Recording a talk with Big Blue Button and obs studio

This page aims at giving a simple introduction to holding a talk over the net, with the Speaker interacting only with Big Blue Button and recording/streaming handled by a separate person somewhere else — this should allow for talks given by speakers who have little to no experience with audio/video streaming, as that is handled by the Stream Angel. Additionally, for live Q&A, a Signal Angel may also join the conference.

For now, this setup assumes that there is just one Speaker, but it should be relatively easy to expand it to several Speakers (e.g. for panel discussions) if needed — although the Stream Angel may end up with an inordinate amount of browser windows (and need a lot of downlink) …

This setup is specifically for situations in which you cannot use big blue button itself for the live stream (e.g. because there are too many people in the audience — most big blue button instances appear to break down once the number of participants gets unreasonably high) and/or recording — if you only want a recording of a talk, the inbuilt recording feature of big blue button is pretty easy to use and produces really cool output, but less portable than a normal video. You can of course also use both, and have one as a backup.

This article was written partly for the Ringvorlesung Umwelt at the TUM, but is intended to be as general as possible and adaptable to other situations as well.

Context

Requirements

The following software is assumed to exist somewhere in the context of this page:

Roles

This page assumes chaos-event-style roles and names them as such:

Of course, depending on your situation and requirements, you may also create additional roles (e.g. a Herald to announce the Speaker, more Signal Angels, etc.). Be sure to tell the Stream Angel about them if they need to speak in the stream or even have their video there.

It may prove useful to have all Angels in a separate conference (e.g. on a mumble server), so that they can all talk to each other during the event without being heard in the livestream.

Speaker's side

Requirements

Before the Talk

During & After

Everything works as intended? Great! Then start your talk once the Stream Angel gives you a go (don't start earlier, as the recording/livestream may not yet have started!)

If there is a Q&A session following directly to your talk, you will probably receive the questions either through the chat on the left side of the screen, or a Signal Angel will read them to you directly through Big Blue Button.

Once you are done with your talk, lean back; the Stream Angel will do the rest of the work. Once they confirm that the stream has ended, simply close the tab in your browser.

Stream Angel

Requirements

Before the Talk

Configuring Big Blue Button:

Configuring obs:

During the Talk

After the Talk

Signal Angel (optional)

Before the Talk

During the Talk

After the Talk