Streaminar Studio tips and tricks
Important: always use the Streaminar tab in front
Streaminar does all the video mixing and encoding in your browser. In order for your browser to utilize the necessary computing power it is important to run Streaminar in the active tab of your browser. If Streaminar runs in an inactive tab, your framerate will drop and eventually the connection could terminate during your live session. Feel free to run other browser windows, applications and presentations in front of the Streaminar window, but don’t let it run in a tab behind another tabs in the same window. We recommend to run Streaminar in one browser, without any other tabs or windows. And use another browser if you want to share screens and show applications or websites.
Test your browser compatibility
You can create and watch Streaminars in any modern browser, on any modern device. Streaminar Studio however relies on the latest innovations in WebRTC streaming. We have tested Streaminar Studio to work on Macs, Windows and Linux computers using modern browsers such as Chrome, Firefox and Brave. Other browsers may work, or not. Please test a broadcast with your computer and browser before you go live. There is a known issue with Chrome on Mac, it has relatively poor WebRTC video streaming performance with degraded number of frames.
Make sure you have enough CPU power
We stress tested Streaminar on 10 year old MacBooks without any GPU acceleration and it worked. However, mixing multiple cameras, screens and videos with awesome overlays requires quite some processing power. Don’t run unnecessary applications. Preview your stream on a second computer. We recommend a modern Mac or Windows computer with at minimum 16GB memory, 4-core CPU and a GPU. The faster, the better.
Check your bandwidth
To minimize your bandwidth requirement, Streaminar Studio streams your video live to the Streaminar cloud platform and from there we stream to social platforms and the audience: there is no impact on your upstream connection if you stream to multiple networks, or if you get more viewers. Your upstream connection is very important: if your connection fails, the stream fails everywhere. Video is one of the heaviest applications on the internet, so make sure you have plenty upstream capacity available. A Streaminar stream is around 2-3Mbps so we recommend a dedicated 10Mbps upstream connection. A fixed UTP connection is recommended. Try to avoid shared WiFi networks. Don’t worry about the number of viewers: we get one stream from your computer and we distribute the stream to social platforms and the viewers.
Turn off automatic stuff and notifications on your computer
Quit all distracting applications, such as email, calendar and all applications that can do notifications. Also turn off auto updates, so you can really focus on your presentation. Also please turn off browser extensions, they could interfere with the broadcast. Quit all applications that you don’t need for your broadcast. Also, turn off sleep mode and screen savers.
Dedicated broadcast account on your computer
We recommend to use a dedicated computer, or create a second, clean user account on your laptop or PC just for live presentations, with all updates and notifications switched off. A dedicated broadcast user account prevents you from accidentally broadcasting personal or business stuff you don’t want to share. Make sure that other user accounts are logged out, so their applications don’t interfere with your broadcast and don’t eat up CPU power and your connection.
Use a second screen
Connect a second screen to your laptop or computer. Use Streaminar Studio on the small screen and use the larger screen to show websites, presentations and applications. This way, you can control your Streaminar broadcast and do your presentations at the same time, without having to switch between windows and applications.
Keyboard commands
Did you know that you can switch between sources using your keyboard? With the 1 through 0 keys you can switch between up to 10 live video, screen share, image and video sources. Use the m key to mute the entire broadcast. And use the x key to toggle between the picture in picture sources. Switch like a pro.
We save your configuration
Streaminar remembers your title, description, promotion image, social settings, schedule and studio settings. When you close and reopen Streaminar, you will see the Streaminars Overview. Select the Streaminar you want to continue with. Or create a new one. We also save your sources, but you may have to reconnect them if you reopen a Streaminar.
Reconnect your sources
When you close and reopen a Streaminar, you may see that some sources such as videos or screen shares are red. For security reasons, browsers can’t always reconnect to microphones, cameras, screen shares and local files. So you may need to reconnected these. Simply click on the three red dots next to the source, click reconnect and select the right screen or video. In some browsers you may want to refresh the Streaminar tab before reconnecting sources.
Magic Picture in Picture
When you want to show multiple video sources, Streaminar automatically detects whether you want to show the second source as a picture in picture. By default, a video or a screen share will take on the main stage, while your camera feed will be shown picture in picture. Streaminar supports two live video feeds in picture and picture too. Press x on your keyboard to toggle between the large and the small screen.
Test going live
When you go live, Streaminar Studio will send the HD stream right out of your browser to the Streaminar cloud. You can do a test broadcast, to check the output and the quality of the stream, without actually broadcasting to your audience. You can preview the stream.
Go live for real
When you want to go live for real. We will restream your stream to all your connected and social platforms that support live streaming. At the bottom of the screen you will see the frame rate (which should be around 29-30 fps), the broadcast duration, and the status of the live stream with your live social platforms. Yellow = setting up, Green = live, Red = error.
Don’t close Streaminar while broadcasting
Haha ok this one is quite obvious, but: make sure you don’t close the Streaminar tab, don’t quit your browser, and make sure that your internet connection is not disconnected during your broadcast.
Don’t watch your live stream yourself with audio on
You’ll get very annoying audio feedback loops and viewers will run away 🙂