Livestream Users - is it worth it?

Livestream

Love it	25.0%	[ 2 ]
Hate it	37.5%	[ 3 ]
I've only ever watched other people	37.5%	[ 3 ]
Total Votes:			[ 8 ]

[mindwasp]

Alright, I know many artists use livestream to broadcast their work/process to the public as it's being created. The value is there, but subscription based services make me a tad twitchy.

Two questions - If you use livestream, do you pay or use it free (and what limitations are there with free usage?)
How do you like whatever respective version of livestream you use?

I'm also curious if there are any comporable platforms out there that would give you a similar result. I have simple needs wink

[Lychee Fruit]

I use the free version and it's not bad.

Pros:
- You can record and post your videos online.
- You have the ability to mod your chatroom and appoint mods.
- You have some control over video/sound quality.
- Customer service is great if you have problems.


Cons:
- There's a cap on how many people can be in the chat at one time.
- Porn is discouraged (but it's not heavily policed).
- Video editing is done online and the program is slow and awkward to navigate.
- Procaster (the streaming software) uses a ton of memory.

[bluberrie_bliss]

I couldn't get Livestream to work well for me. Like Lychee said, the program uses a TON of memory at a time, and trying to load it and art at the same time would almost always crash my system. I don't have enough mem to use the program, but I like Join.me

It's about the same, there's a cap on the number of people for the free version, only ten allowed in a chat at a time, but most of the time I only have one or two people watching to chat with anyways.

Join.me doesn't include sound, so if you want to use voice chat, you'd have to use a different program... but it's not nearly as hard to load with as much lag on the drawing for me as what Livestream was.

I actually intend to try Picarto.tv as well, I can't tell you anything about the pros and cons of it, but I've watched a few drawings being done on the site and it looks worth checking out.

[Latopazora]

I wouldn't know, it never worked properly for me.

[mindwasp]

Awesome, that's a lot of really good info. Thank you, all!

[Psychonautic]

I don't recommend livestream because its podcaster records in horrible quality and hogs up resources, plus the limited viewer thing. If you still want to use livestream, I would suggest using open broadcaster instead to record, as it has much more features and higher quality.
Personally I prefer using picarto. Free users can't save streams online but that's the only con I can find. I always edit and post them on youtube anyway so its not a problem for me.

[nyanie]

I personally don't like Livestream because of how laggy it is.
I currently use OpenBroadcaster, or OBS. OBS lets you stream at a higher quality(all of this depends on the speed or your internet connection) without using so much CPU like Livestream Procaster. If your computer or internet connection is having trouble recording the livestream, then you can set a specific bitrate at which it's recording(for both audio and video!). With OBS, you can livestream on several websites. I am currently streaming on twitch.tv, but websites like picarto.tv are good as well.

Once you get used to it, OBS allows for easy scene editing, and choosing which section of your screen you wish to record without much trouble. Setting up the program may be a bit tricky, but there are many tutorials online, and I'd be glad to help if you message me!

Picarto.tv allows you to set your channel to "18+" if you draw nsfw, and such. There aren't any caps for viewers for both websites that I know of. Unlike Livestream, your channel will be listed in the channel listings without having to "verify" it.
Picarto.tv and twitch.tv allows you to appoint mods and the likes as well.


As for my experience with Livestream..personally I believe that customer service is HORRIBLE. That's the main reason why I switched over because I was not getting any help at all with my questions. Here is a question that was never answered prior to switching to OBS.
I have yet to experience any issues using OBS on twitch.tv and picarto.tv

Hope all of this information is helpful to you!