Delivery
In this Chapter:
Basic network setup for live online performance
Lighting design, in-camera and post effects
Stream monitoring
Troubleshooting
Basic network setup for live online performance
Basic networking knowledge is something that can be extremely helpful in both traditional theatre as well as in digital & hybrid performances. Computers can be networked together to send information such as video and audio streams to each other. This can be a great way to break up the computing load between multiple machines or to create a custom workflow using various programs and operating systems. ETC has a great tutorial on how to connect an EOS family lighting console to QLAB so that you can trigger your lighting cues remotely.
Wifi or Ethernet?
Whenever possible use physical ethernet cables instead of wifi. Physical ethernet offers a more stable and faster connection than wifi.
Depending on your device & preferences you might need to turn off the wifi on your machine to prioritize the ethernet connection (You can also do this by changing NIC priority LINK HERE)
Even a long ethernet cable is better overall than wifi
Not all cables are made equal, make sure that you’re using one that’s rated to CAT5E or CAT6 (you can find this by reading the text on the cable itself)
Before your stream it is important to test what the download and upload speed of your network is. You can do that by googling ‘speed test’ or by going to speedtest.net.
Depending on the resolution (the width and height of the video image in pixels, for example ‘HD’ which is 1920x1080) and bitrate (the amount of digital information per second) that you intend to stream with, your minimum upload speed will change. Check the platform where you intend to stream to know what you need- click here.
If your internet upload speed is not able to sustain your stream (and you’ve tested it using an ethernet cable) then there isn’t much you can do aside from contacting your ISP (internet service provider) to purchase a faster internet package.
For the duration of your stream try to keep extraneous network usage to a minimum (eg: keeping folks on the network off of youtube)
Lighting design, in-camera and post effects
As previously mentioned, lighting design for the camera is very different from lighting design for a traditional performance. In general, cameras often need less lighting than human eyes need to clearly see detail; this is why archival videos often look over-exposed or noisy. Most digital cameras have some amount of control over the amount of light they take in and the general settings for brightness, contrast, and colour correction. Even most cellphones have settings for control, but a lot of the time it’s best to keep your settings nominal and adjust the lighting in your physical space to the desired look. Be sure to look at this through a couple different video monitors to make sure it all looks good and roughly the same. Remember that even if you have a properly calibrated monitor in your space most folks will be watching on their laptop or cellphone which might reproduce colours less accurately.
The challenging part of creating a hybrid performance is in the balancing of lighting for your in-person and digital audiences. This is often where camera settings come into play. It’s good practice to test both your brightest and darkest looks both in-person and on-camera to make sure everything looks good for both audiences. Some of the settings you’ll have in your camera include aperture (the amount of light the camera lets in), ISO (controls sensitivity to light), and shutter speed (how fast the shutter opens and closes which can add blur, affect the brightness of the image, or affect how video projection or LED lighting looks onscreen). Once you’ve set your camera settings, be sure to make note of them in case the camera ever resets.
Post-effects in this context refers to any effects you add after your camera input and settings adjustments and before you stream your content to the internet. These effects could be anything from general colour grading to more cinematic or artistic effects like motion blur, feedback, or image distortion. For these kinds of effects you will need to send your video input through a media server of some kind, like TouchDesigner, Isadora, Madmapper, Resolume or many others. OBS also has built-in options for some simpler post-effects.
Stream monitoring
It is important to monitor your stream at several points through its broadcast chain to be sure that the audio and video quality is at a standard that you’re happy with. You don’t need to monitor all of these areas for the entire stream but they are useful to check intermittently. In this guide we’ll talk about 3 main areas that can be monitored but depending on your system there might be more points to monitor. It can be useful to have more than one device available to monitor video and audio feeds (ie not monitoring on the computer that’s encoding the stream, or also checking out how a stream looks on a phone vs a laptop). To avoid network strain while from you using the same internet that you’re streaming out with you can monitor with a separate network source (such as through porting internet off of a phone) or having someone monitor from a different location.
