Steaming

Before you can start streaming, you need to make some basic preparations. First of all, you should generally think about what content you want to offer your viewers.From gaming and just-chatting formats to cooking streams - there are virtually no limits to your creativity.It can also be useful to develop a unique selling point that sets you and your content apart from the masses. Another essential feature is, of course, the Twitch account itself. You can create this using your email address on the official website.

Once this step is done, you can further customize your channel. To do this, click on your profile picture in the top right-hand corner and then on “Creator dashboard”.

In the “Creator Dashboard” you can choose from various functions. In the left tab under “Settings”/”Channel” you can adjust the name of your channel, write a short channel description and insert links to your social media channels.

The profile picture can be changed and a header image can be inserted under “Settings”/”Channel”/”Brand”.

Various symbols can be seen in the right tab. If you click on the pencil symbol, an additional window opens. This can be used, among other things, to adjust the stream title and the live notification.

PC or laptop

Your computer or laptop must have a certain level of performance for streaming. For example, we recommend an Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM (DDR4) and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card. If you want to stream the latest games, more computing power is also required. There should also be enough USB ports (3.0 is ideal). At least four are required to operate the equipment. External USB hubs can solve this problem quite cheaply. You should also have at least 5 Mbits upload speed to be able to start streaming.

Microphone

The microphone is probably the most important part of your technical equipment. Your voice should be clear and intelligible at all times during the stream. You have various options for this. On the one hand, you can use a good headset with a microphone. However, the majority of streamers use external microphones that are connected to the computer via a USB or XLR connection. XLR solutions are quite expensive, however, as an additional audio interface is required. A spring-loaded microphone arm is also recommended for both microphone types.

Camera

A camera is not mandatory for streaming, but it makes it much easier to establish a connection with your viewers. Alternatively, you can use a VStreaming character, for example. In most cases, a standard webcam is completely sufficient. For the best...

The most common streaming software is probably “OBS Studio”. You can download the program for free from the official website and install it on your computer. First of all, you should start “OBS” and then link your Twitch account to the software under “File”/“Stream”. Then enter your stream key in the field provided.

You can find this on Twitch in the “Creator Dashboard” under “Settings”/”Stream”. It is also important to set the platform to “Twitch” and the servers to “Automatic”.

You should set or enter the following under “File”/“Settings”/“Output”. First of all, set the “Encoder” to “NVIDIA NVENC”. If your computer does not have an Nvidia graphics card, select “x264”. For the bit rate, enter a value between 3000 and 6000 Kbps. If you have 5 MBits in the upload, we recommend that you enter 3500 Kbps. Set the “Keyframe interval” to 2 seconds, “Profile” to “main”, “GPU” to 0 and “B-frames” to 2. Leave the remaining settings as default.

In the next step, we will take care of the video settings. To start with, set the output resolution to 1280x720. The base resolution is based on the native resolution of the source. For example, if you are playing a game in Full HD, set the resolution accordingly to 1920x1080. Use “Lanczos” as the scaling filter.

Once all the settings described above have been made, you can start creating the individual scenes. You can switch between these during the stream. The elements of a scene are added under sources at “+” and removed again at “-”.

The image from your webcam or capture card can be added to your scene via the “Video recording device” option. If you want to transfer the image from your computer, there are several options available to you. A single window can be recorded using a “Window recording”. For transferring the entire desktop, however, we recommend the “Screen recording”. Now we come to the topic of sound. OBS Studio automatically records the desktop audio. All you have to do is select the right microphone.

To make your stream even more interactive for viewers, we recommend integrating a few widgets. These include a chat or alert box, for example. This displays events such as new “Subs” and “Follows” graphically and plays sound. Widgets can be created on the “StreamElements” website, for example, and inserted into OBS as a browser source. To do this, you must first create an account and link your Twitch account with “StreamElements”.

Once you have successfully logged in, you will find the “Streaming tools” tab on the left. If you click on “My overlays”, a new page will open where you can create a new overlay.

Always set the resolution to 1080p when creating. New widgets can be added within the overlay editor using the “+”. For example, an alert box can be added under Alerts. You can find the chat box in the streaming tools.

From a certain number of viewers, it is easy for streamers to lose track of what is written in the chat. That's why it's worth using chatbots, programs that automate the moderation. We recommend the “Mix It Up” program for this. The completely free software can be downloaded from the official website and then installed on your computer. Here, too, you must link your Twitch account with the “Mix It Up” service when you start the program for the first time. You can find more detailed instructions on how to use the software here.

With the tips and tricks mentioned above, you are well prepared for your streaming adventure. The most important thing, however, is to never lose joy in what you do. Don’t be frustrated by low viewership or views at the beginning of your journey. Let streaming be your hobby and not a business model.

All screenshots from Twitch, OBS Studio and Mix It Up were created by Tim Rantzau.