 Tim Owens. Wait a second. Are you over in the arcade? That's crazy. Yeah, I I did some time travel In space travel. In fact, I was supposed to be back in the arcade today or someday soon, but we will rectify that But no, I just have a really bitching green screen with a nice background of the arcade that you so So how would I say so generously took a shot of so thank you No problem. It's it's interesting to me how you know There's a lot of the virtual background stuff in zoom and others where they'll try to fake it just based on what's moving and What's not behind you, but it's like once you put an actual green screen there It's like you can really dial it in Very realistic and I've been trying to find like images and like just slightly Blurring them to the point where it does look like it's behind you because that's one thing too where you can have a Green screen, but then it can look pretty fake if everything is in focus It doesn't really look like you're in a room, but that's pretty impressive Yeah, and I like that you captured the gauntlet Because it almost looks like I'm up against the gauntlet and it gives it some perspective. So I like that That's cool. I'm just playing around with Some shots that I can change in here on my stream deck my Elgato stream Let's talk a little bit about that because after we talked before the show, you know the show before the show You would tell me some of the things you can do with the Elgato stream deck, which quickly prompted me to buy one my office away from home here, so What is the stream deck all about why would someone want one well the stream deck? So well, there's a couple things that we've got going on here. So, you know in previous conversations We've talked about we've got the 8m mini And so I've got a couple different things plugged in including Seems like it's falling asleep here. I'll see if I can turn it back on But I've got a GoPro next to me just so that I can show what's going on in here I'll switch back to Meeple screen and then I'll switch over turn this off and switch There so that's the stream deck That looks cool. It's cool, right? It's it's one LCD screen with buttons over top of it that kind of separated out This is the regular stream deck and it's 15 buttons So you've got three three rows of five buttons in each row But you can customize each individual button to do got just about everything in here And I'm using by Andy's recommendation the software companion Stream deck comes with software. That's pretty nice, but it's a little bit limited in terms of integrations There are some software that works with it and some that doesn't whereas companion had more integrations So I'm not using the stream deck software. I'm using companion for this And one of the things that they have in here is these pages So this is page one if I hit the up button here, it goes to page two So instead of instead of 15 buttons, you have an unlimited number on well, you have 15 buttons across multiple pages and so of course you you lose these You know left three buttons in order to do that But then it gives you the flexibility to have Whole different scenes of buttons that you might need for whatever you're showing in there Which I think is pretty cool this page So if I go back to the first one then you can see and I'll kind of pull it up a lot closer here I've got cam 1 cam 2 cam 3 cam 4. These are all mapped to the ATEM mini software So if I switch here that goes to the camera Camera one, which is the black magic camera there Camera two is a raspberry pi, which we'll talk about in a little bit Camera three is the GoPro and camera four. I don't have turned on That is plugged into a VHS and laser display or a converter over there. So those are my four HDMI inputs MP1 is the media player and black is just black, you know, if I go go there MP1 is that background that I have in there Key puts me over top of it. So there I am When I press that and I've got that set to toggle. So if I just press it, I'm on press it again. I come off Are those three keys ATEM mini? Yes, they are. Yeah Yeah, and there are hardware buttons on the ATEM mini, you know, if I had it up near my desk But what here's what's really cool about this in addition to that with the software You can have multiple key presses all combined into one button So one and two down here are different shots One is me turning my key on making me full Screen on here and then putting the office background on me. So if I press that It goes to this essentially this scene kind of like an OBS, right? to I'm gonna press right now is going to put I Believe it's cam 3. Yeah, the the in the cam 3 input, which is the gopro behind me And it's going to move me down into the corner. So if I press that button And so that's it's almost like building macros you can have one one button press that does multiple things at the same time So you can get really flexible in that Then if I go up to the next page here This was another really intense thing I was starting to figure out keyboard shortcuts and I talked about this a little bit on a previous episode that Streamyard, which we're using for broadcasting doesn't have keyboard shortcuts built in. I found a workaround It does require you to use I can't even remember the extension I'd have to look it up But it's sort of like, you know, the old grease monkey thing back in the day where there's these JavaScripts Only I could see it in here tamper monkey is what it's called now tamper monkey has these JavaScript Files and somebody built one that basically mimics keyboard presses in Streamyard And so I was able to modify that and so I made a page in here that modifies the various Layouts that you have in Streamyard and instead of putting text here I actually took screenshots of the various buttons in Streamyard So it would look just like it does up on the screen So I've got the side-by-side