live streaming thread

[TubularCorporation]

Yeah, I have a feeling it would get really uncomfortable really fast and also that the crappy old cameras I have to work with would need an uncomfortable amount of light to actually get enough color range to make keying even work.

[modey]

lol yeah that's another reason why I didn't do it.. I have a hard enough time controlling multiple hardware synths when comfortable, let alone when wearing a mask.

 

As for lighting, you'd be surprised at what is sufficient. All you need is constant, even light. I made two lightboxes using about $30AU worth of materials from Ikea and they're great, even though they're not really adjustable in terms of height.

[usagi]

have you thought about jamming a hardware stream?

[thawkins]

Yeah, I have a feeling it would get really uncomfortable really fast and also that the crappy old cameras I have to work with would need an uncomfortable amount of light to actually get enough color range to make keying even work.

 

You never know until you test. Maybe tape a flashlight to something? Personally I think the more analog and questionable production values, the better (as long as the sound quality is top notch). :)

[modey]

have you thought about jamming a hardware stream?

what if tho

[TubularCorporation]

 

Yeah, I have a feeling it would get really uncomfortable really fast and also that the crappy old cameras I have to work with would need an uncomfortable amount of light to actually get enough color range to make keying even work.

 

You never know until you test. Maybe tape a flashlight to something? Personally I think the more analog and questionable production values, the better (as long as the sound quality is top notch). :)

 

 

 

I agree, but if it's not going to work at all then I'd opt to not have a sack over my head.

 

I actually got a pair of 500 watt halogen photography lamps with reflectors and diffusers for $10 each (with brand new bulbs, no less) at a yard sale last fall, but I don't have stands for them and they're also REALLY hot.  But that's about what you'd need to have any chance at successfully chroma keying with a camera as old as the one I have, I've tried.

 

 

I mean seriously, it is OLD.  Like 1982 or '83, and it wasn't even very good back then from what I've read - reviews when it was new were already complaining about how much light it needed,  So it's perfect for streaming but I'll probably not bother trying to do any keying with it.  I've tried keying a hand drawn logo with it by taping the logo to a piece of green cloth and putting it in the brightest, most evenly lit spot in the house but even then the light was too low, the picture came through fine but there was so much noise in i that it wouldn't key at all.

 

My neighbor has an HD camera he said I could borrow but that's no fun.

[modey]

1982/83? lol u trollin?

[TubularCorporation]

1982/83? lol u trollin?

 

Nope.

 

Found it in the trash about 8 years ago, and it works perfectly.  It's a portable Sony tube camera, near the end of the line for that technology, right before it was replaced by CCD, so it has a really different look even from old VHS cameras - it will get those long trails from lights that you see in stuff like 70s sports footage.  I'm going to hook it up to a cheap USB capture device for streaming.

 

It's the bigger one on the left in this photo I posted in the studio pics thread a while back:

 

 

The other, little one is a mid 90s security camera that also has some character to it (and is even noisier if anything, never had any luck chroma keying with it either) but I'll probably use the older one because if I'm going to use ridiculously out of date equipment to livestream why half-ass it?

 

 

I don't have any hours at work for the first half of the week so I'm going to have quite a bit of time to start working on ideas for stuff that would actually be streamable, got a good 5 or 6 hours in today and I have a basic idea of how I'm going to approach it musically, should have something ready in a month or two.

[modey]

oh wow! Yeah it didn't even cross my mind that it'd be an old one that you'd use a capture device with. For some reason I thought you were talking about a webcam from the 80s lol

 

Yeah I guess you would need some very bright lights.. that said though you could probably get there with LEDs these days; there are some very bright LED panels out there.

 

I love those light trails though, I wonder if there's like.. a Premiere/After Effects plugin to simulate it haha

[TubularCorporation]

oh wow! Yeah it didn't even cross my mind that it'd be an old one that you'd use a capture device with. For some reason I thought you were talking about a webcam from the 80s lol

 

Yeah I guess you would need some very bright lights.. that said though you could probably get there with LEDs these days; there are some very bright LED panels out there.

 

I love those light trails though, I wonder if there's like.. a Premiere/After Effects plugin to simulate it haha

 

 

Yeah, my budget for this project has to be under like $30 (for a cheap Linux compatible capture device), in a pinch I can put those halogen photo laps on mic stands and run a heavy extension cord into another room so they're running on a different circuit from my gear, since they'd probably trip a breaker otherwise.

 

 

 

Those cameras are actually not as hard to find or expensive as you'd think, I see one for $20-$30 at thrift shops every year or two and they seem to be about the same on eBay (I checked to see if I should sell it).  They were one of the first portable video cameras to hit the consumer market and came with a nice, sturdy case so there are a decent number of them floating around still. The trick is getting the big power brick/composite video output that lets you use it, as it is it just has a big multi-pin connector that was meant to attach to a matching VCR for "portable" recording.  The standalone box isn't expensive either (I paid around $12 to get one so I could use the thing) but they don't show up as often.

