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Welcome to Episode 260 of the StreamYard Live Town Hall.

My name's Gage, I'm here with Dan, of course.

I've seen lots of happy New Year's in the comments.

Of course, happy New Year's Eve to all of you.

Super cool to have you guys hanging out with us on New Year's Eve.

If there's not too many questions, we might do a couple giveaways and end things early, but if there's tons, we'll definitely go through all of them.

For anyone new here, Dan and I are the founders of StreamYard.

We do these town halls every single Sunday at 6 p.m.

Pacific, and we do them for a few reasons.

1 is to stay in tune with all of you, go through the same flow that you all do with your own shows and productions.

That's why we're calling it Ask StreamYard.

So if there's anything you'd like us to touch on tonight, feel free to leave in the chat.

We'll do our best to get to as many as we possibly can.

And 3, I always mention the 3 pillars of StreamYard, which are ease of use, stability, and professional streams.

So if you're about those 3 things, StreamYard is the tool for you.

Before I forget, we have awesome shows on StreamYard.

We have YouTube channel reviews with Dee and Daniel the second Saturday of every month.

Really fun show if you're looking to grow on YouTube.

Both of them are pros when it comes to all things YouTube.

And it's fun because they do specific channels and they'll get into things, you know, like how to think about your analytics, your thumbnails, all the fun details.

And then we have Enhance Your Livestreams, the last Tuesday of the month with Nick Nimmin, who again is a pro when it comes to all things video, but check that 1 out for your specific live streaming questions.

And then 1 thing we've been doing at the start of these, so that we get to know a little bit more about you and you get to know a little bit more about us is a fun fact and the fun fact we had for tonight, was, do you have a, of all the new year's, celebrations that you've had, Is there a particular 1 that is your favorite or maybe most memorable?

Yeah, for me it was the millennial celebration.

So when the 2000, when it became 2000, I was quite young, but I remember going to a party with my family and we were probably the first time I'd stayed up that late.

We were playing a bunch of foosball and just hanging out with a bunch of other kids.

I was dressed up all nice and everything as a little kid.

I don't actually remember the 2000 1, but the most memorable 1 for me is there was, I don't remember which year it was, but there was a year where I happened to be in New York when I was pretty young, so I got to actually see the New Year celebration in Times Square or whatever, So that was pretty cool.

So you already have a few questions for tonight.

Mike Pruitt says, how can I see the pricing?

Yeah, the easiest way to see the pricing, Mike, would just be to go to StreamYard.com slash pricing.

I'm super happy to hear that the transcriptions are working well for you and that they're picking up the accent.

Yeah, that's definitely 1 of the challenges of transcriptions in general is there's a huge variety of accents, but it should work quite well with pretty much every accent.

Yeah, we tested it on quite a few different accents as well, just to make sure.

Let's see that millwall podcast says, is there anything coming to connect Twitter spaces to live streams?

I would be curious if, what X, what Twitter have planned in terms of if there is anything long-term to connect and integrate spaces with live streams, but there's nothing that I specifically know of.

I have definitely heard of people managing to do both at the same time, but they're not using stuff that's built into X or StreamYard.

They're essentially doing something where maybe they're live streaming and they're essentially like capturing that on their phone and then also doing that in a Twitter space or vice versa.

So you kind of have to get creative if you're looking to do both at the same time.

Vibe show says any updates on dark mode for frame yard?

I don't know if you've been on 1 of these before and ask for it.

So we don't have an update as in like, Hey, this is going to be out tomorrow or anything like that, but I'm like, we, we will build this.

And I would imagine it will be relatively soon.

I know some folks will use an extension and actually there's a few different ways to do this.

There's different ways to do it where you can kind of work around it.

If you really can't have a white screen for some reason, like if it messes up your lighting completely or something like that, you could use an extension.

And extensions can kind of have some issues.

So we will likely ship that relatively soon, but no updates on exactly when just yet.

Ring of Hire Show, I see your comment about having issues seeing LinkedIn comments.

If you're having issues, I would just go to streamr.com slash contact and they can help troubleshoot with you.

But like you can see here, like this comment from Alexander, like we're getting comments coming in from LinkedIn.

But the support team is on all day, all night.

They'd be happy to troubleshoot with you.

BJ Rain says, how do I turn the sound down on Instagram live videos so there's no delay slash echo?