view if I press that button right here Now And that crazy You know, and then if I go full screen again, that's the that's just my video in here I also Have down at the bottom. I don't know. Okay. That's coming in here. It is. I took pictures of us on there Just like for advertise, that's right So these actually work if I just I even if I press yours again, it switches back to my video And again, I can go back here and switch back to me being full screen and have my office background behind me That's so cool. I love that stuff. Yeah, there's just I'm finding so much Flexibility with what you can do with it, which is pretty wild It does take a whole lot I think you have to start from the standpoint of like what am I trying to do and then work backwards from that because you can basically Do almost anything, you know with the buttons and the configurations and the shortcuts things that you don't even really think about like Oh, well, what if I wanted to now like open this application mute my mic turn this shot on do that like really stage out of Like a multi-action sequence of things and you could do that. So It's pretty wild. What is the software that you've basically replaced the Elgato software with? What is it called? It's called companion It's made by a company called bit focus And so companion has just a bunch of different plugins Anybody can write a plugin on the integrates with it and then you build out your button layouts in there And so I found that you know Andy had mentioned it and it turns out that's the way to get the ATEM mini to work with the stream deck So I needed it anyway for that. It's it doesn't work in combination with the stream deck software You can only have one open. So you're kind of all in with companion But at the same time, you know for what you lose from the stream deck software, you gain a lot more flexibility with stuff So that's what I'm using right now If I go into it I've got Just two different integrations in there the ATEM mini and something called I don't even know how to pronounce this vicario It's actually looking for keyboard presses and mimicking them. So that's what I'm using for the hockey's So that's how I was able to say like, okay When I press the number one I want you to switch to the first layout in Streamyard and it does that so and that's the grease monkey like script That's basically using accessibility calls to make that happen. That's right So grease monkey is translating the number the press or whatever keyboard press Into whatever button on their layout you actually wanted to be so I went in there and said number one is this layout This button press it number two is this button press it and then the vicario thing is Translating a keyboard press from the actual button that you're pressing on stream deck So it's two pieces of software working in combination But that's pretty gigantic because you now were able and I saw that just with that switch You were able to have a one-button switch in Streamyard which it didn't have which was one of its drawbacks, but you kind of Hacked around that to make stream yard really work for you. That's awesome It makes it makes a big difference because you know like you can see you're able to switch without having to like Navigate a mouse and click certain buttons Yeah, you're looking away and you're looking down and that kind of thing You know, I can actually just keep my hand down here And I I can press things and I kind of know where things are and you start to get that muscle memory on Which buttons go towards which things and that kind of stuff So it's pretty cool. You know adding the images was fun, but I'm not even looking at it for the most part It's the ability to quickly glance down there, which is why for some of them I'll just put like numbers like one two three and four or something because once you start dialing in You know, which numbers go to which stuff, you know, you can it's almost like a phone keypad, right? Like you know which way to go and you kind of remember the number just by where the buttons are Exactly. Yeah, so I love it. It's it's pretty cool. I've been pretty excited about it I just figured out all the key presses and stream yard and stuff I really do hope that they'll add in real keyboard shortcuts in there That would kind of cut out the whole grease monkey script thing because that was like actually having to do some coding and I'll put I'll put links in associated with this episode for people who do want to go down that road It's that's probably a pretty niche thing, but at the same time you never know But at the same time it would be nice if they just supported keyboard shortcuts And then you could take out the grease monkey script It'd be nice if companion just a keyboard presses without having to have a separate listener software running on the computer To be able to do that But yeah, I got it to work, which is kind of cool It is awesome and hey, I wanted to just let you know that you that wasn't the oh well I'm not letting you know this you already know this That's not the only hacking around you did right like you also were it's able if I'm right and correct me if I'm wrong to get that whole To get the raspberry pi 810 bridge idea working is that correct? And we might want to describe what this is because obviously I'm already speaking in tongues right now, but like We saw this thing by Aaron perecki on his YouTube channel and Eric Who commented on one of my posts actually pointed me to it? and I think you had already been watching it and I think the short version of it and you can clarify as He wanted a way for one 810 mini pro So one of these kind of devices that that handles many inputs and allows you to switch quickly before between them To actually broadcast to another Device or another a bridge to another 810 mini pro and given he couldn't wait He actually created his