Journal Update: I'm going to go back to streaming on YouTube now I think.

Twitch, I hardly knew ye, but ye have let me down.

Hi everyone.

So, I’ve been kind of radio silent this past few days, and I have been waiting, watching, wondering.

I’ve been observing my twitch analytics both during streaming, and after, along with no streaming. I’ve also been watching the aftereffect of exporting directly to YouTube.

Let’s just say that I am coming to the conclusion that twitch viewers either don’t know what they want, or twitch itself just sucks. How so?

I stream popular game, no one watches. I stream unpopular game, some people watch.

I stream under Just Chatting, no one watches. At all. Under the one category that should get at least one person, nothing.

Again, granted, I am not exactly super popular, so I am not expected droves of people to join my stream. But at least one or two would be nice, right? And sometimes I do get 1, or maybe 2, but it’s hard to tell till later and twitch analytics start to tell a person who watched when, and how long. Etc. To make matters worse, Twitch automatically puts your own computer on as a viewer no matter how you stream to the service. So that’s 1 viewer by default. Knowing that you can assume for the 2nd viewer to be someone else, right? Yeah, sure. Maybe. If you are like me and have your laptop viewing the stream via a separate connection somehow, then you add on to that viewer count by default. Some may see it as cheating or something somehow, but for me it allows a good way to ensure that the stream doesn’t look like hot garbage, or can be audibly understood. What I see on my main computer may not be what you are getting of course, so this lets me ensure some level of quality is being maintained.

So that’s 2 viewers. Do I ever see that number go above 2 into the 3 or 4 viewer bracket?

Not really. And due to how twitch takes a while in registering someone as a viewer and updating the concurrent tally, it’s hard to say when I have gotten a new person or not. Especially when I can also do the same thing as my laptop with my mobile phone to ensure things all work fine there as well. (Though I typically don’t use it, since if it works on the laptop, it should be fine on mobile as well, right?)

But that there in is the problem I am facing most right now. I know from analytics that twitch is seeing new viewers now and then, and registering them as having viewed my stream at one point. That’s aside from the VOD’s. But those views are so small and hard to tell apart from possibly my laptop being refreshed for instance, that it leads to moments in stream where I am literally saying “hello to the new viewer, unless that’s just me again”.

Hilarious as that may be to some people, it gets kind of dull pretty fast for me.

But okay, so we just ignore this for now since the channel is still growing, right? Sure, yeah, absolutely.

But now we get to talk about the video quality itself. Let’s just say that it’s kind of touch and go as to how much I really like Twitch’s video quality anymore at this point. Still completely possible I am doing something wrong over on OBS when I was using that; but some test streams using ONLY twitch studio using a direct capture of the game, still came out looking similar in quality to my previous methods. Worse actually in some ways.

Meanwhile, YouTube’s quality is often near flawless when frame drops aren’t an issue. What’s more is that I could and maybe should be just recording the gameplay simultaneously for a perfect copy to be uploaded afterwards instead of keeping the stream itself. Or do both, letting people have their choice between an unedited stream, and a cleaned up edited copy of the stream.

Such is possible when serving to YouTube, because YouTube actually lets you use bitrates that are actually nice to look at.

Twitch, does, not.

I doubt the team at Twitch will ever be reading this, or if they do, not right away… but if they do…

Twitch… 6,000 Kbit/s is not good enough. Neither is 7Mbit or 8Mbit. Your own application can be recorded sending my data through at rates as high as 12Mbit at times. But your settings only allow up to 8Mbit. Twitch Inspector as well calls your own “preferred settings” incompatible with your own damn service. Yeah, those suggested settings the program uses by default after determining your computers capability. Those ones. Incompatible. At least, sometimes. It’s touchy about when it calls it compatible or not.

So, Twitch… I’ll be streaming to you still, but more so as a side stream, than a main stream. I might use Twitch still as intended originally, but Twitch is now taking the backseat that YouTube was taking prior to getting my network issues fixed. Now that they are fixed, and streaming to Twitch works fine now as far as I can tell, it makes streaming to YouTube again seem much more feasible.

And when I download a copy of my own video and see it is nigh unwatchable due to the constant changes in video quality, all due to your settings Twitch… It makes me angry.

I’m going to change a few settings on my end here though, and see how that affects things. Perhaps there are a couple things I could be doing still that just am not aware of. But if those things don’t fix the problem as well, well…

Back to YouTube I go. Possibly anyways.

Now, let’s deal with another topic real quick before leaving this here as it is.

I’ve started working on a listicle. This one being my personal top 5 picks of games to be played this fall season. Especially since it’s October.