Okay, yeah, so we actually, we walked through this when you set up an Instagram stream.

And unfortunately, this is just kind of 1 of the limitations of streaming to Instagram right now, where you basically have to have Instagram open in order to click go live.

Really hoping they change that, but for now it's just the way it is.

So as part of the steps when you create it, I think it's like the fifth step in the creation model.

When you're setting up Instagram on our end We explain how to do this so you can read that But just to give you kind of a short version you basically on Instagram You can just right-click on the tab and just click mute and it will just mute Instagram completely I wish they would just mute that video by default.

I'm not sure why they don't I guess just to give you a preview to make sure it's working, but yeah, it's really convenient.

So if you just mute that whole tab, that's kind of the best way to go, and then you won't get any echo.

Yeah, and hopefully they do make improvements in the future on that stuff.

All right, let's see what else we had here.

I see lots of comments from folks saying, enjoying the new updates and whatnot.

Thanks, Millwall, super happy to hear that.

On that note, I do wanna quickly mention some of the recent ones because there have been a lot recently in case any of you didn't catch them.

1 was obviously Instagram Live is now available, like Dan briefly mentioned.

There are a lot of limitations at the moment, but it is super exciting that folks actually have access to it now, assuming that you're on a professional Instagram Live account.

Again, that's not a StreamYard, not the StreamYard professional account.

You can use Instagram on all StreamYard accounts, which anyone should be able to access.

You should be able to convert your account to a professional account.

Vertical Studio, we're doing more to support vertical streaming.

Anything else to add to Instagram Live, Dan?

Yeah, we've mentioned before, or if you've streamed Instagram, you've already noticed this.

Well, there are some limitations like the 1 we just talked about where you have to basically stay on Instagram and click go live there.

Hoping Instagram makes that easier, but it's still amazing that they opened it up at all.

And it's just kind of a great first step where you can actually stream to Instagram now, whereas hardly anyone used to have access to it.

So very excited that everyone can now stream there but just hoping the next Instagram kind of takes the next step now which is actually improving the experience a bit and making a little easier for people because I know it's a lot of steps to kind of walk through at the moment.

We try to kind of walk people through the steps as easy as possible.

So if you've tried it, you've seen all the steps and everything and hopefully that was pretty easy to follow.

But yeah, hoping it gets a little easier on Instagram then.

I think we've already showed a couple from tonight from X, formerly Twitter, which is comments are now available from X, which is really, really exciting.

There was a long period of time where we weren't actually able to access those over the API, but X made that change.

And the nice thing about X is it does work very similar to the other types of integration.

You don't have to do anything special and you can directly connect your account there.

Cool, And then another 1 that's pretty recent is 2 things related to transcriptions, which I think Mumsy had mentioned she was a fan of.

1 is downloadable transcriptions are now available if you're on a pro plan or higher.

So that's after your recording or your broadcast is over, you can actually download those transcriptions.

And it's also available for broadcasts or recordings you've done before we launched the feature, which is pretty cool.

So you can just go in and click and it will generate those transcriptions.

And we've gotten pretty positive feedback about the quality and accuracy of them.

If you maybe wanna create a blog post or something from your Transcript, it just makes it super, super easy to do that.

Yeah, there's all kinds of cool ways to use it, especially with repurposing and blogs and whatnot.

Alexander says, when a guest is added to the stream, a symbol appears as if it's loading.

It's definitely something we've talked about in terms of things we could do to change what happens when you actually add or remove someone.

In most instances, I think you don't usually see the symbol unless it's taking a relatively long time for the person to connect, but appreciate the feedback there.

Something we can consider giving more flexibility on that.

And did you go through, I know you were going through the features the last few weeks.

Did you go through the transcriptions in the editor as well?

So the final 1, which is available on all plans is, in the editor, you can now actually see the transcriptions, which is pretty cool.

And if you've never actually used the StreamRoute editor, I think that'll be a welcome surprise for you as well.

So after your stream or your recording is over, if you go into the StreamRoute Editor, you'll actually see the transcription for the entire broadcast, which actually makes it really easy to navigate to a particular point in the show.

So I actually used it last week for our town hall when I was trying to find a particular moment so I could just scroll through the talk, the transcription talking points.

And if you just click in a particular area, it'll actually take you to that part of the video.

And it's just the start with transcriptions.

