People keep asking me what it takes to livestream Kubernetes events like the community meeting, office hours, meet our contributors, etc. So I figured it would be a fun thing to just show people how I do it and post something fun here!
I started helping to host the Kubernetes meeting about 18 months ago, and back then we just recorded the meeting in Zoom, then we had wait for zoom to render it into a video, upload it to youtube, and then wait for youtube to process it so we can publish it. So I figured it might be a good idea to just stream the meeting directly to youtube.
Here’s my setup:
So first off, I have a strange setup, having three non-matching monitors is not normal and also not ideal, but I deal with what I have.
- This is just the youtube control panel so I can monitor the stream. We usually have about 10-12 people watch a stream live concurrently, with about 40-50 people who will watch it live throughout the meeting.
- This screen has slack, where meeting hosts or participants can PM me links to add to the notes, or other information.
- These are the notes to the community meeting. When I’m not checking all the screens I’m helping out to take notes.
- This is the meeting zoom window, which is connected to my camera. This allows me to participate in the actual meeting.
- and 6. This is actually a separate computer, an Intel NUC. I sign into Zoom here again, you’ll usually see this as “Streambot” in the meeting itself, and then use the excellent OBS to record the zoom window and stream that to youtube. The 5 and 6 are the splash screen and what is actually being streamed, so if we have any technical issues we can drop a splash screen onto the live stream so people don’t see us frantically fixing whatever problem we’re having.
I used to try to record the meeting on the same computer I was having the meeting in, and depending on the day that could get problematic, so having a separate computer that just handles recording has given us the flexibility to stream without losing my ability to participate. There is also an unavoidable quality problem of having to basically screen capture a remote meeting to then reencode it and push it back out. Maybe someday Zoom will let us stream directly to youtube.
After we go off the air it usually takes YouTube about another 30 minutes or so to render the final versions of the video, which we then endeavor to publish as fast as possible.
As always if you have any feedback on our videos or meetings, please let me know!
