5 steps of streaming on twitch as a beginner
Twitch is one of the most popular platforms for live streaming. It’s an app that can be downloaded on any device, and it has the ability to stream video gameplay. Streaming on twitch requires the best laptop or PC with high-speed internet connection and an external webcam so viewers can see you playing your favorite games.
There are five steps to getting started as a beginner: pick out your platform, set up your account, connect your webcam, download software like OBS or StreamlabsOBS that will help you broadcast yourself easily, then start setting up your settings before you go live! Also make sure you have plugged in the best gaming headset so that you can communicate with your audience smoothly.
1. Make a twitch account
The first thing to do is create an account on twitch(see link in article) .After you have an account, there are some things that need changing. First of all the e-mail you used when registering needs to be changed so your password can’t leak if somebody happen to obtain it somehow. E-mails created with Gmail are very secure and hard to attack so use one of those when creating your Twitch account.
You also might want to change the username because by default all accounts will start with “twitch” then some numbers, which is not good for your presence on search engines like google or any other searching system. You definitely don’t want people that find you via google search end up on another streamer.
2. Connect twitch with your YouTube account
After you have created your twitch account, go to the settings by navigating to the bottom of the screen. Scroll down until you find “Connections” and press it. A new page should appear where you will see information about all your connections(YouTube, Twitter, facebook etc). Press connect on youtube(youtube is used as example in the guide but same applies for other choices) . It might ask you if it can allow public share data from your youtube videos so press allow access.
The reason for this step is that only users that are connected with google or other services that Twitch uses for stats will show up on those lists(like top games used while streaming). Once you added Twitch to your youtube account, you can use the same connection to access twitch from other services.
The next thing you should do is to create a banner for your stream since Twitch will show it while streaming if you don’t have one already. You can create one on Canva.com .
The size of the banner should be 1500×500 pixels(width x height) but you might want to make it bigger because even though it’s 500 pixels wide, there are some characters limit in the banner itself so it might get cut off after putting in all info.
If that happens, you will need to either edit out or resize some elements until they fit inside the 500 pixel width and still look good when watching them from certain angles.
Other things to remember is that it has to be a PNG image and the background should be transparent(you can see examples of good banners in article) .
4. Stream options
After you have created your banner, you will need to set up what kind of stream you want. The window for this will appear after pressing “start streaming” on Twitch. If everything works fine and internet speed allows it, select high quality in the settings(also make sure delay in settings is zero or as low as possible).
You also might want to play with resolution and bitrate but I would advice only doing so if you know what you are doing since changing these things incorrectly can cause lag when playing games while streaming which will ruin the experience for both you and your viewers.
5. Play and start streaming
After everything is ready, just press the play button and launch your game. Now just stop thinking about whether people will see your channel or not and start playing games while having fun to entertain others as well as yourself! You can find other streamers by going to Twitch directory .
Note: The guide might be updated with more images and info if it turns out that there isn’t enough information in article for some parts of it right now(it was written before release of UE4 source code so I might do an update on the article after I get the chance to make something new for it).
There is also a livestreaming software list which can give insight to how others use streaming for various games(and you might even learn something).
If there is anything to add to the guide or if I have made a mistake then let me know in comments below. If article was informative, please give it a thumbs up and share it with others that can benefit from it. Thanks!
Also read about 6stream