 

Not that I'd recommend buying any of this stuff, with a few exceptions I've just been grabbing it as I find it being thrown out and eventually I got enough to actually do something with it and bought a couple things (that power supply and the cheap Sony video switcher in the photo) to ti it all together, but I wouldn't actively seek any of it out or spend more than the cost of a couple pizzas on it even if I could afford to.

 

 

OTOH, Jexus makes it seem worth the trouble.

 

[TubularCorporation]

Alright, all of the wheels are in motion, it will take a month or two to get the streaming setup organized and develop some new material/patches/improvisation framework, but I should be ready to livestream some kind of vector synthesis oriented performance sometime in mid to late August (early August is pretty much nonstop busy already).

[modey]

excellent!

[TubularCorporation]

Hmm,that might get me back on Facebook actually.  Video only, or do people post audio recordings as well?  I've got probably 25-30 hours of audio recordings of hardware jams from the last few years, solo and with other people.

 

 

Not all of them are good, of course.

[thawkins]

How strictly is the "hardware" part of the thing enforced? My stuff is a mix of hardware and software, but I mostly use the software for sequencing and looping all the MIDI. Does it count as hardware if just keep the laptop off camera and only interact with it through my controllers? Normally I still mess around with the mouse but I think now I got all the pieces together to do a completely hands-off jam too.

 

Even though there's plenty of cheap hardware these days, it seems sometimes people create this barrier of entry with the words "analog" or "hardware" as if you couldn't do a jam session on a PC. I get it though that it's not interesting to watch a guy launch loops with a mouse or something, but I wish this view would be a little more nuanced.

 

I'm not saying all this applies to the group that you mentioned though, Stickfigger. I just wanted to ask what's the sentiment over there. :)

[TubularCorporation]

Cool, I will probably get involved with that once I've got the video situation worked out in that case.

[modey]

Sorry Modey If this is considered soliciting on your thread.

All good, this has become the general streaming thread anyway :D

[thawkins]

 

Yeah I get it man. The guy who started this group did so because they got A little frustrated with the FB group Dawless Jammin which is very militant about use of DAWs etc.... and tends to have a lot of banter unrelated to jams

If the music is good generally the response in this group is good no matter how it's made .. but emphasis is definitely on live jams on hardware gear. Have a look in and if it's not your thing then leave :)

 

 

I think what people actually mean with this sentiment is that basically you should build up the tracks from (mostly) scratch in real time, not just play pre-recorded stuff. With hardware, it's easier to enforce because you know that a drum machine ain't going to spit out intricate melodies, but anything could be going on in the laptop so it's easier to ban the thing straight away. The only drawback here is that in my impression, building a hardware jam rig is a lot more cash (or DIY effort) than it is to set something equivalent (in terms of results) up in the PC, so it kind of locks out folks who maybe don't have that much money or time.

 

In any case it's an interesting prospect and I think that even if I upload a video with a laptop in it, as long as it shows that I am just not clicking play, it should be all fine.

 

Now waiting for the power supply for my Volca Sample to arrive so I can properly hook it up - I did buy it with batteries included, but one of the batteries went poof with a loud bang on Saturday and started leaking the liquid, so for the time being I am playing it safe.

[thawkins]

There was just a huge bang and then a sizzling sound. The Volca just kept the lights on as if nothing happened so I switched it off ASAP and then took out the batteries as fast as I could. I have seen this sort of thing happen once before - at work many years ago a battery inside a wireless mouse went off with a pop and started letting out liquid.

 

Anyways I took the Volca apart and checked that it's not leaked anywhere in the internals. I don't think anything is damaged, but in the future I will avoid using batteries if I can help it.

[TubularCorporation]

 

The only drawback here is that in my impression, building a hardware jam rig is a lot more cash (or DIY effort) than it is to set something equivalent (in terms of results) up in the PC, so it kind of locks out folks who maybe don't have that much money or time.

 

 

 

I think this is a real factor in the more evangelical "dawless" circles.  I don't know about the Facebook group or anything, but on Youtube there's definitely a certain undercurrent of "I can afford thousands and thousands of dollars worth of hardware and a nice camera, therefore it almost doesn't matter what I play, I'll still get views."  Obviously far from universal, but there is definitely some of that. 

 

I few months ago I was talking to someone about that Youtube channel where the guy just gets really expensive things and then breaks them on camera (like destroying an iPhone 6 on the day of release, for example) and how one of the easiest ways to achieve some degree of success on Youtube (enough to make a modest living on it back then, not sure how that works now since all of the ad revenue is drying up) is simply to own things most of your viewers can't afford.

 

It sounds like the Facebook group we're talking about doesn't really have that problem, and that's good.

 

 

Also that is crazy about the Volca, I've never had anything like that happen before.

[auxien]

 

 

there's definitely a certain undercurrent of "I can afford thousands and thousands of dollars worth of hardware and a nice camera, therefore it almost doesn't matter what I play, I'll still get views." Obviously far from universal, but there is definitely some of that. .

Very true. I've watched many of these and have been so constantly underwhelmed. Lots of gearheads in general tend towards this, from what I can tell, and what's worse is the feedback loop of it, they boost each other. It's kinda sad.

