I find twitch to be an unholy amalgamation of a NPR pledge drive and a Las Vegas slot machine.
How to Run a Live Coding Stream on Twitch Using OBS
161–170 of 193 posts
Re: How to Run a Live Coding Stream on Twitch Using OBS
#162Well, truth is, you need to code something "mainstream" to make it even worth it. (read as: have at least like 2 people watching or even just visit your channel once, not including yourself ...) Program some "Unity game prototype", some Java or JavaScript web dev, frontend or backend, put in buzzwords like Postgres and NodeJS and what else is relevant to people right now. You know, Twitch has a specific target audience after all. No one is gonna come for some bootloader programming on a STM32F0 (no vector table offset register after all!) or integration of a secure element from NXP including some crypto basics about ECC because people simply don't care there.
There was a twitch-like platform for live coding once, but obviously it flopped.
Re: How to Run a Live Coding Stream on Twitch Using OBS
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
I run a piece of software called TimeSnapper on my machine that takes a snapshot every 10 seconds of the entire desktop area. I have recordings going all the way back to the very beginning of 2006. It is incredibly interesting to watch some of those old recordings to see what I was working on that month.
That looks cool. Too bad there's not a Linux version. I suspect you could code a screenshot every 10 seconds in bash pretty easily anyway.
Drop this into a crontab with your desired frequency:
DISPLAY=:0 import -window root "$HOME/Pictures/screenshot-$(date '+%Y%m%d%H%M').png"
ImageMagick installed
Improvements
You can change the date +FORMAT for a more readable filename. See the date(1) manpage.
Caveats
You may need to change your DISPLAY to match your actual X11 server. You may need to add XAUTHORITY=$HOME/.Xauthority depending on your X11 ACLs. Probably doesn't work with Wayland, but nothing works with Wayland so YMMV.
Re: How to Run a Live Coding Stream on Twitch Using OBS
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing you might enjoy is recording your screen for yourself, and then replaying it at 10x speed. I’ve done this before and it allows you to get some of the feeling of “being watched” with none of the privacy or security problems. Also sometimes it’s neat to see the crazy process of building something, particularly if there is ui or visual design tools involved. Also, I do think there is a whole additional level o…
I run a piece of software called TimeSnapper on my machine that takes a snapshot every 10 seconds of the entire desktop area. I have recordings going all the way back to the very beginning of 2006. It is incredibly interesting to watch some of those old recordings to see what I was working on that month.
This sounds amazing, essentially a video diary without the omissions of a real diary.
I'd love to see watch my work sped up like this. At 30fps you could see your entire day in 90 seconds.
Re: How to Run a Live Coding Stream on Twitch Using OBS
#165Well, truth is, you need to code something "mainstream" to make it even worth it. (read as: have at least like 2 people watching or even just visit your channel once, not including yourself ...) Program some "Unity game prototype", some Java or JavaScript web dev, frontend or backend, put in buzzwords like Postgres and NodeJS and what else is relevant to people right now. You know, Twitch has a specific target audien…
>There was a twitch-like platform for live coding once, but obviously it flopped.
I went searching for that exact site and couldn't find it (or maybe I did but regardless it was dead). I actually used it for about 5 maybe 10 minutes once upon a time because I thought the concept was cool. Watch me create a SaaS service on the fly. 3 minutes into it, I'm realizing I'm about to type in public IP addresses, log into secret management systems, pull data out of a CMDB which gives up a bunch of my internal system data... So I thought to only share a single monitor and use my second monitor for privacy related tasks. But then people can't see what I am doing and for long periods of time while i'm gathering CMDB data, no one sees any coding going on. At the end of the 10 minutes, I had about 12 viewers so I'm sure if I was doing somethign worthwhile it would increase a decent clip..
But live coding without planning is a security nightmare. Someone I knew once live coded their programming "homework" for a position they applied to and then shared their coding session with the interviewers. That takes the cake. He was hired on the spot, probably because he wasn't afraid to show his mistakes.
