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Improve your mobile livestreams' audio and video with Larix Broadcaster

22 May 2020
💬 EN

Table of Contents

Are you a musician, broadcasting from your studio to fans over Facebook Live, YouTube Live, or other livestreaming platforms with your smartphone or tablet?

  • Have you used an “audio interface” to make use of studio microphones, only to discover that the recordings afterwards are out-of-sync for some viewers?
  • Does your camera constantly readjust the focus (resulting in unnecessary occasional blurring) as you move while you perform?
  • Do you wish you could stream to “scheduled” broadcasts with your smartphone or tablet?
    • (Facebook’s mobile app won’t let you stream to “scheduled” broadcasts, and YouTube makes you have 1,000 subscribers to stream from their mobile app at all.)

A free iOS / Android app called Larix Broadcaster can help.


For one-to-many broadcasts only

Note that this setup isn’t meant to help with issues in interactive streaming video, like participating in a Zoom call or a Google Hangouts call.

This setup, which leverages a video transmission protocol called “RTMP” that involves a multi-second lag between your real-world experience and viewers’ experience of watching you, is meant for livestreaming setups where there’s just one “moviemaker” (you!) and a lot of people as “audience,” like you find when broadcasting a concert over Facebook Live or YouTube Live.

Interactive conferencing technologies use faster video transmission protocols that little Larix Broadcaster isn’t meant to stream over.

Don’t worry – using Larix Broadcaster won’t cause any increased lag in your Facebook Live broadcast. Facebook’s mobile app uses the same laggy “RTMP” protocol for filming you and sharing your beautiful face with the world.


Why does Larix fix synchronization problems?

Larix Broadcaster is in a class of live video streaming production tools that includes household names such as Wirecast and Open Broadcaster Software (“OBS”).

All of these tools are meant to gracefully combine audio inputs and video inputs, outputting them over the internet as a “livestream” to some sort of web site responsible for delivering the movie to viewers.

  • Wirecast and OBS are meant to run on full-fledged laptop or desktop computers with a lot of features.
  • Larix Broadcaster is a miniature piece of software meant to run on a smartphone or tablet with very few features.

According to Cliff Cabute, what all of these pieces of software have in common is that they:

“essentially [take] both your video and audio into a single stream

“And because the audio is in a single stream process with the video, any dropped frames of the video will also drop the frame of the audio so that you will always appear to be in-sync.”

In contrast, many mainstream consumer-grade livestreaming apps (such as the Facebook mobile app):

”[process] the video feed and their [audio] separately, and because a video feed has much more data than audio, any hiccup to your internet connection will cause the video to drop frames first while the audio continues to be played in real time.”

Not suffering synchronization problems in the first place?

Yay!

Personally, I’ve found that the poor synchronization issue doesn’t always seem to be a problem during a livestream, but that it can show up when replaying recordings.

Furthermore, with Facebook’s mobile app, poor synchronization seems to be far more of a problem when using an “audio interface” to plug a traditional studio microphone into your mobile device than when using the mobile device’s built-in microphone.

If you’re happy, you probably don’t need this tutorial.


Replacing the Facebook app, YouTube app, etc. with the Larix app

Obtain your RTMP(S) URL from your streaming platform of choice

First, you’ll need to log into facebook.com, youtube.com, etc. and find the “RTMP” URL for your livestream.

An advantage to “scheduling” livestreams is that you don’t have to rush to do this at showtime, but that’s content for another post.

This work will require a desktop or laptop computer.

[[[TO DO:]]] WRITE UP SOME BASELINE STUFF

Re-formatting your URL for

Tell Larix Broadcaster your RTMP(S) URL

Some time before you’re scheduled to go live (no more than 5 hours early for Facebook; whenever you want for YouTube), hop onto the mobile device from which you intend to broadcast and tell your Larix Broadcaster app the URL starting with “rtmp://” or, even better, “rtmps://”, that you obtained from your streaming platform above.

