Streamlabs: All-in-One Free Live Streaming Software

Now, go back to the dashboard. There, you can set the minimum amount of tip or the recommended amount for the donation. If you are not based in the US, you are allowed to change the currency as you pleased.

You can also write a message for your audience. Let them know if you’re taking donations as well as the purpose.

To strengthen your personal branding, add a custom image to the donation page header.

B. Setting up your Charity Live Stream

Streamlabs is a free live streaming platform for charity. It won’t charge any fees from you. 100% of the fundraising will go to the charity. All of the money will go straight to the streamers. Streamlabs never lays a hand on the cash.

There are lots of organizations that have used this platform to seek financial support for the charity. In the last Z event, they even collect $1.98 million in only 24 hours.

Now, do the following steps to manage your charity account:

1. Visit Streamlabscharity.com

2. Sign up as a Fundraiser to create an account. Or, sign up with your Twitch, YouTube, or Facebook account.

3. Create your Streamlabs charity account.

4. Check the inbox in your email. You will find a welcome mail.

5. Open the message and click the verifying button to verify your account.

Now, you are ready to start your first charity campaign.

C. Start your fundraising

Now, since you have created your account, you are ready to be a fundraiser. You can either be a fundraiser for the registered charity or your own charity.

Once you decide on the charity, you can start creating a campaign for the charity. Write the description and choose the date you will go live, and set the donation target. Click Create Campaign when it’s all completed.

You will now return to your profile page. Press Publish when you are ready for the fundraising event to go live.

Don’t forget to share you charity tip page to your audiences. They can donate to your campaign by simply clicking the link that you have shared.

How do I create charity stream alerts?

Create charity stream alerts to remind you about your charity live stream that you are going to hold. To do this, you need to link your Streamlabs account to the published campaign. It’s a piece of cake.

Go to the dashboard > Settings > Integration to manage your charity campaign.

After the integration has done, you will get the alerts whenever it’s time for collecting donations.

The Best Streaming Settings for Streamlabs OBS

Before you press the LIVE button, it is wise to know your device specs. Setting up too high quality can result in crashes or performance issues.

If you are a new streamer, you can use the Auto Optimize feature in Streamlabs OBS. It will analyze your hardware and internet speed. Then, it will custom the setting based on the results.

It is quite useful if you don’t really understand this technical thing yet.

To access this feature, go to Settings > General.

However, if you have knowledge about technical things, you can custom the setting yourself.

Below is the best setting that you can apply in Streamlabs OBS for streaming on Twitch. Check it out.

1. Quality and resolution

The higher the quality and resolution you choose, the higher the CPU works. Choosing the highest resolution will give you the best output, but it will take more resources.

Therefore, you should consider your computer specs. You can choose the base (canvas) resolution similar to your computer’s original resolution.

You can also reduce the Output (Scaled) Resolution since streaming in 1080p can weigh your CPU. Thus, set it to 1280×720 to balance the performance and quality.

2. Select encoder

There are two kinds of encoders: software (x264) and hardware (NVENC).

The software (x264) uses your CPU to play and stream the video. You should have a high specs computer if you want to have the best quality video.

The hardware NVEC uses GPU to encode video. Stream with it if you are using an NVIDIA graphics card on your computer.

3. Change the CPU usage preset

Change the default CPU usage preset to get the best performance. To do this, go to Settings > Output.

The x264 encoder provides several options of usage preset that you can use. Choosing Very Fast will give you a balance between performance and quality.

The NVENC encoder offers three presets: low-latency, optimal performance, and max quality. You can start with the Quality preset and experimenting to get the best setting for you.

4. Enable Dynamic Bitrate

Dynamic Bitrate feature lets the application adjust the bitrate setting based on network to avoid dropping frames issue.

To enable Dynamic Bitrate, go to Settings > Advanced > tick the Dynamically change bitrate when dropping frames while streaming.

5. Adjust Bitrate manually

You can adjust the bitrate manually to know which works best for you.

Here are some recommended specs for NVIDIA NVENC from Twitch. Select the settings according to the resolution and fps you want to use.

Settings	1080p 60fps	1080p 30fps	720p 60fps	720p 30fps
Resolution	1920×1080	1920×1080	1280×720	1280×720
Bitrate	6000 kbps	4500 kbps	4500 kbps	3000 kbps
Rate Control	CBR	CBR	CBR	CBR
Framerate	60 or 50 fps	25 or 30 fps	60 or 50 fps	25 or 30 fps
Keyframe Interval	2 seconds	2 seconds	2 seconds	2 seconds
Preset	Quality	Quality	Quality	Quality
B-frames	2	2	2	2

Keep in mind that the settings for each computer can be different because of the various specs they have. So, try to experiment to get the best settings for you.

ALSO READ: Google Text to Speech: Read Texts on Your Screen Aloud

Troubleshooting

Sometimes issues appear in Streamlabs though it doesn’t happen often. However, it is still annoying and irritating to experience a problem when you are doing live streaming. And you need to fix it as soon as possible. So, your live streaming can go smoothly.

1. Streamlabs dropping frames issue

Before jumping to the solutions, you need to know that there are three kinds of frame issues. Each has different causes and methods to fix. Check them below:

• Lagged frames: It happens due to an overload compositor or high GPU usage.
• Skipped frames: It happens due to an overload encoder or high CPU usage.
• Dropped frames: It happens due to network errors caused by servers or hardware.

