Best platform & software for these convos

April 20, 2020 9:08 PM

What's the best way for me to create a "videochat podcast" show that happens in real-time, requires no editing, and lives on the internet?

I'd like to make a social media video show, with the format a podcast interview.

- two people in an unscripted conversation
- 30 to 40 minute duration
- I want to see both faces the whole time, in a simple 50-50 split screen
- no editing or post production at all
- the content then lives forever, publicly, online.
This interview with Saff from Tiger King is similar to what I'm thinking of, except it's not interactive.

Bonus, in a perfect world: Interactivity!
- it would be cool if the convo could be publicly viewed live while we have it,
- and if people could comment / ask questions / send reactions as it's happening

So- what's the best platform?
* Instagram Live would be perfect for interactivity and format - except I think co-host chats can only be archived for 24 hours, is that accurate?
* Perhaps Facebook Live, on a public "page" instead of a personal profile page?
* Zoom or similar?
* Something else?

Thanks!

posted by nouvelle-personne to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

If I were going to do that, I would use either Twitch or YouTube because they both have good archiving, are open to all users, and support live chat with the viewers. YouTube archiving is better, you can set it up so the stream will just exist as a normal YouTube video when it's over. Check out this random example, it shows how it was live streamed a few hours ago and now lives as a normal video. If you want to focus on people watching it after, I would go with YouTube.

But probably because channel discovery is better on Twitch, I've seen more of a talk show community on the platform. There are a LOT of streams with just the format you're talking about: Talk Shows & Podcasts. If you click on any of the channel names (the smaller one below the title), that takes you to the video page which has links to both curated clips and full archives. If you wanted to focus on live viewers, I would go with Twitch.

My understanding is that this is possible with Facebook Live, but it's harder and the viewer interaction isn't really very good. Zoom isn't a good platform for this, it doesn't have searching or channels so you would need to archive it somewhere else like YouTube anyway. It would allow you to do it all in their software though, for YouTube and Twitch you're going to need to set up separate software to combine the two feeds, there are tutorials but I haven't done it myself.
posted by JZig at 9:51 PM on April 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

odinsdream, are you suggesting that the poster use the OBS software, Open Broadcaster Studio, on each of their desktops, and send the ouput up to Twitch for distribution/combining/archiving?

(Just making sure I understand!)
posted by wenestvedt at 1:32 PM on April 21, 2020

Jitsi functions like any other video conference platforn but also has a feature for the conference to be live streamed to YouTube.
posted by tillwehavefaces at 10:03 AM on April 22, 2020