Which would read the music being played on my PC and display the title on the stream. (I used it for anytime I took a break between games)
Snaz - It allows you to display text elements that change dynamically. I used it to control my timers. It can also display the number of viewers you have.
There may have been more, but those are the ones I remember using.

Feel free to PM me if you have any other questions, I'll be happy to help.

Also, stay tuned to the Games folder later today as I plan on launching the Official GRcade Sick Kids Save Point 2015 thread tonight.