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For better performance of your equipment: please make sure that your camera is constantly plugged in to an electricity socket. In some cases, it is strictly necessary because otherwise the capture card (more about capture cards in the next slide) with attempt to save energy and won’t transfer any captured image to the laptop.

HDMI outputs in cameras vary in their size - they can go from micro size to normal size. Make sure you buy the right size with a high speed connection. The HDMI input for capture cards is normally regular size.

These are devices that allow a computer to read and convert the image coming from the camera.

We recommend (tested and guaranteed) one of the following to produce HD broadcasts:

NOTE: Make sure to always install the drivers / codecs from your capture card in your laptop

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Without a capture card, your laptop will not be able to show any image coming from your camera. These are special “computers” designed to specifically convert an analog video signal - such as that produced by a camcorder - to digital video, i.e. converting the analog video signal into computer files referred as a digital video stream or simply video stream.

The main outputs in a capture card are USB 3 or Thunderbolt. Please make sure you purchase the device with the correct output to connect to your computer. Thunderbolt are most common for Mac Laptops, and USB 3 to all other Laptops in the market.

There are a wide range of laptops available in the market, of which we can only test a small number. Every content owner is free to try out their options but we always recommend, for a minimum quality of broadcast, that the laptop you use has a minimum processor of Intel core i5, latest generation. For even better performances and assured HD resolution we recommend i7.

The computer should also have either a Thunderbolt port (if Mac) or a USB 3.0 port (other PCs).

We recommend the use of an Apple Macbook Pro, because the software used for streaming runs much better in Apple OS X than in Windows. The computers are typically faster and consume less CPU, which then becomes available for the live stream.

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For better performance of your equipment, your laptop must be connected to an electricity socket during the entire stream. By being connected to a power source, your laptop will not consume all its CPU resources trying to perform a better stream, and therefore will generate a far better quality image.

You should use only the broadcasting software on your laptop during the stream, and close all other applications. Depending on the capacity of the processor and the number of cores in your portable computer, this might be an issue. Your CPU will allocate resources to all open software, and this will reduce the capacity allocated to run the stream, which could therefore reduce the stream quality. As such we strictly recommend to have open only the Open Broadcast Software and the Live Studio during a live stream.

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There are different qualities in the speed delivered by the most varied cables. In order to produce a good stream it is recommended therefore that you purchase any cable of the highest quality possible. Streaming quality depends on your connectivity. To make sure you send a High Definition (HD) image from the camera to the capture card, you must be sure, for example, that you have a minimum 1080i or 720p frame resolution in your camcorder. If you do not buy a high speed HDMI cable, when you send the image from the camera to the capture card, it will not arrive in the same quality. The same happens with the USB 3 / Thunderbolt cables that connect your capture card to the computer.