Open the “Larix Broadcaster” app on your mobile device. Make sure to give it permission to use your microphone and camera.

Android

Superimposed over a view of what your camera sees, somewhere at the right-hand side of the screen, towards the top of your screen, will be a circular semi-transparent icon depicting a gear, indicating “settings.” Tap it.

You’ll be taken to a page titled “Settings.” The first option should be “Connections.” Tap it.

You’ll be taken to yet another page titled “Settings.” (No idea why it’s not titled “Connections.”) It lists any URLs you’ve already saved in the past, putting a checkbox by them to turn broadcasting on and off to them. Below this list are “New connection,” “Import Grove setting,” and “Manage connections” options.

When the time comes that you want to edit or delete a previously stored URL, you’ll use “Manage connections.” This is handy if you made a typo when entering a URL or if you decide upon a new “name” for a saved URL.

But let’s presume you haven’t yet added this particular URL to Larix Broadcaster’s settings. Tap “**New connection.”

You’ll be taken to a page titled “New connection.” It has a lot of options, followed by “Save” and “Visit docs page for setup details” buttons at the bottom.

Luckily, for major streaming services, you only need to enter 2 pieces of data here: “Name” and “URL.”

  • The name is up to you. Pick something meaningful. You can always change it later under “manage connections.”
  • The URL can be a bit tricky to enter. It’s going to be long and full of random numbers and letters. If you type one thing incorrectly, nothing works right. I recommend coming up with a secure way to “copy and paste” the URL from your desktop/laptop computer to your mobile device. For example, if you have the same secure messaging app on both your computer and your mobile device – especially one from which you can easily delete messages – you could message it to yourself. Copy it from your computer, paste it into the messaging system there. Then copy it from the messaging system on your mobile device and paste it into Larix Broadcaster’s settings. Good luck!

When you tap “Save,” you’ll be brought back to the “Settings” page with a list of connections – the one that should probably be titled “Connections.” The URL you just entered should now show up in this list with a checkbox, sorted in alphabetical order by the name you gave it.

Check the box next to your URL so that instead of being an empty white box, it’s a green box with a white checkmark in it.

Then tap the left-facing arrow in the upper left corner of the screen, to the left of the “Settings” title.

Tap the left-facing arrow in the upper left corner of the screen, to the left of the “Settings” title on the main settings page, to exit settings altogether.

Note: Larix’s official documentation for configuring it to work with Facebook Live and YouTube Live use screenshots from Android, so lucky you – you have another source of information besides me.

iOS


Double-checking your broadcast works

Start streaming with Larix, but don’t go live in Facebook/YouTube/etc yet.

Open the “Larix Broadcaster” app on your mobile device.

Android

Superimposed over a view of what your camera sees, likely along the right-hand side of the screen in the center, is a big red “record now”-style button. Tap it.

The “record”-style button will turn into a red square “stop”-style button when Larix Broadcaster attempts to go live. Don’t press it just yet.

If you typed in the correct URL, then superimposed over a view of what your camera sees, in the bottom-left corner of the screen, should be two ovals: one showing the name you gave your RTMP URL in “settings,” and the other a measure of how much data you’re transmitting to your streaming platform per second, followed by the amount of data you’ve transmitted since you hit the “record” button.

If you made a typo when entering the URL into settings, you’ll see an oval-shaped bubble appear and disappear along the bottom of the screen saying, “Name-You-Chose-Here: Can’t connect to server.”

If you still have a “stop”-style button at the right-hand side of your screen, tap it to turn it back into a “record” style button, fix the typo in your URL in settings (“Connections” -> “Manage connections” -> tap the name you gave your URL -> tap the URL to bring up an editing box -> work on it) and try again.

