How to run a show

Your first show, start to finish

1. Open My desks and click your desk, then Open control panel. This is your control room; keep it open while you stream.
2. Click Join as host at the top. The host stage opens, with you in the tile marked You: pick your microphone (and camera) there and click Start. From then on you are on stage. Leave it open.
3. In OBS, start your stream as usual. The overlay you added during setup draws the stage.
4. Tell viewers to type !debate in chat (or read out your join address). Each one appears in the Queue on the left, with a green dot once their camera is on.
5. Click Put on stage next to a name. They are live straight away, and on the overlay - in Solo, which shows only the big frame, once they have it (click Focus on them).
6. When they are done, click Off stage. Next person.

Getting guests in

There are three doors and they all lead to the same queue:

1. Chat: a viewer types !debate. On Twitch the desk whispers them a private stage link, or, if Twitch will not deliver the whisper, tells them in chat to open your join page. On YouTube (coming soon) the desk does not answer each one (every message it posts there is metered by Google): the viewer opens your join page and posts the code it shows in your chat.
2. The join link: the address on your desk page. Put it in your stream title or panels. While the Door is open, the overlay shows it with a QR code; to show a shorter address you own that redirects to it, use Setup - Show something shorter on screen.
3. The QR code on the overlay, for viewers on a phone.

On the join page a viewer proves who they are. While the desk is reading your chat, the page shows a short code to post there (!debate ABCD), which ties the chat name to that browser, and offers Sign in with Twitch beside it; when the desk reads no chat, they sign in with Twitch or type a name. Then they turn their camera on. They wait in the green room - a page with their own camera and their place in line - until you bring them up. They cannot be seen or heard by the audience until you do. On Live Lobby media servers the first ten in line also watch the show while guests are on air (Setup - Green room watches the stage); nobody on stage sees or hears them. Once seated, they see and hear you and hear everyone on air. On Live Lobby media servers they see everyone on air too; peer to peer, they see up to two others, and more at a tap.

The stage

Seats are letters, one person per seat. A new desk has two seats, A and B, for a debate. For a panel, Add seat (on the panel's More seats tile, or on the host stage) or New seat (on a full stage) adds C, D and on up to J, as far as your plan allows. The count stays until you change it: Remove seat (or Setup - Seats on stage) takes empty seats away again.

1. Put on stage - on a queue row. They take the next free seat and go live. If every seat is full it offers a New seat, while your plan has one to give, or asks who to replace.
2. Off stage - on a seat. They are gone from the overlay and their link stops working.
3. Mute, Camera off, Lock - for when something goes wrong. Moderators have these too.
4. Focus - on a guest who is on air: the other voices come down, and in Stage and Focus they take the big frame. In Solo they become all the audience sees, and you are hidden. In Split and Tall nobody gets bigger: they are only outlined. A guest whose camera has failed is not given the frame. Unfocus takes it back. On the host stage it is the Focus key in a guest's tile (on Live Lobby media servers a click on their picture works too).
5. Floor to A and the clock - for timed debates: gives someone the floor and starts their time.

Your voice

Join as host, then Start in the You tile, is all you need: guests hear you the moment they are seated, live, not off the delayed stream. The audience hears you through OBS as always.

If the host page is your only microphone, tick My sound from the overlay too in Setup; otherwise leave it off or the audience hears you twice. Use headphones, and tell guests to.

Layouts - what the audience sees

The layout keys are in the panel and on the host stage, and change the overlay live:

1. Stage - the big frame in the middle, everyone else on air beside it on both sides.
2. Focus - the big frame on the left, everyone else on air in a column on the right.
3. Split - everyone the same size.
4. Solo - only the big frame. Everyone else on air is hidden, you included while a guest has it.
5. Tall - portrait tiles, for guests on phones.
6. Spotlight - the frames you make big share the stage, and everyone else, you too, sits small beneath. Click a frame in the panel's preview or on the host stage to make it big or small again (on VDO.Ninja, click Big or Small on the tile, or Make big on a seat in the panel). Until you choose, every guest on air is big; Every guest big goes back to that.

The big frame goes to the guest with the focus, else the guest with the floor - if they are on air and their camera has not failed - else to you while the overlay shows you, else to a guest on air. S / M / L sets how big the big frame is in Stage and Focus: S makes it smaller and the guests beside it larger, L the other way round. In Spotlight it sizes the row beneath the big frames the same way. The overlay's colours and fonts are under Look, beside the background of your panel, green room and host stage.

Twitch

Connect it once from your desk page: Connect Twitch, approve on Twitch, and you are back. From then on the desk reads your chat, answers !debate, and can time people out from the panel. It renews itself. To use a channel you moderate rather than your own, pick it under Setup - Twitch channel.

YouTube - coming soon

Connecting a YouTube channel is coming soon. Until it opens, a show you stream on YouTube takes guests from your join link and the QR code, and Twitch works as above.

Streaming on X

A show you stream on X works the way a Twitch one does: the overlay in OBS, guests on stage from your join page. What X needs of your account, and the steps:

1. A public account that may go live. X does not let protected accounts broadcast, and X says going live from a streaming app like OBS needs X Premium. Check both before the day.
2. Your stream key, from X. On the web, open X's Live Studio (x.com/i/live-studio, or Creator Studio, then Live Studio; it needs X Premium) and choose a streaming app (RTMP). It shows a server address (the RTMP URL) and a stream key: copy both. Keep the key private: whoever has it can broadcast as you. X moves these menus now and then; if yours differ, X's Help Center has the current steps for going live with a streaming app.
3. Put them in OBS. Settings - Stream - Service: Custom. The RTMP URL goes in Server, the key in Stream Key. OK. Your overlay is already a source in your scene.
4. Chat open to Everyone. When you set the broadcast up in Live Studio, choose who can chat: Everyone. A viewer who cannot chat cannot type !debate, and some ways of starting a broadcast default to verified accounts only. With X connected, your desk page warns you when a live broadcast's chat is limited.
5. Go live: Start Streaming in OBS, then Go Live in Live Studio. Live Studio can run a private test broadcast first, to check the picture and the chat before anyone sees it.
6. Tell people: Post on X on your desk page opens X with your join link filled in, to post from your own account. It costs nothing and needs nothing connected.

This platform does not connect X accounts yet; Post on X works anyway. The desktop edition does not have X yet.

The overlay in OBS or Meld

1. Copy the Overlay address from your desk page (it ends in ?k= - that part is your key, keep the address private).
2. OBS: Sources - the + - Browser. Paste the address. Set Width 1920 and Height 1080. OK.
3. Right-click the new source - Transform - Fit to screen.
4. Meld: Add Layer - Web - paste - stretch it over the scene.
5. The desk page ticks the overlay step when it connects, and the panel's Frame tile says Overlay connected. If it does not - or after an update, if the overlay looks wrong - open the source's Properties and click Refresh cache of current page.

Moderators

On your desk page, add people by email. They sign in here with their own account and land in the panel with the queue, mute and cut - and none of the settings. No codes to pass around.

The desktop edition - coming soon

The same desk on your own computer and bandwidth, on Windows, Mac or Linux. It is coming soon to Studio; until then, run your shows on the desks this site hosts.

If something is wrong