Sure, you don’t need to show yourself at all!.)
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Nice. I might do some tests.
There is someone who has a bunch of videos about spider ID inc one where they start doing iNat at 4 hrs in :
https://www.twitch.tv/spider_id/video/1086305351
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It might be frustrating to go slow on the stream itself (because it’s gratifying to feel like you got a lot IDed of course). BUT, if it teaches even a few other people how to ID well and they stick with it, think of how many extra IDs that is in the long run! It’d be like compounding interest…
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I sometimes do a thing with friends where we each do IDs independently, talk over voice chat, and help each other out on difficult IDs. I could imagine something like that, on an ongoing casual basis. Depending on what I’m identifying and what others are doing there may be more or less interaction…
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nice. that might be the first ever Twitch stream that includes an iNaturalist ID session. it looks like he’s only made 10 IDs in total though. i watched the identification part of the video, and it’s actually quite entertaining, though it’s a little above my level. it’s interesting to see his process, too.
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Yes, shame he hasn’t been back - profile only active for a few days
It was interesting to watch… I’ve not gone into Arachnids much but even just seeing the wiki he uses is useful to know about. It was a bit slow …but then not a typical identifier. Be cool to participate in group chat with others who ID similar taxa
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What about making it doscord-like, so there’s a chat where people talk and everyone can turn on an option to translate their screen, so people can connect and watch it.
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I’m sure there is discord integration and built in translation plugins for twitch. It’s a huge platform. And there is already group chat
Yes, there is twitch/discord integration with various features: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/212112068-Twitch-Integration-FAQ
I’ve been thinking about a call-in Montana nature talk/identification streaming show for some time. Love the idea. If anyone starts one, post it!
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there’s no better time to start a streaming channel than now. i think it would be interesting to have someone look through Montana observations, say, once a week and point out some really interesting ones, as well as go through and identify ones that need identifying. you’d probably do that anyways, except that you’re not currently streaming it.
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i was at home this morning halfway / passively attending a Zoom conference. so i thought i’d try some Twitch streaming on the side just to see how easy or hard it is.
it took just a few minutes to set up an account in Twitch. then i downloaded / installed OBS Studio and hooked it up my Twitch profile.
just for privacy, i downloaded / installed VRoid Studio and created / exported an avatar. (that took maybe 30 minutes for something really basic.) then i used VSeeFace to handle the face tracking. (in VSeeFace, imported the avatar and then turned on the simple expression tracking under general settings.)
since i have just one monitor right now, i set up 3 Windows desktops, with OBS and VSeeFace on one, a browser with iNat on another, and a browser with Twitch on the third. then in OBS, i added a scene with the iNat session as the base layer and the avatar (VSeeFace window) on top.
i set up my Twitch account to save videos of the streams by default (but not automatically publish). then i kicked off the stream in OBS and did a few identifications for #IdentiFriday in my iNaturalist session.
then i stopped the stream in OBS and went over to my Twitch session to view the resulting video and publish it. it seemed to all work as expected, although my stream was a bit laggy because i also had the Zoom conference session going on. (but my connection is relatively slow. so i was actually surprised that it allowed me to stream at all.)
there’s a chat window that can be attached to the OBS setup, but i didn’t have any chat going on during my short stream. i think it would be easier to monitor if i had multiple monitors, but i’m not sure yet. and i haven’t tried testing with audio (since i had a Zoom session also going on at the same time). so i’ll have to test those later…
UPDATE: i tried doing a second stream this afternoon after the Zoom conference ended, and my stream was still quite laggy. i guess my connection (only 6Mbs down / 1Mbps up) is not strong enough to handle the load. also, VSeeFace takes quite a bit of memory and GPU power. so it’s causing the fans on my laptop to spin up quite loudly, which isn’t good for audio… i guess that ends my stint as a vtuber…
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you could try limiting it to the minimum – a shared screen at 30 dps, 720 resolution, high latency / 30s delay. not even a voiceover, just chat. might be more stable.
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yesterday, i actually signed up for 5G home internet service, since it’s going to be cheaper and 5-50x the speed of my current DSL service. so that should allow me to stream without the lag. as for using an avatar, i tried simplifying my model, but it still seems to take a lot of computing resources to animate, which will make my machine run hot / loud.
so i guess i will be able to stream, but maybe not with an avatar, unless i go without audio (to avoid streaming the unpleasant sound of computer fans whirring). i’ll try again when i get the equipment for my new internet service.
when are you going to start streaming?
UPDATE: i was able to solve some of the problems above by putting my laptop in quiet mode and dialing down some of the settings in VSeeFace to consume less GPU and CPU power.
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depends. I’m visiting my mom, but when I get home I’ll test how my home laptop and wifi handle things.
I’ve wanted a new SSD in any case, but my landlord may not be inclined to upgrade the wifi just because I’ve picked up a potentially transient new hobby :P
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I have toyed around with the idea of doing something like this, although it always seemed more practical to do so YouTube where you can upload edited down content if your session was a bit slow and uneventful (my focus would be on herping, turtles in particular). I do have a friend who has been looking to steer me in the direction of Twitch though. It’ll take some work to get the idea off the ground, but it definitely has some educational appeal.
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just do it, and and improve over time, i think. edited videos do take more time because of the editing, but streaming can be really easy, since there’s no extra editing. even if your desired end product is an edited video, you can practice on a live stream or use a recorded live stream as the basis for an edited video.
yes, i think i would definitely have a YouTube account even if i were streaming primarily on Twitch. you can load clips from Twitch over to YouTube, and they can live there indefinitely, whereas Twitch videos stick around for only a limited period of time.
i think if you’re going to be creating mostly edited videos, then doing everything on YouTube might make the most sense – to avoid having to cultivate viewers on both platforms.
but i think identifying sessions on iNaturalist would be more suited as live streams than as edited videos or vlogs, and if you’re going to do a lot of streaming, i think it’s just easiest to do on Twitch, and i’m guessing the general Twitch audience probably has a lot of overlap with people who are potentially interested in iNaturalist.
there’s also a little bit more of a community feel on Twitch than over on YouTube, i think. just for example, on Twitch, if you and your friend are doing similar streams, you could coordinate and stream at different times and host each other’s channels while you’re not streaming (or raid each other’s streams if streaming at the same time) to promote each other’s streams and share viewers.
the bar for monetization on Twitch is a little lower, too, though YouTube probably has greater income potential if you’re really popular… although you can bypass each platform’s standard routes for monetization by using something like Patreon or hustling for some product placement sponsors or using affiliate links or other stuff like that.
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With so many people interested / curious, what about a shared account? Each person can stream whenever they wish, which means that those interested only have to follow one channel. And that means there will be more regular content, albeit not really a schedule.
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i think that’s the advantage of Twitch and its hosting feature that i mentioned above. if you’re going to coordinate schedules anyway, you can have everyone who’s not actively streaming host another person’s channel that is actually live streaming.
with separate accounts, you can also interact with and follow each other to build each others channels that way, too.
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My husband says about your hypothetical stream, “that sounds very soothing.”
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