Easiest way to make a single stream from multiple remote streams
March 14, 2020 7:21 PM Subscribe
I'd like to make a quarantine online show with friends who all contribute a song from wherever they are. The end platform could be Facebook Live, Twitch, YouTube Live — not really important. I'm having trouble thinking of a simple way to accomplish it.
Just to be crystal clear:
Friend A plays a song in his living room.
Then Friend B plays a song in her living room.
(and so forth)
The viewer sees this as a single broadcast.
No one is playing at the same time as anyone else, so no split-screen is needed.
Assume everyone has some kind of setup in their home and can Skype or FaceTime.
Also assume I have a very humble DSL connection in my home. I think I could go to Facebook Live without a problem, but keeping a Skype call going and streaming at the same time might be hard. Or maybe not? If there were some way of throwing control over the stream directly to each user, instead of going through my machine, that would be ideal.
I'm on a Mac. No money to spend on new software over about $10.
Thanks.
Just to be crystal clear:
Friend A plays a song in his living room.
Then Friend B plays a song in her living room.
(and so forth)
The viewer sees this as a single broadcast.
No one is playing at the same time as anyone else, so no split-screen is needed.
Assume everyone has some kind of setup in their home and can Skype or FaceTime.
Also assume I have a very humble DSL connection in my home. I think I could go to Facebook Live without a problem, but keeping a Skype call going and streaming at the same time might be hard. Or maybe not? If there were some way of throwing control over the stream directly to each user, instead of going through my machine, that would be ideal.
I'm on a Mac. No money to spend on new software over about $10.
Thanks.
So this is not really my area of expertise and I asked around, there are 2 methods I can think of.
One is that each person has their own individual stream, to whatever platform. You view their stream on that platform, and restream it to your own stream. As each performer ends their stream you switch to watching the next one. You'd use software like OBS on your side to do this (and probably each streamer would use it also, or something similar).
Another option is essential videoconferencing. You all join a video conference, and focus is given to whomever is performing now. To keep bandwidth low, I'd say only have the current performer and the next up connected at one time. Examples of this are like google hangouts, zoom, etc.
I think residential DSL can definitely handle the first option and likely also the second.
posted by RustyBrooks at 7:19 AM on March 15, 2020
One is that each person has their own individual stream, to whatever platform. You view their stream on that platform, and restream it to your own stream. As each performer ends their stream you switch to watching the next one. You'd use software like OBS on your side to do this (and probably each streamer would use it also, or something similar).
Another option is essential videoconferencing. You all join a video conference, and focus is given to whomever is performing now. To keep bandwidth low, I'd say only have the current performer and the next up connected at one time. Examples of this are like google hangouts, zoom, etc.
I think residential DSL can definitely handle the first option and likely also the second.
posted by RustyBrooks at 7:19 AM on March 15, 2020
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by davidmsc at 6:47 AM on March 15, 2020