Full Budget Streaming Setup!
If you managed to bag a new gaming PC this Christmas and are ready to start streaming – or it’s just something you want to try out and get into – it can be really daunting looking at the triple-digit dollar signs hanging off of most streaming gear. It seems like a rather high barrier to entry, especially for the top tier kit, but especially if you are just dipping your toes in the streaming waters or just getting started, you don’t need a 4K60 DSLR, a £1000 audio setup and hundreds of pounds in capture cards and lights.
That’s where the sponsor of this video, Streamplify, comes in. They are launching a full line of streaming hardware designed to be everything a beginner could need, all for a budget price tag. This is their full lineup – at least for now anyway – and it’s exactly what you’d need to get started. Let me give you a quick tour of these bits, then get them set up, show you how to get streaming including stream settings up and running, and get to playing some games with them too.
First, the most important part of a streaming setup, the microphone. You have two options here – both are the same actual mic, the only difference is their attachment method. This one includes a boom arm to mount to in the included shock mount, whereas this one includes a little tripod instead. The mic itself is a USB C condenser mic, using a 16mm condenser capsule with a cardioid pickup pattern, 100-18KHz frequency response and 16 bit 48KHz sampling. It’s got an RGB ring around the body, because that’s an instant 10FPS gain of course, and a large dial on the front to increase the output level – or press it in to mute the mic. You’ve even got a 3.5mm jack on the back if you want to monitor the audio too!
Next is the camera – when it comes to streaming you really don’t need something too over-the-top crazy. Especially when you end up just sticking your face cam in a corner, 1080p60 is plenty fine, which is why the streamplify cam is perfectly fine. Of course it has auto focus built in, has a 90 degree field of view and can either clip to your monitor or screw into a tripod head like the one included in the box. The absolute best thing about this for me though is the privacy features. Not only does this have a physical sliding privacy cover to cover the lens and front facing mic, but hear that little click? That’s an electronic disconnect too – in hardware. If this cover isn’t fully open, this can’t be used to see or hear you at all. I love that.
Of course, if you are going to show your beautiful faces on stream, you’ll want to make sure they are lit well which is where the two ring light options come in. The Light 10 is a 10” ring light that’s just powered by USB – specifically a 2A port. You can screw the cam straight to it, then use the controls on the USB cable to turn it on and adjust both its brightness and colour temperature. It delivers up to 480 lumens with a CRI (colour rendering index) of over 90, and colour temperatures of between 3000K and 6000K. It also comes with a desk size tripod included to mount the light to.
If you’d prefer more light, the Light 14 is a larger 14” ring light with up to 2250 lumens, and much more adjustment for both colour temp and brightness. It’s powered by a wall power adapter, and has two USB 2A ports if you want to power other devices – like the Light 10, or say your phone. It includes a much larger tripod, and both actually include phone mounts if you’d rather mount your phone as your webcam instead.
Finally there is the greenscreen – this monster is 2m tall and 1.5m wide, includes caster wheels and a handle to make it easy to move around, plus has hydraulic assistance so it’s nice and easy to raise up and down. It’s a really nice even surface, which should make keying it out in OBS nice and simple!
Right – those are the pieces, let’s start arranging the jigsaw, starting with a system you might actually have. This is a Ryzen 2600 and RTX 2060, and while it’s a perfectly capable system, it’s not the absolute best for streaming, at least with the default settings anyway. I’ve got a monitor here too, so let’s get the Streamplify bits set up. I’ll start with the lights – I’m going to use the Light 14 on it’s tripod and mount the cam to it. I’ll position it just above the display. I’m also going to plug in the Light 10 into the power ports on the Light 14 for a bit of extra light, since I’ve got it. I’m going to use the boom arm mic, so I’ll attach the mount to the boom arm and clamp it to the side of my desk, then screw on the microphone’s shock mount and slide the mic into it. We can’t forget the pop filter, or the USB cable! Finally for the greenscreen, that just lifts up and locks in place, and hey presto we are sorted.
Software wise, I’ll be using OBS here as it’s my go-to favourite – plus who doesn’t love a good Open Source project! The first thing we’ll need to do is open settings. I like to head to the “Video” tab first and set up the base canvas and output resolutions. I’ve got a 1440p display here so I’m going to put 2560×1440, but you will normally want to pick whatever resolution your gaming monitor uses – say 1920×1080 for 1080p – and the output resolution you’ll want to either set to 1920×1080 or if you’d rather stream at 720p instead you can pick 1280×720. You’ll also want to pick either 30 or 60 FPS, 60 is smoother, but 30 can often provide better visual quality so it’s up to you and your internet connection.
Click apply and head to the output window, where the biggest thing you’ll want to do is set the streaming bitrate to 6000 Kbps (assuming your internet connection can handle that) and set the encoder to use your graphics card – in this case it’s called “Hardware (NVENC)” but on an AMD GPU it’s normally “Hardware (AMD)”. If you want to record as well, you can make it easy and set recording quality to “same as stream” and recording format as mp4. You’ll want to hit apply, then head to the stream tab to log into your streaming platform of choice.
Setting up the actual stream is nice and easy. Hit the plus at the bottom of the “Scenes” box, then hit the plus in the “Sources” box – pick game capture, click ok, then hit the plus again and click video capture device, select the Streamplify Cam and hit ok, then drag and size the window to where you want it. In the audio mixer, click the cog on the “Mic/Aux” line, click “Properties” then make sure the Streamplify Mic is the selected device. You might also want to check the Windows sound settings to make sure your headset is your default output device, and check the “Desktop Audio” properties in OBS has the same selected so your audience can hear both you and your game! If you have a lot of background noise, you can add filters to the mic like a noise gate and noise suppression which can help out.
Lastly, for cutting yourself out of your background with the greenscreen, right click on your video adapter and click filters, then add a “Chroma Key” filter and tweak the settings so your background is completely gone – but you are still well defined. If you still have part of your background in frame after keying, you can add either a crop filter, or an image mask filter where you provide a “mask” image that OBS uses to cut out part of the frame. Once that’s done you can then place yourself wherever you like in frame!
Ok, I think that’s a good starting point, let’s play some games with this new setup!
Now I’ve mentioned that this is a budget setup – but how budget? Well, the camera is listed for just £59.99, as is the microphone with the tripod, or if you’d rather the boom arm version that’s £69.95. The smaller ring light is just £19.99, and the larger 14” version is £64.99, and finally the green screen is £129.95. If those prices still aren’t cheap enough, Streamplify are offering bundles with a decent discount – the “Starter Bundle” which includes the camera, tripod mic and 10” ring light is £129.95, their “Pro” bundle which gets you the boom arm mic, camera, and both 10” and 14” lights is £199.99, and their “Complete” bundle which is the the same but with the Screen Lift greenscreen too is £329.95.
So there you have it, an awesome budget streaming setup that’s perfect for anyone looking to get into streaming but doesn’t want to spend an arm and a leg on gear! Thanks again to Streamplify for sponsoring this video – as always you can check out all of these bits at the links in the description below, I’ll leave links to all of these options there for you!