We plan on doing lots of other cool things when it comes to implementing that in the editor and making it even easier to use.

I think I just screen shared it, nevermind.

Yeah, definitely encourage if you guys haven't tried it out to try it out because all you have to do is do a quick recording and you'll get a very good sense of how simple it is to use.

Yeah, and honestly, it is better if you try it out yourself rather than me screen share it or I show you a video or something.

It's nice just like go back to your last stream, click on the library where you can see the recording, just click into there, click edit and repurpose, you'll actually see the whole editor, you can click around with the transcript and play around with it yourself.

Awesome, cool, I see some other questions here.

Flames Nation says, will streamer ever have a preview screen like other streaming services?

I would be curious Flames Nation, like what exactly you'd like to see with the preview screen is like before you go live, you want to see sort of like what it's going to get more details flames nation like what like, or is it like a transition thing like before you show it in overlay, you want to see what it's going to look like if you could add more details there.

Let me know if I'm off here, but basically it shows like, here's the stage, here's what the stage could be, essentially, and you click a button to kind of transition it over.

It's basically how like a really sophisticated sort of TV editing setup would work.

Let us know if that's kind of what you mean or something else.

1 thing I will add on that note, Flames Nation, and it's not directly what you're asking for, but 1 thing that I have alluded to in the past that the team is currently working on and that we're really excited about is under the same sort of vein of custom layouts and sort of the change we made there where we wanted to keep things super, super simple, but for folks that did wanna go sort of go behind the scenes and change things around when it came to layouts in that editor.

We wanna do the same thing when it comes to the overall run of show and give more flexibility when it comes to like when a particular change is happening and giving you more control over that if you want to.

We wanna keep things really simple, but we do have some cool changes there that will feel similar to what you've seen with layouts but for the sort of run run of show and that might actually address what you're looking for there.

BJ rain says any plans to make total views available post broadcast and not just while it's live.

Potentially, I would say, I'd be curious what you'd like to learn from that.

There is sort of limits to what the platforms will kind of expose to us.

So assuming you're talking about like YouTube views, Facebook views, etc.

And kind of aggregating all of those, I would say yeah, possibly.

But also be curious, like, Would you just want to know it right after it ends?

So you want to see what was the total viewership?

Or are you more interested like, you know, even a week later what the viewership was?

Because there is only so much information we have access to through those other products like YouTube and Facebook.

With something like StreamYard OnAir, which is StreamYard's webinar product, we have a lot more information, so we could provide way more data.

But we are somewhat limited by what the platform is actually exposed to us.

So yeah, just any more information, basically, about why you would want that is helpful.

Also, Beauty Bubble, happy to have you here with us tonight.

Episode 260, Gage and I were just talking about that beforehand.

That's exactly 5 years since we started the town hall.

Captain says, will YouTube, question, will YouTube emojis ever work on StreamYard?

We definitely want to continue improving the YouTube integration in any way we can.

Like, Like we made some recent additions when it came to, what was the most recent 1 Dan?

I have a gifting subscriptions, we added some.

Gifted and member milestone, I think were the 2 most recent.

Yeah, so we absolutely wanna continue improving it.

When it comes to YouTube emojis specifically, I'm not sure if that's something we have access to or

Yeah, we also chat with YouTube about this stuff and kind of pass on feedback to them.

Albert says, someone asked if we were still required to set up a SY key for each session, true or false?

So I might not be understanding the question correctly, Albert, but there's never been a requirement to have a key for StreamYard on a broadcast or session basis.

So I might be misunderstanding it, but in that sense, no.

You can just go on StreamYard and start it.

Maybe you're asking about the login codes.

But it used to be that the only way to log into StreamYard would be we'd email you a login code, which you can still do if you want, but now we've added the option to also log in with Google.

So in that sense, you don't need a login code there, but I feel like I might be misunderstanding the question.

Or if then maybe this is for Instagram where you need a stream key for each stream.

That's just kind of a limitation of Instagram.

BJ says seeing total views later would be much easier than having to add them up from 5 places.

APG show says view meters on video thumbnails thumbnails would be nice to see relative volume levels.

Let me know if I'm understanding it correctly, but we want to explore something where it is a little easier to kind of balance volume.

So say for Gage and I, we entered the studio and we just want to make sure that I'm not way louder than him or vice versa.

