Scheduling a Youtube Live video
24 Apr 2020
I really like scheduling YouTube Live videos and broadcasting to them from a smartphone or tablet, now that I’ve got the hang of doing the same thing in Facebook Live. Youtube Live broadcasts are a bit less intuitive to set up, but certain features make up for it.
Verify your YouTube account
You can’t use YouTube Live unless you’ve given YouTube a phone number at which you can receive texts and “confirmed” your identity to them at some point.
You’ve probably already done this once upon a time if you needed to upload videos more than 15 minutes long.
Start your 24-hour waiting period
Visit https://www.youtube.com/dashboard.
- This will redirect you to
https://studio.youtube.com/channel/Abc0dEF123gH4iJK5lmn6OP
, perhaps followed by a question mark and some more junk that this link would work just fine without. - The
Abc0dEF123gH4iJK5lmn6OP
part of the URL is your “channel ID.”- Make note of your “channel ID” – you’ll need it when you tell your Larix Broadcaster app on your phone/tablet how to talk to YouTube on your behalf.
Click “Videos” in the left navigation menu.
Under “Channel Videos” in the list at right, click the “Live” tab.
This will take you to https://studio.youtube.com/channel/Abc0dEF123gH4iJK5lmn6OP/videos/live
.
Underneath the list of past live streams (you probably won’t have any yet), beneath a cartoon character, beneath “Your live streams will show up here,” click “Get Started.”
This link points to https://studio.youtube.com/channel/Abc0dEF123gH4iJK5lmn6OP/livestreaming
.
The first time you visit it, you won’t be able to do anything but see a note from Google saying they need 24 hours to decide if you can livestream or not.
Sign out of YouTube and have a nice day.
Schedule a video
To schedule a new video (presuming you’re past your 24-hour waiting period), log into YouTube.
Visit https://studio.youtube.com/channel/Abc0dEF123gH4iJK5lmn6OP/livestreaming/stream
, replacing Abc0dEF123gH4iJK5lmn6OP
with your channel ID.
If you don’t know your channel ID, visit https://www.youtube.com/dashboard.
- This will redirect you to
https://studio.youtube.com/channel/Abc0dEF123gH4iJK5lmn6OP
, perhaps followed by a question mark and some more junk that this link would work just fine without. - The
Abc0dEF123gH4iJK5lmn6OP
part of the URL is your “channel ID.”
I recommend bookmarking https://studio.youtube.com/channel/Abc0dEF123gH4iJK5lmn6OP/livestreaming/stream
(with the channel ID replaced appropriately) with a note like “Schedule a new YouTube Live broadcast here” as the bookmark title.
- Fill in a title.
- Decide whether you want your livestream to be Public (attention-getting), Unlisted (birthday parties), or Private (“testing 1, 2, 3”).
- IMPORTANT: Do not charge money to people for the link to an “unlisted” YouTube video. Do not hide the link behind a paywall or as a “membership perk” at, say, Patreon.
- From what I hear, it goes against YouTube’s terms of service, and if you get caught, they won’t hesitate to trash your YouTube account. Not good for your band.
- Just use “unlisted” to wish your brother a happy birthday during a virtual family party.
- Enter a description.
- In Chrome on Windows 7 I managed to include line breaks in my description.
- In Firefox on Windows 10, so far I’m not having any luck.
- Your results may vary. There is another place where you can try again with a different editor for the description.
- Toggle Schedule for later on.
- Enter a date and time.
- One feature I like: Unlike Facebook Live, YouTube won’t really hold you to this time.
- YouTube will just sort of … display a little timestamp in your video with this date & time.
- But you can easily start early.
- And I got bored seeing how late I could start a show (I made it to 37 minutes).
- Facebook Live lets you start early, but you can’t be more than 10 minutes late to your scheduled broadcast.
- Note that Facebook Live defaults to auto-starting your broadcast as soon as it has a “hot camera” and “hot mic” once your “start time” has elapsed (you have to go into “manual mode” to do otherwise), but YouTube defaults into what Facebook would call “manual mode”.
- YouTube has an “auto-start when you have a hot mic & hot camera” setting you can turn on for a video, but it means as soon as you do, so if you’re just playing with your camera 30 minutes to start … oops, you’re live. (If you turned that setting on.) I recommend keeping it off and just remembering to manually start your YouTube video once you’re happy with your “mic & camera check” and trying to go live at approximately the time you promised.
- Pick thumbnail as a placeholder image for before you start broadcasting.
- Click “No, it’s not made for kids.”
- This doesn’t imply it’s 18+ (that’s what the “age restriction” even farther down is for).
- It just implies you’re not literally making children’s television.
- Click the blue “Create Stream” button.
Share your stream’s URL with fans
You’ll be taken to a URL like https://studio.youtube.com/channel/Abc0dEF123gH4iJK5lmn6OP/livestreaming/dashboard?v=zYxW98vuT_S
.
In this case, the “zYxW98vuT_S
” at the end would be your video ID.
You can share the URL https://youtu.be/zYxW98vuT_S
or https://youtube.com/watch?v=zYxW98vuT_S
with your audience now.