own kind of almost receiver using a raspberry pi. Is that fair in my description? Yeah, absolutely. I think you know the idea behind it You know and like almost everything else we're doing in here Andy I think mentioned it briefly on our on our call Which was easy as was the idea behind it is that you've got a box You're streaming to that box and it's converting it to an HDMI signal that you can then put into another switch or something You know some people will use it within the same office building to be able to stream from one room But to have all the equipment and everything to push that out to is some larger producer area in another room For example without having to run long wires for every piece of equipment So that's the idea behind this what they call the streaming bridge But this is a raspberry pi. I actually moved the GoPro down here so that people see I'll come over. I don't have the microphones closer to my desk, but this is the raspberry pi here It's plugged into this is my um, it's a wireless router, but it's got ethernet ports on the back So it that's we don't have network in this room. So this is our workaround I'm able to plug in everything that I need into the back of this wireless router And then it acts as if it's you know plugged into a hardwired network connection This is power and this is HDMI. So HDMI is Coming in to the ATEM mini here So let me move this over here input to if I press that No switch to you Yeah, but it's right because I'm connected Okay, I was like why is it doing that you're streaming to it right now, aren't you and I'm probably working on a 10 second delay Yeah, I'm streaming to the do you want me to stop streaming to it, but I am streaming to that device That's super cool. Yeah, stop streaming for a second And but yeah, it's good because you're seeing the green screen there Whereas in stream yard you were using the green screen effect, which is interesting too exactly um That's awesome. I love it. Who is this? Who is this guy? Yeah, so it's frozen, but now it went back to the raspberry pi's home page Which you can see is just command line and there's no desktop running on there or anything like that Yeah That's so cool. I love and that's a raspberry pi 4 And Aaron perecki's video, which is on youtube, which we'll link to was really clear and how to get this thing It's pretty brilliant what he did um And then it's it's great. It's interesting in terms of flexibility because you know Since it's an open streaming thing you could give access to anybody So I'll start streaming there and this should flip over and you'll see a different view of me Yeah, there I am and so you know sort of this is just yeah, I didn't do anything in here but I just opened up obs And started the stream now. This is a lot faster. There's very little latency That's because it's on the same network. So that's the difference You're coming you're sending a stream high definition from Italy to us versus me sending a high definition stream Right over the local network to the raspberry pi. So there's a little bit of a delay there But it's like what three seconds maybe if that so If I went on the network there if I actually Got on through a vpn and it saw me as a network. It would still be delayed, right? I would think so Yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't really thought about that Um, I was because we've done that for other projects Right. Yeah with the vpn. So I I think it would still have to be delayed because at the end of the day You're you're sending, you know high definitions, you know frames across a network Um from Italy. So but I think about it in terms of stuff like if you wanted Me to be producing something, but I wanted you to be playing Pac-man or whatever the games from your system. And so you're streaming that game out. I'm receiving that signal in here And I'm able to do stuff with it I don't think it works well for conversation because it is like 10 10 seconds or more in terms of a delay So I don't think you could have a back and forth in in in that sense But I think if you were playing a game or something I could have your audio and everything else coming in through another stream But then you could have high quality video Connect directly. Yeah, I mean, I think if we go back to the raspberry pi and you disconnect your stream And I reconnect mine you can see like I'm connecting to the raspberry pi in Reclaim hosting headquarters from Italy And it's basically hd So I'm frozen, but okay now it's open. So you should be able to stream there I'll try let's see that I love this stuff so much Yeah Isn't that wild That's so cool So that your stream is large here and I've got your actual video from stream yard smaller in that in that layout But essentially it's both of us, right? So exactly I just love it like I could And then 10 seconds later look at my myself in Fredericksburg, Virginia do the same thing Oh, I could do this all day Anyway, that's I love that and I think the the possibilities and applications Um are super cool not only locally, but even like you said if I wanted to take advantage of some of the stuff you have Um at your this at your disposal in the headquarters That might be a good way to do it Yeah, it's it's been Really cool to start dialing in some things. I mean I got this No, let's switch back to the go pro and give you just a very quick tour here Yeah, I'd love to see it if I can turn the go pro back on I've got to figure out why the go pro falls asleep for whatever reason, but there we go. So I'll turn my key off and switch over to that Loading loading loading This is not an advertisement for go pro No, it's not at all but So a couple things uh, Andy had mentioned the luna display Which is what I'm using in the teleprompter so I can look right at the screen And be looking into the camera, but talking to you so the luna display is Plugged