Re: How to Run a Live Coding Stream on Twitch Using OBS
#166Audio-input-wise, I fail to understand why anyone whose objective is to capture their own voice, would choose a condenser over a dynamic microphone. Dynamic microphone hardly those fan/AC/room nearby phone calls that the author had to reduce using software filters. Farther more, dynamic mics can deliver your voice with a touch of radiophonic note. What's more, they're usually more durable and cost less (you can get a…
Getting a good level out of a solid dynamic mic requires a good pre-amp as well as (often) a signal booster like the Cloud Lifter or Cathedral Pipes. It’s a more expensive setup overall, but it does make for a much richer ‘radio’ sound if that’s what you’re after.
No, the pre-amps of even cheap interfaces (e.g. Behringer UMC series) are good enough for voice-overs with a dynamic mic.
Re: How to Run a Live Coding Stream on Twitch Using OBS
#167Audio-input-wise, I fail to understand why anyone whose objective is to capture their own voice, would choose a condenser over a dynamic microphone. Dynamic microphone hardly those fan/AC/room nearby phone calls that the author had to reduce using software filters. Farther more, dynamic mics can deliver your voice with a touch of radiophonic note. What's more, they're usually more durable and cost less (you can get a…
Getting a good level out of a solid dynamic mic requires a good pre-amp as well as (often) a signal booster like the Cloud Lifter or Cathedral Pipes. It’s a more expensive setup overall, but it does make for a much richer ‘radio’ sound if that’s what you’re after.
The mics I mentioned have an internal pre-amp. Sure you can get even louder signal using external one, but they provide enough gain for one person speaking few inches from the mic.
Re: How to Run a Live Coding Stream on Twitch Using OBS
#168Audio-input-wise, I fail to understand why anyone whose objective is to capture their own voice, would choose a condenser over a dynamic microphone. Dynamic microphone hardly those fan/AC/room nearby phone calls that the author had to reduce using software filters. Farther more, dynamic mics can deliver your voice with a touch of radiophonic note. What's more, they're usually more durable and cost less (you can get a…
Thinking about it a bit more, perhaps one reason to a condenser in this scenario is to easily hide the mic from the video. It's doable with a well a dynamic mic and some composition work too though.
Re: How to Run a Live Coding Stream on Twitch Using OBS
#169One thing that I was surprised not to see in the post was how to deal with editing files that have secrets (such as API keys or email credentials). When I set up OBS, I overlayed a full screen image that says I'm showing something secret which had nothing but a small webcam feed in the bottom right so folks could still see me but not my desktop. It was assigned to a global hotkey toggle of course.
I think the best way to deal with secrets is to not live stream them, at all, ever, in any way. If you have secrets anywhere near your live stream, it's not a question if "if" you will leak them but "when." Don't put yourself in that situation. Work _hard_ to keep yourself out of that situation.
It's not always possible to do this.
Let's say I live streamed implementing Stripe. There's no way to avoid not showing my test API keys if I'm going to show the end to end process of setting everything up. The best I could do is to roll the keys before I start the stream but this degrades the quality of the stream since it's not from scratch.
Of course those keys and anything else that's sensitive would be sitting in an .env file, and I'd also have an .env.example file showing how it's set up without anything sensitive being in there (I do this already in my pre-recorded videos). Even going as far as preventing the real .env file coming up when I fuzzy open files so I don't open it by accident and the contents of that file being ignored from multi-file searches.
Re: How to Run a Live Coding Stream on Twitch Using OBS
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the best way to deal with secrets is to not live stream them, at all, ever, in any way. If you have secrets anywhere near your live stream, it's not a question if "if" you will leak them but "when." Don't put yourself in that situation. Work _hard_ to keep yourself out of that situation.
It's not always possible to do this. Let's say I live streamed implementing Stripe. There's no way to avoid not showing my test API keys if I'm going to show the end to end process of setting everything up. The best I could do is to roll the keys before I start the stream but this degrades the quality of the stream since it's not from scratch. Of course those keys and anything else that's sensitive would be sitting i…
Maybe the answer is simpler than that. Rotating a key should never be painful. If you accidentally reveal a key, it should be straightforward to change it (I'm sure your audience will understand if you take a one minute break).