Going live: what to set up before you start
The technical bits that ruin a first stream, and how to avoid each one.
Most bad first streams fail for boring reasons. Here they are, in the order they usually happen.
Upload speed, not download
Your connection is almost certainly asymmetric — much faster down than up. Streaming uses the up.
Run a speed test and look only at the upload number. For 720p you want 5 Mbps sustained. For 1080p, 8. If you have 3 Mbps up, stream at 480p and it will look fine; try 1080p on it and it will stutter for an hour.
Wired if you possibly can
Wi-Fi is fine until someone in the next room starts a video call. Ethernet removes a whole category of problem for the price of a cable.
On mobile data, check whether your signal is stable in the room you will be in, not just present. Two bars that drop to one will kill a stream.
Sound matters more than picture
People tolerate a soft image. They leave immediately over bad audio.
If you are streaming music, take audio from your interface directly rather than a room mic. If you are talking, anything is better than the laptop's built-in microphone — even wired earphones with an inline mic.
Do a test recording and listen back on your phone speaker. That is what most of your audience will hear it on.
Light your face, not your wall
One light source in front of you beats a bright window behind you. A window behind turns you into a silhouette. If you have one lamp, put it behind the camera pointing at you.
Do a private test first
Start a stream nobody is invited to. Watch it back. You will find something — audio out of sync, a notification popping up, your framing cutting off your head.
Ten minutes of this saves a first impression.
Then: say the plan
Open by saying what this is and how long it will run. People who arrive twenty minutes in have no idea what they have walked into, and a sentence of context keeps them there.