Your video will look like this before your scheduled start time:
Your video will look like this after your scheduled start time if you haven’t yet clicked the button to “really go live:”
Tidy up your title and description (optional)
Go to https://studio.youtube.com/video/zYxW98vuT_S/edit
(yes, you can do this before your stream – it just won’t be as fully-featured as after).
Here, you can:
- Edit your title
- Work on getting line breaks lined up more neatly in the description
- (I still couldn’t use the “enter” button, but I was able to copy & paste a blank line break from Notepad – the same trick I use when I want a line break in a Microsoft Excel cell)
- Change the “visibility” of your broadcast
- Change your thumbnail (hover over the upper-right corner of it and click the 3 dots that appear for the “Change” link)
- Add some tags
- And more, under the “Advanced” tab, if you’d like, such as if you forgot to set your category to “Music.”
The Save button in the upper right turns blue and clickable when you’ve actually drafted a change.
Here’re the basic things you can change:
And here’re the advanced ones:
Visit https://youtu.be/zYxW98vuT_S
or https://youtube.com/watch?v=zYxW98vuT_S
to double-check that your changes took effect.
Get technical
Go to https://studio.youtube.com/channel/Abc0dEF123gH4iJK5lmn6OP/livestreaming/dashboard?v=zYxW98vuT_S
.
Be careful on this page – you can accidentally start broadcasting to your livestream, and you don’t want to do that until showtime.
Avoid the “Go Live” button in the upper-right corner.
Set and write down your secret broadcaster key
At left, in about the middle of the page, underneath the black box with the spinning circle saying “Connect streaming software to start preview,” there should be a section with 3 tabs: “Stream Settings,” “Analytics,” and “Stream Health.”
Beneath the “Stream Settings” tab, below the phrase “Stream Key”, click the down-facing arrow to the right of the the drop-down labeled “Select Stream Key” that is probably currently set to “Auto-generated key.”
From the drop-down that contains additional options to “Create a new stream key,” “Manage stream keys,” use an “Auto-generated key,” or “Some Name Of A Key You Set Up Earlier
”, pick the “Some Name Of A Key You Set Up Earlier
” option.
For me, that meant picking the option labeled “Persistent Key Generated 2020 04 24
” because that’s what I named my custom key.
- (If you don’t have all those options, read the next section about creating a stream key and then come back to these instructions.)
In the next field, labeled “Stream key (paste in encoder),” click the eye-shaped icon at the right-hand side of the box so that you can see the contents of the field.
Write the value of this “Stream key” down. You’ll need to put it into the Larix Broadcaster app onto your phone later.
(If the contents of the field go back to being hidden, click the eye again.)
Create a “persistent key” if you haven’t ever done so before
I’m not a fan of Facebook Live persistent keys because they’re “forever keys” and, should they leak, people can forever broadcast (perhaps unpleasant things!) in your name, but YouTube Live long-lived keys are a little different.
In YouTube Live, you have to manually create any long-lived key you’d like to have, aand you can destroy it and create a new one if your secret gets out.
Therefore, I feel a lot more confident using “persistent keys” in YouTube Live than I do in Facebook Live. It’s definitely enjoyable to avoid typing a new key into the Larix Broadcaster app for every single broadcast.
I don’t like using the “Auto-generated key” option in YouTube Live because I find YouTube URLs a beast to type into the Larix Broadcaster app on a tiny keyboard on a tiny mobile device.
I’d rather just do it once before my first broadcast and never have to do it again, no matter how many times I broadcast.
To create a new key (you only need to do this once, presuming you don’t give your key to an untrustworthy friend):
Beneath the “Stream Settings” tab, below the phrase “Stream Key”, click the down-facing arrow to the right of the the drop-down labeled “Select Stream Key” that is probably currently set to “Auto-generated key.”
From the drop-down that contains additional options to “Create a new stream key” or use an “Auto-generated key” pick the “Create a new stream key” option.
You’ll be prompted for a Name, Description, “Maximum bitrate,” and potentially promising to broadcast at 60 frames per second.
Choose a name and, if you like, a description, that you’ll recognize later.
I named mine “Persistent Key Generated 2020 04 24
”.
Leave the “Maximum sustained bitrate that you can support” on “Variable bitrate” and leave the “Enable 60 fps” box toggled off, then click “Create” in the lower right-hand corner of the pop-up.
Now go back and follow my instructions above about setting this particular scheduled broadcast to make use of this particular key, and then be sure to write down the key.
Delete a “persistent key” if it gets into evil hands
This is unlikely, but if you ever, say, try a different app besides Larix Broadcaster, and then realize they’re totally untrustworthy (or if news breaks that Larix Broadcaster was actually the NSA!), here’s how you delete a key:
From the drop-down that contains additional options to “Create a new stream key,” “Manage stream keys,” use an “Auto-generated key,” or “Some Name Of A Key You Set Up Earlier
”, pick the “Manage stream keys” option.
Then click the trash can icon to the right of the key you’d like to delete and click “Close.”
All clear!
Okay, that was a bit of a diversion.
Back to configuring your upcoming broadcast.