One such game is going to be getting streamed here soon, since it only makes sense I stream the same games I am listing. I’ve already got them all downloaded and ready to go. Other games I was streaming before, have gotten the axe pretty much. Only one of them will continue to be a streamed game, returning this coming Sunday. Civilization. Otherwise, the new set of games will be made apparent in the upcoming article. Some are games I was already planning on streaming anyways, but that just works better for me regardless since it works for the article as well as far as I am concerned. I list those games as ‘good games to play in the fall’ because they are games I find enjoyable to play, and tend to play them around this time of the year of all things. Not sure why that is exactly, but it’s a good enough reason for me, so hopefully you as well.

But seriously, I am giving better reasons to play it than that in the article. But said article also needs to have some gameplay video, preferably played/recorded by me so as to avoid any sort of copyright issues. So I need to get some footage happening. That means that for this past week, and for some days still, I am probably going to be busy doing that and not really streaming all that much. If I do stream, said streams are probably going to be clipped from to get some of that footage. So if you see my stream up, that’s what is probably happening for the next few days. I probably should have been more active about it these past few days, but some things in my life have popped up that require a change in how I schedule things.

I got a part time job. Yeah, that throws a monkey wrench into things, but it’s a good monkey wrench. Ideally I can get it to pay me enough to get by without dipping into savings, but we’ll see how that goes. I might have to get a second part time job yet, just to make ends meet. But I still have my E.I. for this month and a single pay period next month, so I am still fine for now.

But that means that late night streams on Thursday and Friday are now off the table. If I do stream at night at all, it’s because I got home early, and have time available. So in those cases, I might make use of that time to do things like continuing with Fallout on a sporadic basis on Fridays, and/or maybe Civilization on Thursdays. Or however that works out. I know I just said Sunday earlier, but that’s a great example of how up in the air it all is right now. I have no idea what I am going to do with which/what time I have available. I just know I am going to do things. Hopefully the right ones.

To make matters worse… that job might also want me on Wednesday and/or Saturday. They don’t know quite rightly for sure yet. Even now, I am considering calling them here today to ensure they don’t need me suddenly for today. But then, I also left the place under previous notions that I was not going to be back in their until Thursday. So maybe I’ll just leave it alone for today, and enjoy my last day off.

But that’s this week. This week is where they are still ascertaining just how many days they want me for each week, cause it looks like they might be losing another of their cooks possibly. They need to know just how much they truly want me around for, so they can fill the other days with the other cook not leaving/being fired. If they can get it to work using just me and the other person, then they probably will. But I made it pretty clear to them that I prefer to work 3-4 days, not 2-3, since I need to make enough to get by once we are past the E.I. pay dates. 1010$ on the spot, assuming I don’t buy anything other than the absolute necessities, pay only for my rent and bills, etc sort of thing. They currently will only be paying me roughly half that… but that’s also assuming for 2 days a week, with maybe a 3rd. If they do 3 days with maybe a 4th; that changes things.

So we’ll see how that goes. I also have my computer repair thing on the side, so as long as I can get a few people needing some repairs done each month, that can easily help cover the slack.

And then there is all of this. It obviously isn’t going to be paying me much of anything for some time to come, if ever; but if it does at some point… it would also be useful in keeping things going.

But until then, a second part time job may be required sometime in mid November. I prefer to make double per month whatever my monthly costs are, so I can save a month while spending a month. Get this going long enough, and I can get a years savings set up, and be able to afford to spend a bit more now and then again. If all goes to plan here for this month and next, then I will have a third of a year already pre-saved.

So that’s why that 2nd job is important if this 1st one can’t manage to make ends meet for me on my very small living requirement. It’s why all of this is important. It’s why I am constantly looking for things that can be fixed about it, to refine down things until I have found my exact niche, and exist within it.

And so far, I think my niche market is going to be mostly people who want to watch the old games more so than the new ones. The older gamers seem to not mind as much if they don’t have a webcam to watch while watching someone play a game. They also don’t seem to mind as much if things aren’t going 100 miles a minute.

Which is good, because I just don’t have that kind of mental energy to be like that. I’ve tried, and it just doesn’t seem to be happening. Heck, I’ve even considered just speeding up the videos to make them more entertaining. I tested it once, and it works. My voice gets changed, but the slow pace of some games gets removed, and my voice becomes more funny to listen to. But that’s not really possible with streams. I mean, it is, but it’s harder to do when its not prerecorded.

Anyways. I’ll figure something out. In the meantime, don’t expect things to be the way they used to be with me posting something daily. If I do post anything on a daily basis, it will be because I’m back to looking for a new job, lol.

With that all said and done, thanks for being here and reading this far. Next post I put up will probably be the listicle, and that will not be happening until I have it finished properly. Video embeds and everything.

Also, I have another planned article as well, but it’s still in the starting phases so much so right now, that I only bother mention it exists, not what about. Not yet.

Anyways. Hopefully I see some of you in the comments section here, now, or in the future. Till then, have fun and good luck with everything in your own lives.