Live streaming – Have you tried Justin.tv?
With live streaming becoming increasingly popular among the indie music community, our friends over at Justin.tv gave us this tutorial to get artists up to speed with using their site. If you’re not familiar with Justin.tv, it’s definitely worth a look as they have tools geared specifically for musicians.
Justin.tv is a free YouTube-like site that allows anyone to stream themselves on camera in real-time. It has seen a surge of interest ever since musicians started using the site like a video Twitter – as a way to have live video chats with their fans when they have a spare moment. We’ve prepared a small tutorial so that you can create an account and try it out. The process takes 3-5 minutes. All you need is a computer with a webcam and a built-in microphone, and a broadband internet connection.
Step 1: Create a Justin.tv account.
In the top right hand corner of the site, there’s a link to create a Justin.tv account. Choose your username carefully! The web page that your fans will go to will be www.justin.tv/[YourUsername].
Step 2: Click Broadcast and Enter Channel Info
Also in the top right hand corner is a Broadcast button. If it’s your first time, there’s a short information gathering page before you are directed to the Broadcaster window.
Step 3: Select inputs and quality and clicking Broadcast
Our system automatically detects your bandwidth connection and sets the correct upload rate. Before you click Broadcast though, make sure that you have the correct audio and video inputs. MacBooks in particular are known to have 3-4 different input types, so you might have to play around a little and select different cameras until you see your face on the screen. As musicians, set the Audio quality to 44 kHz sampling. Once you’re ready, go ahead and click broadcast and you’re live!
Step 4: Invite fans to your channel page
Fans can now see and chat with you at www.justin.tv/[YourUsername]. Visit this page to see what they’re saying and interact with them. Share the link around. If a user is trolling in chat, we give broadcasters the ability to ban users from chat. You can also assign a trusted user (a “Moderator”) to ban other users for you.
Step 5: Saving your broadcast: Archives and Clips
All your broadcasts are automatically recorded, and can be found by viewing your archives. We throw away archives periodically, but allow you to create clips that remain forever. Just use our clip creation tool on the side.
Have you had some success using Justin.tv? Please share in the comment section below.
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