Also make sure that the green checkbox is only checked next to the URL you want to broadcast to, if you have multiple URLs saved in settings. (Yup – Larix can broadcast to multiple destinations at once if your mobile device and internet connectivity are strong enough. Not recommended if broadcasting over WiFi or typical residential broadband.)

iOS

[[[TO DO:]]]


Make things pretty

Before you “check 1, 2, 3” yourself, you can play with your video and audio settings a bit.

Check your audio

If you’re trying to plug in a studio microphone through an “audio interface,” plug in the “audio interface” to your Lightning or USB port on your camera now.

Give Larix a moment, then watch the “decibel meter” superimposed over your screen, bottom left.

Unplug or turn off the studio microphone itself, leaving the “audio interface” plugged in and powered on. Clap loudly and slowly, 5 times in a row. Did the decibel meter spike each time you clapped?

  • No is good. Continue on.
  • Yes is bad.
    • You’re still picking up your mobile device’s built-in microphone’s sound.
    • Play with your audio interface’s connection to your device until you pass this test.

Now plug in and turn on your studio microphone. Clap loudly and slowly, 5 times in a row. Did the decibel meter spike each time you clapped?

  • Yes is good. You’ve gotten your mobile device working with an external studio microphone.
  • No is bad. No pretty music for your audience until you fix this.
Flip your camera if you’d like
Android

Just above the decibel meter, center left, opposite the red “record”/”stop” button at right, should be two arrows pointing at each other in a circle. Tap that to flip your camera between the “front” (selfie) and “rear” cameras.

iOS

[[[TO DO:]]]

Lock camera focus if possible
Android

I don’t understand why, but Larix Broadcaster doesn’t let me “focus lock” on a specific point of interest on Android. Neither on the front-facing or the rear-facing cameras.

I can, however, “focus lock” to a moderate distance that leaves me only slightly fuzzy (not bad – just like I’m using a cheaper camera than I am) if I’m more than arm’s-length from the camera using the front-facing camera, and that seems to pretty much put “everything in the same sharp focus” using the rear-facing camera.

This can allow me to lean forward and turn pages without going blurry while I move.

Once you’re sending video to your streaming service properly and on a “hot camera,” tap and briefly hold your finger against the middle of the video preview. An oval-shaped bubble reading “Continuous AF” or “Focus to infinity” should appear for about 2 seconds, then disappear.

Depending how fat-fingered you are, you might see both fly by.

The phrase you see right before the bubble disappears is the mode you’re in:

  • Continuous AF” will constantly try to put something “meaningful” in focus, potentially making you blur while you move.
  • Focus to infinity” will keep the camera focus fixed, but sadly, you don’t get to choose what it’s fixed on.

Pro tip: To fix the “angelic haze” a bit when using the front-facing “selfie” camera in “Focus to infinity” mode, put your camera on its tripod or music stand.

Make a “pinch and zoom” gesture on the video preview panel with two fingers to zoom in, then move your tripod farther away from where you plan to perform.

You should be less blurry than with your camera close to you and “no zoom.”

When you are “zoomed in,” an oval reading “#.##x” (some number of “times zoomed in” that you are) should get superimposed on top of your preview video at the top left corner of your screen. This bubble will disappear if you “zoom out” all the way.

iOS

I don’t understand why, but Larix Broadcaster doesn’t let me “focus lock” out of the front-facing camera on iOS.

I guess I just have to trust that the artificial intelligence of my phone’s / tablet’s camera processor is smart enough to stay focused on my face, even while I move, when using the front-facing “selfie” camera.

Sadly, it is a bit annoying to let the camera do all this adjusting, because it can result in a lot of blurring and unblurring as you move.

Fortunately, the problem seems to be a lot less severe using front-facing cameras (which seem to auto-lock in on faces pretty well and avoid un-focusing from them) than rear-facing cameras.

However, if I use the rear-facing camera on an Apple mobile device, I can “lock” the focus on a certain depth when using the rearview camera.

If I have a family member serving as “cameraperson” and don’t need to see myself, this can allow me to lean forward and turn pages without going blurry while I move.

