JamKazam offers a rich set of live broadcasting features that you can use in JamKazam sessions, either alone or when playing with other musicians. This help article is organized into five sections:




Installing OBS Studio & the JamKazam Plugin for OBS

Before making a video recording, you must first install OBS Studio on your computer, and then install the JamKazam Plugin for OBS. OBS Studio is an industry-leading video/audio broadcasting and recording piece of open source software that is quite excellent, and we have integrated with OBS to give you best-in-class video features. Read our help article Installing OBS Software, and follow the directions in this article to get this critical step done properly. When finished, return to this help article, and read on!



Setting Your Preferred JamKazam Browser

Due to compatibility issues, for now we can only support the Chrome browser for making video recordings, so you'll need to use Chrome as your preferred JamKazam browser. (This won't affect your browser preference or use for anything other than JamKazam.) If you don't have Chrome, you will need to install it. And if you do have it installed, read our help article Setting Your Preferred JamKazam Browser and follow the directions to set Chrome as your preferred browser for JamKazam. When finished, return to this help article, and continue forward.



Making Adjustments to Your OBS Settings

If you want a polished, high-quality live broadcast, you will need to crop your JamKazam session video in OBS so that you capture only the part of the screen you want in your video. You do this just one time, and then it will save your crop settings for all future broadcasts, as well as any video recordings you make. While less likely, you may also want to adjust the overall audio volume in your video recording (if too high or low), or adjust the sync of video vs. audio (if not well synchronized), but you probably won't need to do these things. To learn how to crop your JamKazam video in OBS, please read our help article Making Adjustments to OBS Settings, and when finished making these adjustments, return to this help article to move forward.



Starting a Live Broadcast on Your Preferred Platform

Next you'll need This section explains how to start or schedule a live broadcast on whatever platform you want to use. YouTube is a popular choice that works well, and Twitch and Facebook are also popular. You can use other platforms as well. To learn how to set up a live broadcast on your preferred platform, please read out help article Setting Up Your Live Broadcast on YouTube, Facebook, Etc, then return to this help article to move forward.



Broadcasting Your JamKazam Session

To broadcast your JamKazam session, you first need to turn on your session video. To do this, click the Video button in the session toolbar (pictured below with arrow). 


You will see a new browser window open, displaying a "Join Room" button (pictured below). Click this button.


You should now see video of yourself, as well as any other session musicians who have turned on their own video. 


Now start up the OBS Studio app if you haven't already done so. You should see the JamKazam session video in the OBS video preview area (pictured below), so you'll know you have a good connection between JamKazam and OBS.




Next, return to the JamKazam app, and click the Broadcast button in the session toolbar (pictured below with arrow).




The broadcast dialog is displayed (pictured below).

Copy the stream key from the broadcast platform you're using (e.g. YouTube/etc), and paste it into the Stream Key field in the dialog (pictured above). You're now ready to start streaming the audio and video of your session through OBS to the broadcast platform. To do this, click the Start Broadcast button at the bottom of the dialog (pictured above). When you do this, the stream from JamKazam/OBS starts. Go to the live event page on your broadcast platform, and you should see the video from JamKazam displayed in the event preview window (pictured below in YouTube). This tells you that you have a good connection from JamKazam/OBS to your broadcast platform, and you're now ready to go!




In your broadcast platform, whenever you are ready for your audience to actually see and hear you, you can click the button to go live. Until you do this, the JamKazam video is being streamed to your broadcast platform, but the video is not forwarded from the broadcast platform to your audience. This is good because you can have everything ready to "push the big red button" but then do any last bits of preparation you and your group need to do before you show yourselves to your audience.


One other note. When you click the Start Broadcast button, the button changes to Stop Broadcast. When your live broadcast is over, you'll want to first click a button on your broadcast platform to stop broadcasting to your audience. Once you've done that, come back to the JamKazam app, and click the Stop Broadcast button in the dialog shown above. This stops the stream from JamKazam/OBS to your broadcast platform.


While you're broadcasting, there are two main features you may want to use.


First, if you click the Audio tab at the top of the Broadcast dialog in JamKazam (pictured below), you'll see a VU meter and slider that lets you adjust the volume of the broadcast you are sending from the broadcast platform to your audience. It's always good when you go live to have someone check the overall volume of your session from the perspective of your audience by using the broadcast platform link to your live event that you share with your audience. If your volume to your audience is too low, they may not be able to turn up the volume high enough on their device to hear you as well as they'd like.  Note that this adjustment won't affect what any of you or your group hears in JamKazam. It only affects the volume your audience hears through the broadcast platform.




The other feature is pretty cool. It lets you control the video from your session, and cut between different views of the band and individual performers, adding visual interest and energy to your performance. One the left are buttons you can click to show individual performers. On the right are buttons you can use to show the whole group, with different screen layout options for visual interest.


If you have a friend of the band who can get set up on JamKazam, it can be handy to have them join your session but keep their webcam turned off so they are not visible in the broadcast. If they start and stop your broadcast, they can also click on the video buttons during your broadcast, effectively acting as the "camera person", since it can be hard to impossible to play and work the cameras at the same time. Note that when you click buttons on different cameras, you'll see the video in the JamKazam session window change immediately. But you won't see the video in the broadcast change right away.


The reason for this is that there is some lag between your JamKazam session and the what the audience sees and hears from the broadcast platform. How much lag depends from one platform to another, and even from one broadcast to another on the same platform, in our experience. This doesn't hurt anything. It's just something to be aware of. 


If your band is interested in being featured by JamKazam and having us promote your live broadcast to our community, just drop us an email at support@jamkazam.com!