Now, let’s take a look at how to fix the dropping frames in order to improve the live stream qualities.

a. Fix lagged frames

1. Adjust the game to the lower quality than currently. It gives the Streamlabs OBS some space to encode the frames. Limiting the FPS or using V-sync can be another solution.
2. Set the game settings to 120FPS and 12Hz or lower.

b. Fix skipped frames

1. Reduce your CPU usage by closing other opened apps that you don’t need.
2. Consider upgrading your CPU by using hardware encoding (NVENC/AMD).

c. Fix dropped frames

As we have mentioned earlier, the dropped frames mostly happen because of the internet connection failure. When it occurs, you can try to contact your ISP provider and tell them about your issue.

However, there might be possibilities that the network issue occurs due to your hardware failure. If so, here are some steps you can do:

1. Restart your router or modem. Unplug it for about 30 to 60 seconds and plug it again.
2. Check your video and audio bitrate. It should not exceed the internet upload speed.
3. Try connecting to a different streaming server. Avoid using Auto in Settings > Stream.
4. Reinstall your network driver on your computer.

Those were the methods you can try to fix dropping frames.

2. Recording issue

There are three kinds of message that will appear whenever you experience a recording issue in Streamlabs OBS.

• An unexpected error occurred: Unable to write to.
• An unexpected error occurred: [empty]
• No errors; No Recording File Created.

Here are some solutions that you can do to fix the recording issue:

1. Check your disk space. Ensure that you have enough space to store the recording file.
2. Install both versions of Microsoft Visual C++ redist 2017: 64 bit and 32 bit.
3. Update your graphics card driver.
4. Run Streamlabs OBS as an administrator.
5. Make sure that you are allowed to write a file in the recording path/folder.
6. Use Same as Stream quality.

3. Black screen game capture issue

In some cases, Streamlabs  OBS game capture won’t work. It shows a black screen when you try to capture the game.
If you are experiencing this problem, try the following steps to fix the game capture black screen issue.

1. Right-click on the app and choose “Run an Administrator“.
2. Delete the capture source and run Streamlabs OBS as administrator. Then, add a new source.
3. Make sure that you install Streamlabs OBS in Program Files.
4. Use “Capture Specific Window” or “Capture foreground window with hotkey“.
5. Disable and enabled the Anti-cheat hook.
6. Disable 3rd party in-game overlays.
7. Install Visual C++ Redistributable.
8. Update all drivers and software.

4. Crash issue

If a crash happens while you are doing a live streaming, try to do the following methods:

1. Update your Windows. Go to Windows Start Menu > Check System Updates. Press Check for Updates. Install the updates if any.
2. Install Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 redistributable (both 64bit and 32bit).
3. Update GPU driver.
4. Re-install Streamlabs OBS and run as administrator.
5. Install DirectX.
6. Give permission for Streamlabs OBS through any Antivirus.

5. Streamlabs won’t go live issue

To fix Streamlabs won’t go live issue, you can do several steps below by order.

Step 1

• Install Microsoft C++ 2017 Redistributables and restart your laptop.
• Log out from Streamlabs OBS, close the application, and run as an administrator.
• If you use Advanced Output Mode and using NVEC/AMD, the GPU should be set to 0.
• Run the auto-optimizer in General Settings if you sign in using Twitch.
• Enable 2FA in your Twitch account.
• Clear cache and data.

Step 2

If you get an error message, “Invalid Path or Connection URL. Please check your settings to confirm that they are valid.” after doing the methods above, you can do the followings:

• Navigate to Settings > Advanced > Bind > IP.
• Change it from Default to your local machines. It should start with 192.168.x.x or 10.0.x.x. (or another combination of numbers).

Now, try to go live stream again.

Step 3

Do these steps if the methods above didn’t work.

• Go to Settings > Stream > Custom Ingest.
• Choose a different service.
• Choose the streaming service you want to use.
• Select the server (avoid auto).

Step 4

When you click Go Live and you’ve got an error, you should try the followings:

The method below will work to users that are using NVENC only. Go to Settings > Output to see if you are using this device.

• Launch Geforce Experience and choose Drivers.
• Click the triple dots to update or re-install the driver.
• If you choose to download, after it’s completed, click Custom Installation and tick Perform Clean Install.
• Choose Install and run it.

Now, you can try to go live with NVENC or NVENC (new).

6. Webcam not working issue

If you can go live, but the webcam is not working properly, you can do these steps:

1. Update your webcam driver
2. Remove duplicate sources of the webcam.
3. Make sure the setting is correct.
4. Check if all apps to access your camera are enabled. Go to Windows > Settings > Privacy > Camera.

READ ALSO: Headspace App: Your Daily Meditation Guide

Final Words

Streamlabs is a free live streaming platform that can do multistream instantly. It is simple, effective, and fantastic. It allows you to go unlimited live streaming on YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, TikTok, and more simultaneously.

The overlays are easy to set up and it’s a great-looking app. It provides good quality and good frame rates too.

This is a great app for everyone who wants to reach a cross section of audiences quality. Including make money and get donations for charities.

If you are planning to be a streamer, download Streamlabs OBS app right now.