"Hangouts on Air" discontinued -- What are people using to record their games?

#1

Hello! I seem to have missed the memo. I got on Youtube Creator Studio Classic to create a “Live Streaming” event. However, when I get to the “Create Event” page, the “Quick” option has a parenthetical note next to it stating: “Hangouts on Air has been discontinued.” Yikes! That’s the only way I know to record a Hangouts session.

I am technically challenged and need help! Are there instructions about how to create and record a Hangouts session in light of the above changes? Is there a different platform that I can use for the same purpose?

PS. I apologize if this topic has been covered elsewhere. The only instructions that I could find appear to be outdated now that Google killed Hangouts on Air.

2 Likes
#2

I’d really hoped to have a good guide and crowd-sourced pros/cons document by this point, but circumstances have delayed that.

Free options:
Stream Yard allows you to do a video call and stream to your YouTube channel. Looks decent, but developers have indicated it won’t always be free.
jitsi allows you to do a video call and stream to your YouTube channel. People have had issues with the program, it can crash a lot, there’s a limit on concurrent users, and recordings are limited to 2 hours. On the plus side, it is open source.

Free But You Need OBS
Hangouts Call. You can still do a Hangouts call, with a limit of six total users and some weirdness about which camera pops up when you speak. To stream and record the video, you need to use OBS which is pretty easy to set up but also eats processor power.

I don’t know about Twitch.

Zoom: Stable, automatically streams well, but it costs $15 per month.

2 Likes
#3

I have tried a couple of options and found Zoom to be head and shoulders better than anything free. It’s totally worth it if you want to run more than a few games a month and recording them is important to you.

4 Likes
#4

Thanks for the speedy reply! I think I will try out StreamYard for my game tomorrow. It looks very similar to the old YouTube Creator Studio interface. I hope the developers keep a free version available!

A definitive guide with instructions (like the one Yoshi made before the changes) would be much appreciated!

Anyway, thanks again for the guidance!

1 Like
#5

My recommendations are:

  • If you are non-technical: use Streamyard since it basically does everything for you.
  • If you are technical: set up OBS and then use whatever meeting platform you like.

I’m lazy and have been using Streamyard. Though I am also a bit paranoid so, since it requires full control of your YouTube account, after the stream is done processing I will go to accounts.google.com, and in the security settings, remove Streamyard’s access.

4 Likes
#6

Thanks for the recommendations, Shane! Yeah, I wasn’t entirely comfortable granting broad permissions to StreamYard, either. But OBS is very intimidating looking for a non-techie like myself. In any case, I will report back here regarding my experience with StreamYard. Fingers crossed!

1 Like
#7

I use Zoom, not because it’s great, but because everything else has been worse. As noted, it works well with OBS for streaming, but I still use it for non-streamed games due to that reliability.

2 Likes
#8

StreamYard is very intuitive … My instructions to myself are:

  1. The first time you use it you’ll be asked to allow them to log into your Google account so the connection to YouTube is built in.
  2. You can withdraw access at the end of the session and go through that simple process each time.
  3. Then you’ll just follow the instructions to set up a broadcast …
  4. It gives you a chance to say how you want to be described on screen and to check mic and camera are working.
  5. Then enter broadcast studio and note you need to click on the greyed out picture of yourself bottom left to join the broadcast
  6. You can then invite others using the button at the bottom … Copy it and paste it wherever you are sharing it with your players.
  7. They will get the same screen to name themselves, check video & mic before entering broadcast studio.
  8. They’ll appear as a greyed out postage stamp bottom left which you’ll need to click to add them.
  9. You do the same when you want to share a screen.
  10. Once you are ready you click Start Broadcast top right and there’s also a link up there which will open YouTube to let you monitor the stream.
  11. End Broadcast … Does what you’d think …
    It may not be 100% but should act as a guide rail …
5 Likes