into the mac mini that we're streaming out with and then it's using teleprompter mode so that you know Because I've got it on the tv, but I'd rather look right into the camera, right? So it's doing all of that for me But we got this like rack-mounted System it didn't cost that much money and that allowed us to just start cleaning up some of the wires and things. So we've got laserdisc vhs That could plate the vhs converter over there The mac mini Is there This is a headphone transmitter a wireless audio transmitter that I've been playing around with And then I've got some stuff on top still the atem the raspberry pi the wireless router And that kind of stuff So that all just sits there, but you know having stuff directly on the desk and I've got the standing desk over here That I can use and raise and lower whatever the case may be And then now with that close enough I can get the stream deck right up here on the desk, which is nice It's really clean actually Yeah, it's it's worked out really nice and you know, I've got one hdmi cable running Back to that tv back there as a confidence monitor, but then with the teleprompter I can actually look directly into the camera as well Yeah, and that really that it goes that goes the extra mile because it always looks Like you're engaged with the people who are on stream You know, it's nice. I mean for me talking to you. It's quite nice So thank you You're quite welcome. Yeah, and it's cool too because oh, I and I forgot to mention now that we've got the atem mini pro We've got the multi monitor Oh, yeah, let's see that. That's super cool Switch over there and turn my key off again So the the idea behind this is that the hdmi out from the atem mini Is showing you all four inputs At the same time as well as a preview and a program of exactly what's going out So I know you're seeing the gopro because the program is showing that um, and so, you know, it allows you to you know When you're switching between the buttons it's highlighting those you can see the audio levels Down there. So I know how loud I am and how how well it's picking up I'm not using the audio from the gopro. So even though it's picking it up with the built-in mic It's not turned on so it's grayed out in there If we were streaming directly to ds1 of 6 tv or to youtube or facebook This would be showing up there. I can see what image I've got stored on there So it's just a nice little confidence that shows you all the various inputs that you've got plugged in which is super nice Yeah, that's awesome. And I remember When andy was doing the open va Andy rush who in many ways inspired a lot of this was doing the open va You know recording and I don't know if we streamed that out. We might have But he had that kind of multi view Monitor with all the different shots and it was really impressive. I mean he's been doing this forever He must be in his heyday right now because like all this stuff has come to a to a point where all that knowledge It's like to have that after all these years of work. You're kind of like invaluable And I don't have right now I just have it said when I press a button it goes live on certain things But you can that's where the preview comes in if you have it set that way You can start building a shot and before you push it out to what goes out Yeah, I don't have that set up right now and Because a lot of times I'll forget to hit program and actually get it to send out to the stream It's it's more than my mind tends to work with sometimes But it's super cool even like with this like when I make you full screen Then I'm able to jump out of the camera and quickly set up the next shot People don't necessarily know that that's happening You know and so it's pretty cool to just switch over to there And then I might go down here switch to the go pro turn off my key And then come back here and now you know I were switched to that shot, but you didn't see me like scrambling and you know doing all of that kind of stuff, you know In front of the camera, which I think is cool, too I think and in some ways it's those small things that make it cleaner And make the whole process seem a little bit more cohesive You know, there's still so much going on and you brought up the point. I think it's right You know, you almost need someone on the back end managing the shots and like, you know giving you but You know who has someone hanging around who like hey, I'm going to be streaming for an hour and a half Like, you know, so you got to figure out a workaround in the in the age of coronavirus I'm not sure anybody has a group of people producing their stuff It's kind of all on your own But I think that's where the macros come in too Like the ability to like build out multiple things that happen at the same time You can save yourself from I've got to click this. I've got to do that. I've got to do that If I just know on page one when I hit the number one I'm going to come to the view that I want for when I'm talking and then if I hit number two I'm going to switch over, you know I'm going to switch over to the go pro with me down in the corner and that kind of thing And I could even tie that into stream yard and say I know if I hit this button It's going to do all that and it's going to make me full screen versus side by side like this So I think if you know where you're going with that stuff, you can build out the shortcuts and things to do it So it's pretty sweet Well, that's I mean that's awesome between You know getting the shortcut keys locked in for stream yard And then playing around with stream deck As a result like the two are related and then just the bridge I mean, I love the raspberry pi bridge just because it proves just how Unbelievable the raspberry pi as a tool can be for small dedicated projects where a 50 dollar computer Really allows you so much power like you were saying The new