Yup - today - in a few hours-time - "Strings on Sunday" revived !

Here are the 4 participants - join in the chat if you like (even better, get up and play after my "slot" (all slots tend to be 30 minutes) - oh - or before the first show, but don't overlap another Strings on Sunday player !

Also, I have to obscure the actual times (they are always shown in YOUR local timezone - so - check the site at http://www.streetjelly.com

Hope to see you there !

@ELCBK - regarding equipment - I'm using a laptop - and what I go on to say may not apply in exactly the same way for folks using mobile devices.

It's all very basic really - although (for laptop) a small financial outlay is really needed. 

You need a camera and a microphone (obviously!) - but - certainly for laptop - avoid the use of the internal microphone.  That's because (1) they're generally cr4p and (2) prone to pickup of fan-vibrations/noise.  You *could* get away with a relatively simple external analog mic plugged into the normal audio jack-socket (line input) - but that can also have issues with levels and impedance matching.  The best (well, I mean "easiest") solution is to use a USB mic - of which there are a good number of reasonable quality around. For streaming, I use the "Samson C01U" USB mic, (which is not far off studio quality).  There are others like the  Blue "Snowball" which are much the same spec and performance. Devices like these give a good clean sound. [ Funny story - I do have other setups for general non-streaming recording-work - but that involves using a small mixing desk and other stuff - just gets over-cluttered for basic streaming - so - when @Barry first suggested SJ, I thought I had better get a simpler setup - and went for the USB version of my phantom-power Samson.  It comes with a simple stand (not shock mounted) and in the first show, as I was playing, a viewer in the audience (I think it was @coolpinkone if memory serves) - chatted "What's that thumping noise" - Barry texts back "Oh, that'll be Billy tapping his foot as he plays....."  LOLOL - aye - I had the mic (in its stand) sitting on the floor responding not so much to the actual "sound" of my foot tapping, just the transmitted impact through the wooden floor !!!   I subsequently set the stand on top of a car-wash sponge .....] 

Anyway - that's the mic set-up I use

For camera - a cheap webcam is much more flexible (on laptop) than the inbuilt cam although at a push, sure you can use the inbuilt.  I use one of the Logitech things (a kind of mid-spec'd device ... let me think errrr - yep - a Logitech C270 - that's it.  [And I use that for all my videos, streaming or general recording ]

So, it's all pretty basic - just the few points above to consider gets you off-the-ground into reasonable quality streaming.  There ARE SJ artists with much more complex setups where they are working with other devices like synths, separate pickups for instrument and voice and a small mixing desk - but for basic streaming you can live without it.  There is one particular issue worth mentioning now I say that - although I just use the one mic (instrument is not mic'd-up) picking up fiddle and voice - if you wanted to play along to a backing track you would *probably* want to resort to something different (although I have got away with just playing a backing through a small monitor speaker and letting the single mic "listen in" on all of it - voice, fiddle, backing - but - you do need to manually get the levels, positioning of the mic and so on, just right)

ELCB said
......

I love the sound & video quality of my smartphone, but there's no way I can see to use it for streaming and chatting - phone has to be set up out of reach.

Yes, that must get problematic.   

I'm not a luddite by any means, and I happily embrace new tech - and without doubt both video and audio quality is great on many mobile devices.   But, I just hate using them for "highly interactive" purposes - yes - like a text box for chat whilst following a live video etc - it just drives me crazy as things have to get scrolled up or down or sideways etc..   LOL Old Man Bill !!!

@ELCBK - it is my understanding that you can have multiple concurrent logins to SJ (not just on the one platform - which works anyway --- I mean across different devices).  I know, way back in the past, I did that on 2 separate laptops - and - it worked (within limitations of my broadband - i.e. the one "watching the stream" would occasionally freeze if I was streaming-out on the other. 

I did that as a test to check the real video lag time (which here, turned out to be around 15 to 20 seconds).  One of the "problems" on SJ is that - well - depending on how geographically remote one is from the SJ server and how many "hops" the video has to make, there can be a fairly significant lag between the text-chat-stream (which seems to be pretty much instantaneous) and the video.  This is disconcerting for the player - I've seen me move on to the next tune, and suddenly there is text-chat responding to the previous tune)

But AFAIK you should be good to go for that set-up with just the one account.

ELCB said
@damfino , @BillyG -..... Made an ass out of myself, missed you both on Street Jelly because I fell asleep before you even started..........

 LOL !  Don't be so hard on yourself.  It happens!

Billy, you don't have a replay - did you save a recording?  I know it doesn't really help you if I don't watch/participate during the live stream, but I'd still love to see/hear it if you feel like sharing! 

I didn't actually set a "Replay" on SJ, but I did set it into "Record" mode - so there is (available to me only) a recording held on SJ I can upload (and rebroadcast/share on YT for instance).  I'll be downloading it for myself anyway, so I can easily share it out.  [ Oh - unlike the previous one I shared - THIS recording will NOT have the text chat area - SJ only save the video/audio stream.  [ You won't see this "Record" button anywhere until you actually broadcast, it appears once the outgoing video stream is established ]. 

I've actually had a nasty cold over the last few days (first really horrid one in a long time) and my show was compromised by occasional loss of voice, siffling, and a generally dazed-and-confused head as a result of various cold-remedies having been imbibed throughout the day.  I took Lyd's advice, and after the show and made myself a nice hot toddy ( or two, actually! ) - a good dram of whisky, honey, hot water, lemon....  I certainly slept well - feel a LOT better this morning!!!!

.....  Don't think I should be having any issues with my service (433Mbps?)...

What is this huge number of which you speak - 433Mbps - lordy, I can only dream....

Mandy's video stalled for a few seconds - then I noticed the website note about enabling the audio/video (symbol next to padlock), so I did.  Or, doesn't it matter?  Wondering why I was able to see/hear anything before. 

Don't know about that - although - while watching (live) both Lyd and Mandy's shows, they both froze several times - but that could easily have been other local-to-my-router internet traffic causing that.  I blame Windows 10 which I have running on another machine - it just goes off and performs Windows updates when it feels like it - fair enough on that one machine - the updates suspend if there is user interaction - but - here - once it starts that you can forget about doing anything else on any other device since it eats all of my incoming 2Mbps !!!!  Just wanted to moan about it....  Again....  LOLOL

I'll fetch that local-to-SJ recording and put it (unlisted) on YT - I'll post the link later