The first point in the chain is in whatever software you’re using to create the stream (ie OBS, Touchdesigner etc). Being the start of the chain, if it doesn’t look and sound good here, it won’t look or sound good anywhere else. In OBS you can monitor the sound by enabling audio monitoring in the advanced audio properties. This is the place where you’ll likely do most of your monitoring for the duration of the stream as it’s where small adjustments can be made live to levels etc.
The next spot to monitor is on the ‘backstage’ portion of your streaming destination. Most streaming platforms offer a low latency version of the stream for monitoring. This is a great point to check for audio/visual sync as well as general quality. It also offers a place to monitor before your stream is technically live to the public & adjust settings on the platform. While backstage streams are low latency there will still be some delay so you’ll need to wait a few seconds to see any changes that you make appear on the stream.
The last main spot to monitor is wherever the audience will be experiencing the stream. Monitoring at this stage lets you see exactly what the audience is experiencing. This is the spot with the most delay (usually 30 seconds) so make sure to keep this in mind when interacting with any chat function.
Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting is one of the most important skills that you can have when trying to create art with any level of technical integration. It’s impossible to know the solution to every possible problem that can pop up which is why it’s more important to have a good handle on the process of troubleshooting and a sense of where to look when the issue is not resolving easily (ie: the internet). In regards to a troubleshooting methodology the most effective approach revolves around eliminating potential points of failure and variables until you can arrive at what component is causing the issue.
Imagine your system in terms of directionally flowing data. The data (raw camera feed, audio etc) starts at one end and moves through different devices and programs until it eventually arrives at its final destination (your audience’s eyes and ears, but functionally we can only test up until the Internet streaming destination). When a problem happens you will need to test the system components, either from the last point that the stream functions fully and forwards until you find the problem, or backwards from the problem until you find a point that’s functional.
Here’s an example:
You’re streaming out a play to Youtube that’s being performed and captured live. You have a single camera setup that’s running through a capture card to OBS and then being streamed to Youtube. Your actors are each wearing wireless microphones which are connected to a mixer alongside Qlab which is running the background music and sound effects. The mixer is connected over an XLR cable to a sound card which is connected to your streaming computer using USB.
There are multiple places in the chain of data that could be causing this issue, here they are in backwards order from the final destination.
Youtube itself
OBS
Encoding
Other
USB cable to the computer from the soundcard
Soundcard
Settings
Hardware
XLR cable from the mixer
Mixer
XLR cable from the wireless reciever
Wireless microphone receiver
XLR to 1/8” cable connecting QLAB to the mixer
QLAB
The mics themselves.
The first thing you’ll want to do is pinpoint exactly where in this chain the problem is occurring so that you can eliminate as many variables as possible. First you test with both the mics and a piece of audio from qlab. They’re both distorted. This means that it is unlikely that the issue is with the mic or qlab components.
Youtube itself
OBS
Encoding
Other
USB cable to the computer from the soundcard
Soundcard
Settings
Hardware
XLR cable from the mixer
Mixer
XLR cable from the wireless reciever
Wireless microphone receiver
XLR to 1/8” cable connecting QLAB to the mixer
QLAB
The mics themselves.
You decide to test backwards from the problem and notice that it still sounds bad in OBS. This means that youtube is likely not the problem
Youtube itself
OBS
Encoding
Other
USB cable to the computer from the soundcard
Soundcard
Settings
Hardware
XLR cable from the mixer
Mixer
You try throwing a piece of audio directly into OBS and it sounds fine in the stream. This means that it’s not how OBS is encoding the stream but perhaps how it’s interfacing with the soundcard or something earlier in the chain.
OBS
Encoding
Other
USB cable to the computer from the soundcard
Soundcard
Settings
Hardware
XLR cable from the mixer
Mixer
Next up you try listening to the audio out of the soundcards headphone port, and it sounds fine. This eliminates the hardware of the soundcard as well as anything earlier in the chain.
OBS
Other
USB cable to the computer from the soundcard
Soundcard
Settings
It is very likely now that your issue is either driver based (how your computer and the soundcard talk to each other) or settings based. When you check your settings of both OBS and the soundcard that there is a mismatch in the refresh rate. You change this to match and test your stream again. Success!