raspberry pi 4 has like two hdmi inputs so you can have like micro so you can have dual monitors It has like outputs. It has it's amazing like what it can do And they haven't raised the price on it Like it's still like 35 bucks for just the circuit board and then I ended up spending 10 bucks to buy a plastic case I could have 3d printed one here too, but I mean it it's dirt cheap And of course you've got to buy the accessories like a keyboard or mouse or whatever to plug in and those kind of things Um, but at the same time it's incredible to me what you can do with that. It's cool Yeah, and I love it when people take advantage of that and build these cool projects like you know Hats off to Aaron Parecki for doing that and showing the value but also I like his videos too because they're a demonstration of how to do an instructional video and how to really dial in like Stopping keep keeping mind of pacing showing people the code like even if you've never used A raspberry pi or coded through command line his videos I think just about anyone with a little bit of patience could do Yeah, and my next so so where I want to go next is Uh, instead of using StreamYard, I want to use OBS But I want to bring in your video feed as a separate source that I can then make my own layouts with I love StreamYard. There's quite a bit here But there are some limitations in terms of designs in terms of shots and things like that And of course the whole keyboard work around thing whereas with OBS There's a module for a companion. I can just do OBS directly in there Um, I think that could be pretty cool too Uh, and two things that I've been looking at with that are OBS.ninja It's a website that allows you to connect to a WebRTC group similar to like whereby or you know jitsie a several other video conferencing software It's very basic conferencing software on the web But each individual person that joins in addition to the chat that you're in in the video chat And you can all talk to each other you can grab each person's feed as a separate thing that feeds into OBS And I think that's where you could actually mix and set up your layouts and things in OBS And that's what you're broadcasting with and you're just using the website OBS.ninja to have your conversation So, um, that's one thing I want to play around with the other one is skype support something called ndi. Have you ever heard of it? No ndi It's from a company called new tech And it's basically a way to get a direct video feed from other software and skype supports it So that you can in OBS if you've got skype opening You're on a call and you say I want to add an ndi source and it's like, okay You've got skype open with jim and lauren. Do you want each of them as separate sources? And you say, okay. Yeah, absolutely. And now you've got a direct capture of their video alone So they add their own logo in there, which is kind of a pain But at the same time That's pretty powerful too because any skype call then each person with their own separate audio and video is coming in as Separate sources that you can mix and match in OBS without a hardware switcher Wow And that's that would be okay. So those are two Good episodes to follow up on the OBS ninja and the one with nti I have not heard of nti, but that's pretty slick or at least it sounds like Dia's and dog. Yeah, and ndi and yeah Yeah, I'm trying to look up exactly what it stands for. I know it's from a company called newtex. I'm sure that's probably What it's related to but anyway, yeah, I'm I'm fairly new to that as well But I found out about it. I'm like, what is ndi? I don't understand and I started looking at it. I'm like, oh, that's pretty powerful So, yeah Cool as usual tim. You are a wealth of information. I just put in three new pins in my penboard You know what I mean? I got OBS ninja. I got companion. I do like them board. Yeah, and um the new tech um What is it? It's the OBS ndi new tech ndi integration into OBS. So yeah, right super slick And I did the whole one the virtual cam for the mac today with OBS So I'm I'm feeling the love right now. So thank you. That's right The virtual cam lets you do anything in OBS and then it shows up as a webcam in the software So I guess you can do that for um a zoom call or for you know, whatever it be google meet Whatever, um, it just shows up as a webcam input and then you can Set up all your shots and do that which I think is pretty cool, too Which we have something we have something cooking up for that That's right So we'll see if that works. Absolutely. Yeah for sure. So Well awesome, dude This is this is fun and you know the the studio continues to improve and you know, I love playing with this stuff to me This is the this is the kind of incubator stuff. I want to be doing and it's it's the perfect time to do it You know like in a In a we're in a world In a world Where everybody is isolated you must connect by video Reach out and touch someone. That's right. I have one thing to say on that Andy rush each a heart out I'm basically like I'm picking apart the first video and stealing every single thing he mentioned. So, you know, it's fair game That's ultimate form of flattery. I think absolutely absolutely So if and you know, who knows that somebody else might might benefit from it as well, so great I Awesome, dude. I enjoy having these episodes. We can keep keep track of the developments on this Over time and so the next one I think we should do it in obs instead of stream yard and see what we could really accomplish In bringing in your video and doing some other things maybe bringing lauren or someone else into meredith Katie whatever the case may be Into it and start like really mixing up an interesting podcast episode in there. I love it. That sounds great All right, well, that's it for this episode everybody. Thanks for watching like and subscribe Smash that button