Set latency
Facebook Live always has your audience watching a stream about 15-30 seconds behind your real life.
It’s extremely disorienting when you’re trying to interact with people in the chat.
You’ll say, “Where’s everybody from?!” or “What do you want to hear next?!” and no one will get back to you right away in the chat, because they don’t hear you ask the question for half a minute.
So then you have to “fill”-talk with blather like “I think Australia’s the farthest visitor we’ve had so far” before you get a chance to actually read the chat room and announce, “Oh, Senegal, wow! Atlanta? How’s the weather?”
YouTube Live gives you a choice of “Normal latency” (about like Facebook’s), which they say should make it very unlikely for your video to “stutter” on your audience, “Ultra-low latency,” which I’ve found to be only 1-3 seconds behind even when broadcasting from a home network but unable to render my video attractively if I’m moving a whole lot, and “Low-latency,” which I haven’t yet tried but they claim splits the difference.
- For your sister’s birthday party, maybe you want to be “ultra-low latency” and know exactly what people are reacting to as they comment.
- For a really professional show going out to a lot of people, maybe you want to be “normal latency” and feel confident that you’ll look good and your video won’t “stammer.”
Tough call.
Anyway, YouTube Live gives you options.
However, once you click the “Go Live” button, you can’t change your latency settings, so make sure you’ve played a lot on private test streams before you make up your mind about what you want for the “big show.”
If you can’t decide, I’d say go with “Normal.” It should be high-quality and the social dimension is no weirder than you’re used to on Facebook Live.
Leave auto-start and auto-stop off
Moving on to the right, under “Additional Settings,” to the right of the “Stream Key” section, make sure that auto-start and auto-stop are DISABLED.
Auto-Start’s functionality (bad)
Unlike with Facebook Live, auto-start doesn’t imply letting the platform automatically take you live at a scheduled time.
In the case of YouTube Live, auto-start would mean that as soon as you have a “hot” camera & microphone (e.g. your Larix Broadcaster app) … ta-da, you’re live, even if it’s still 25 minutes before your scheduled show and you haven’t put on pants yet!
Don’t auto-start.
You can click the “Go Live” button in the upper-right corner yourself when you’re wearing pants and it’s actually “downbeat.”
Auto-Stop’s functionality (bad)
Just like with Facebook Live, though, auto-stopping means that if you have a momentary glitch with your internet … your broadcast is over. Too bad for you.
So don’t turn that setting on, either.
Set “replay” listability
At the bottom of these “Additional Settings,” you’ll see “Unlist live replay once stream ends.”
- If this is a “private” or “unlisted” video, just for good measure, toggle it on.
- You probably want to keep it toggled off if this will be a public broadcast. Why not take free attention from YouTube if you can get it?
Mic & Camera check
Unlike Facebook Live, YouTube Live doesn’t care how many hours in advance of a scheduled broadcast you test your microphone & camera (for Facebook Live, it’s 5 hours max).
So check them now.
Set up the mobile device from which you will broadcast
Open the Larix Broadcaster app (iOS, Android) on your smartphone or tablet.
You should see whatever your mobile device’s camera is looking at, with a few icons (including a constantly-moving decibel meter) superimposed over it.
Tell Larix your broadcast’s stream key
Click the gear-shaped icon to open Larix’s settings.
Click “Connections.”
Click “New connection.”
Give it a Name you’ll recognize easily like “YouTube Persistent Key
.”
Into URL, if your YouTube “channel ID” were Abc0dEF123gH4iJK5lmn6OP
and your “stream key” were 9PnM-8L7k-ji65-H4gF
, you’d type:
rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2/Abc0dEF123gH4iJK5lmn6OP.9PnM-8L7k-ji65-H4gF
Have patience. This is going to be a doozy to type into a tiny screen. Sorry.
Leave Mode as “Audio + Video,” “Target type” as “Default,” and don’t touch any of the other settings.
Click the “Save” button at the bottom of the screen.
- Now you should see your new “connection” in a list. Does it have a checkmark to the right of it? If not, tap the space to the right of it to make a checkmark appear.
- Are there any other “connections” in the list? Tap to the right of them to make sure they’re un-checked.
You can also see Larix’s official documentation on the subject.
- [[[TO DO:]]] [Screenshots and iOS instructions here – these are Android instructions]\ Click the “back” arrow up by the word “Settings” to return to the main Settings menu, then click the next back-arrow to return to the “what your camera sees, plus icons” mode.
Flip your camera if you’d like
Just above the decibel meter, center left, opposite the red “record” button at right, should be two arrows pointing at each other in a circle. Tap that to flip your camera.
Lock camera focus if possible
I don’t understand why, but Larix Broadcaster doesn’t let me “focus lock” out of the front-facing camera.
I guess I just have to trust that the artificial intelligence of my phone’s camera processor is smart enough to stay focused on my face, even while I move.
However, if you’re using the rear-facing camera and on an iOS-based apple device, you absolutely can “lock” the focus on a certain depth when using the rearview camera.
Put your phone/tablet on the tripod, music stand, etc. on which you plan to set it while broadcasting.