I don't know if they will just appear at the bottom on what I think you're referring to as the thumbnails or somewhere else, but that is something we would like to do.

Or maybe we just do it automatically for you and just kind of adjust automatically.

Although sometimes people might not want that, so we need to be careful.

But yeah, it's something we're actively thinking about right now.

NC Pro Motor says, zooming capability soon with cell phone live streaming.

So 1 recent addition we did make and see is there's now a guest app for StreamRoute if you're on iOS.

And the main reason we added that is when it comes to browser support for the StreamRoute technology, Safari's always been a bit difficult to work with.

So in order to give folks on iOS the best possible experience, we ended up coming to the conclusion that the best way to do that was to give folks the option to use a native application.

But 1 of the cool aspects of having a native application is that stuff like screen sharing and zooming in on the phone is actually a lot easier for us to add.

So that is something that we likely will be adding.

Millwall says, is there a tie-in with TikTok Live Like you can now do with Instagram, as in getting a stream key from Tik Tok to, oh, getting a stream key from Tik Tok is hard work.

So yeah, I assume what you mean, Noval is like we've kind of made Instagram, it's not the same type of destination or integration that we have with like YouTube and LinkedIn and Facebook, but we have sort of tried to make it easier.

Most people don't have access to TikTok Live, and I'm sure even some people watching maybe saw that question and thinking, ooh, I wanna stream to TikTok, Let me try that.

And some people can stream to TikTok, but most people don't have access.

So we're just a little cautious to add a destination if most people don't have access to it.

But we might try and do something for people we maybe know have access to make it a little bit easier.

It's just very few people actually do, which is why we haven't built anything for it yet.

If it suddenly opened up and everyone had access, we would definitely

do something immediately to make it much simpler.

Johan, hopefully I'm saying your name correctly.

Johan says, what about audio communication between producers slash moderator and guests without being listening, without the live audience hearing it?

So in the standard studio, right now, the only way to really do that is with the private chat.

Greenroom is on the higher tier plans, but Greenroom does give you the ability to have sort of like this separate holding area, which actually would probably perfectly address what you're looking for, where you can have an area where you can communicate with folks before they actually go into the live studio.

So I would encourage you to check that out.

It still doesn't have the live component, where when someone's actually in the stream and talking to be able to go into their ear, but it might address what you're looking for.

Let's do maybe A couple more questions here before we get into the giveaways.

Awesome, BJ, I see all your feedback on the analytics.

I assume you just mean when you're live, can you see the viewer count from each platform?

Let me know if that's wrong, but you can do that if you just hover on the viewer count in the studio.

Yeah, it shows you the breakdown on hover.

Johan says, what about animated overlays?

Do you wanna show that 1 we have with bottles, Dan?

So you do have some options there with GIFs, Johan, so you can actually upload a GIF and get an animated effect in that sense.

We have gotten a ton of feedback from folks that they would love to have the option to use things like MOV files or WebM files when it comes to overlays.

And that is something we're actively exploring.

But yeah, like Dan, I'll have to comment, like Dan showed on screen there, you can do stuff like, like have a duck flying across the screen, right?

Yeah, GIFs are not ideal, so hopefully videos will be supported relatively soon, but it does work for stuff like that.

Not that you're necessarily going to do these types of gifs, but you could have Christmas lights that are twinkling like that, something that can be relatively easy.

Awesome, well, yeah, definitely something we'll continue to think about.

right, then should we go ahead and start queuing up the giveaway while I do a couple more here?

Damien says, suggestion, the names should be adjustable in size and it'd be nice to be able to move around GIFs and banners.

It's always a balance between trying to make things like as easy as possible and sort of, you know, just click and go versus giving you more flexibility.

And like I sort of mentioned earlier in this stream, we do have some really cool stuff coming that will give folks a bit more flexibility in the same sort of, under the same philosophy that we sort of use with custom layouts.

All right, I think folks, most folks are already familiar with the giveaway, but yeah, at the end of these, we always do a giveaway.

And tonight we'll be giving away a StreamYard pillow and a StreamYard duck.

And to be eligible, all you have to do is type in hashtag the yard, we'll give you 10 seconds, 15 seconds or so to get in your hashtag the yards.

See all StreamYard transcripts on Youtube

Ask StreamYard - Final Town Hall of 2023 (#260)