Normally, I spend my time streaming on Twitch.tv, but I decided that I should probably at least test and make sure I could stream on YouTube. I've spent the last couple weeks doing a little research here and there, trying to figure out how exactly you can stream on YouTube. YouTube wants you to stream with their proprietary streaming program, I believe it's called WireCast, but it only accepts one input, unless you want to pay $99. HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHA NO.
I was looking online and I found out that you can actually use OBS to stream on YouTube, and since I use that normally, I figured that that would be my best bet. So when I was reading the tutorial for how to set up OBS to stream for YouTube, I found out that first of all, the tutorial was for an older version of OBS, that didn't have any presets for YouTube. That should have been my first clue that things were going to go awry... Anyway, now there are presets, so it's not as hard to set up. However, there are quite a few fundamental differences in how you stream on Twitch as opposed to YouTube.
First of all, when you're going to have a Live Event on YouTube, you must first set up beforehand your Start and End time. The End time is not as important as your Start time, but the thing you need to know is that your stream is ONLY visible during the time inbetween your start and end time. You also CANNOT resume your stream if you hit "End Streaming" from the 'Live Control Room.' There's no going back. I also found out, much to my dismay, that once you hit the end stream button, YouTube basically kicks you out of the live control room and immediately acts like your stream is a regular video. Thus, you cannot see what people are saying anymore, as 'comments' on your Stream.
The Live Control Room is actually the way that you tell YouTube how and when to add ads (If you're able to), and how to start and end your stream. It also has a handy "STREAM STATUS" section. I chose to go as low a setting as possible for a decent stream, at 360p, just to make sure nothing would go wrong with frame rate. HOWEVER, choosing 360p was a problem because the moment I started to stream, my status went from GOOD to BAD. It told me, for basically the entire duration of my stream that I needed to change my height to 360, and for the life of me, I could not achieve anything to that end, no matter what I tried. However, I do not think the video quality or the framerate was ever that bad, but I haven't really had a chance to figure it out.
The Live Events feature itself had also updated since the tutorial I was looking at was added. There are now two options when streaming, using a Google+ Hangout (Which I know nothing about), or a custom encoder (<-- Choose this option if you want to use OBS or WireCast, I would imagine). I found out that once you put in the initial information for a live event, and thus 'create one' so it appears on the Live Events section of your page, you CANNOT go back and change it. I accidentally did the Google+ hangout option, and could not change it, so I had to delete the entire live event and start anew, which was very frustrating to me. There should definitely be an option to fix that large of a mistake.
Also, Stream Keys work totally differently on YouTube than Twitch. On Twitch you get a set stream key, and that allows you to broadcast at any time. From what I understand, once you create a Live Event on YouTube, you get a stream key, that changes EVERY SINGLE TIME, based on what time your event is scheduled for. That in itself is a hassle, and I'm sure a lot of people will mess that up. Supposedly the Control Room and thus most likely streaming as a whole is in beta, but there are lots of things that still need to be fixed.
When I actually got to streaming, I finally got rid of the echo completely, but there was a TERRIBLE squealing, that I could not silence, no matter what! I muted both audio input sources (My EasyCap and my Microphone), but it was still there, angry as ever. That's why I said if you can stand headaches you can watch... I have never had it that loudly or as much of an annoyance. A lot of the people that came to watch left because I could not get rid of it. On top of that, the time discrepancy between when you record and when the audience actually sees what you recorded is absolutely atrocious. I was posing questions and I would get replies 2 or more minutes after I had said anything. My girlfriend was commenting on things that happened so long ago on-screen that I had no idea what she was talking about anymore... I had originally envisioned streaming on YouTube as the perfect outlet for vlogs, since I could get audience participation and have some fun with my friends, but... With the huge lag in recording>viewing, that would make my kind of stream impossible.
There's also the fact that streaming on YouTube is not meant to be done for long durations. Apparently, YouTube can only save the footage of a live event for up to 4 hours. After that, you won't get a copy of the video. I know plenty of people that literally stream day and night.
All in all, I do not think the Live Events feature will be used very much by myself in the future, at least not until it comes out of beta.
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