 

I feel there's an obvious parallel there with the modular world as well, but that's another thread.

[TubularCorporation]

 

Very true. I've watched many of these and have been so constantly underwhelmed. Lots of gearheads in general tend towards this, from what I can tell, and what's worse is the feedback loop of it, they boost each other. It's kinda sad.

 

I feel there's an obvious parallel there with the modular world as well, but that's another thread.

 

 

 

Yeah, I am always afraid of/fighting against a sort of low-rent version of that myself these days, not that I can afford the kind of setups the people I'm thinking of have, but I definitely have a bit of a problem with hoarding cheap/semicheap gear ("when will I ever have a chance to get one of those for $50 again?  So I have to keep it even though I haven't used it in 6 months!") and it can definitely get in the way of just spending tie with what you have and getting everything you can out of it. There's also an element, for me, of not having much money most of the year and then binging a bit when I actually have a few hundred dollars to throw around once or twice a year and justifying it as "I can afford to get this now, and then the rest of the year when I can't afford to do much in general I can spend my time using it," which actually works out a lot of the time but not always, sometimes it just makes me buy something dumb that I don't end up using much but can't sell easily.  I can totally relate to how someone with more money could get into the same sort of pattern but in the thousands of dollars scale instead of the hundreds, especially if they have a more consistent income and can always get something new when they get bored of the last thing.

 

For most of my life I hardly had any gear so being able to amass a pretty big (if eccentric) pile of it over the last 7 years feels like I'm compromising my principles in a way.

 

Actually one of the most concise takes on this issue I've ever heard is something I read as a kid in, of all stupid places, this:

 

 

 

They talk about the early playtesting of the game and how initially they were worried about what they called "rich kid syndrome," where someone who had enough money could just buy all of the good cards and use them to win all the time, but in the end they decided that the problem would be self-limiting because in the long run playing that way would get boring for the rich kid and even if it didn't, everyone else would stop playing with them and they'd have to change their approach.

 

I think that applies to some degree with music, but the nature of social media, and Youtube in particular, incentivizes that sort of behavior and makes it a bigger problem than it would otherwise be.

 

Anyhow, this is kind of a derail and we've probably talked about it enough for this thread, I mostly just wanted an excuse to unironically paraphrase the M:TG Pocket Players' Guide in a discussion.

[auxien]

Haha wasn't expecting to see a Magic reference ITT, but it makes sense. It's all definitely a trap anyone (with the means) can fall into, but just recognizing it is perhaps enough to keep it at bay.

[TubularCorporation]

Haha wasn't expecting to see a Magic reference ITT, but it makes sense. It's all definitely a trap anyone (with the means) can fall into, but just recognizing it is perhaps enough to keep it at bay.

 

 

I hadn't thought of it until just now but Eurorack is kind of M:TG for synth dorks.

 

Re: recognizing it, that does have the effect of making me routinely dig out old stuff that I haven't used in a while and make something with it jsut out of a kind of sense of guilt, and a lot of the time I'll end up with the best stuff I've done in a long time because I'll be approaching everything kind of fresh.  Or at any rate that's a likely excuse for not selling stuff.

 

 

 

Heh, its mainly volcas and roland boutiques on this facebook group to be fair. Throw in the occasional elektron box for the guys not making acid.

 

 

Yeah, the group sounds like it's not about the stuff I'm talking about at all, I'm more talking about places like Youtube.

[TubularCorporation]

Just did a quick test and I expected there to be some setup with the cheap capture device I got but nope, linux support is seamless, just plugged it in and it showed up as a source in OBS, so the main hurdle (other than developing some material that will work for a livestream, but that's the fun part) will be getting cables long enough to go from my studio over to the media server in the living room.  Once that's done it's no problem to control it remotely with VNC from my laptop.

 

If I can get a second capture device to work at the same time, I could get tricky and set up OBS to switch cameras under MIDI control and bake some camera changes into the performance, but I've heard that these USB dongles don't really perform that well if you use more than one at a time.  For $12 it wouldn't hurt to get another one though, just to try.

 

 

EDIT: if you're a Linux user, a lot of capture devices won't work or won't work well (and if lots of posts on lots of Linux forums are to be believed, for some reason it seems like the more expensive, brand name devices are the ones that cause the most trouble).

 

This is the one I got, it's about $13 and works perfectly with OBS under Ubuntu so far. I picked it because its chip set apparently has kernel level support, and it seems to be true.

 

So if you need to stream or capture analog video under Linux and don't need amazing quality (but it's perfectly decent, especially for the price, as good as or better than any 480p Youtube video I've seen which makes it more than adequate for livestreaming SD analog video) this is the one you want.

[TubularCorporation]

Tested the setup by live streaming some old VHS tapes the other day, and it stayed stable for about 6 hours. only issue other than the capture device being not exactly broadcast quality (to be expected) is that the audio is 2 or 3 frames ahead of the video, presumably because I left the buffering enabled for video capture in OBS. Should be able to calculate the amount of latency and add a delay to the audio to put it in sync, better than risking dropped frames or worse.