First, I put my phone/tablet on the tripod, music stand, etc. on which I plan to set it while broadcasting.

Then I put something in the room as a stand-in for my own face, approximately where I plan to sit/stand while performing.

[[[TO DO:]]] Finish this


Sound-check yourself on a desktop or laptop


Stop streaming with Larix

Don’t forget to turn Larix off!

Android

Tap the “stop”-style button superimposed over your video preview in the center-right part of your screen to stop sending video and audio to your streaming platform. The bubble text in the bottom-left corner of the screen should disappear when you’ve successfully stopped.

iOS

[[[TO DO:]]] Write this


Go live at showtime

On the Larix Broadcaster side, going live at showtime is exactly like it was while testing, so I won’t repeat the instructions.

Open Larix Broadcaster and start streaming your signal with the “record” button to the “connection,” or “RTMP” URL, that you saved in Larix Broadcaster’s settings (double-check the right “connection” is checked) for your streaming platform.

Then go over to your streaming platform’s control panel, like you did during testing, and make sure you can see yourself.

Take some deep breaths and get ready for showtime.

Starting your broadcast

Facebook Live

Woah! I’m live!

Watch a reliable clock carefully. If you have a “hot camera” (Larix is broadcasting to Facebook’s RTMP URL) at your scheduled “showtime,” congratulations – you’re live, ready or not!

In fact, I’ve seen a broadcast start about 7 seconds early – I was giving musicians a countdown based on Facebook’s countdown in my advertising post.

So look pretty.

Trickery

If you can’t manage that, and you have a “cameraperson,” you could slightly trick Facebook, but if you don’t have family running your camera, you have to plan for a “grand entrance” from off-screen after having hit the “record” button.

Scheduled for 8PM?

If you don’t have a “hot camera” over RTMP in Larix Broadcaster when 8PM rolls around, Facebook Live will wait up to 10 minutes before it gives up on you and cancels your scheduled broadcast.

If you’re not “feeling pretty” until 8:05 and haven’t yet been in “record” mode in Larix Broadcaster at any time since 7:58PM, Facebook Live won’t actually go live until it has a “hot camera” over RTMP – that is, until you hit the “record” button in Larix.

Early bird

If you’re twiddling your thumbs at 7:58, with a “hot camera” feeding out of Larix Broadcaster over RTMP, I think there’s a link somewhere in the Facebook Live control panel in which you were making sure everything looks good that lets you force-start the stream a few minutes early.

YouTube Live

YouTube will never force you into streaming. You always have to start broadcasting to the internet manually. Phew!

Once you have a “hot camera” feeding out of Larix Broadcaster over RTMP and like the way you look, click the GO LIVE button in the upper-right corner of the screen in your YouTube Live control panel.

If you were scheduled for 8PM, you can do this before or after 8PM. YouTube really doesn’t care.


Stopping your broadcast

You can stop your broadcast either of two ways:

  1. Stop your broadcast in the streaming service’s control panel on your desktop/laptop computer, then stop Larix Broadcaster from sending your audio and video to the streaming service over RTMP.
  2. Stop Larix Broadcaster from sending your audio and video to the streaming service over RTMP, then stop your broadcast in the streaming service’s control panel on your desktop/laptop computer.

Either one works. Are you physically closer to your laptop/desktop or to your mobile device’s touchscreen? Which one can you do more gracefully, if you don’t have family assisting you?

If you choose approach #1, your livestream ends immediately – the streaming platform announces that you’re off the air for real.

If you choose approach #2, your viewers will see an active livestream with freeze-frame of the last place you were standing/sitting in front of the camera before your transmission went dead (because it thinks your signal dropped and is waiting for you to get it back) until you also end your video in the livestreaming service. Don’t worry – the recording afterwards won’t include the awkward pause on a single frame – your video will just end at that moment.

Technically, approach #2 makes it easier to “oops, never-mind!” and go back live without starting a new stream.

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