{"id":458,"date":"2020-04-14T11:02:14","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T11:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thecodehub.ie\/news\/?p=458"},"modified":"2020-04-14T11:02:18","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T11:02:18","slug":"our-live-sessions-setup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thecodehub.ie\/news\/2020\/04\/14\/our-live-sessions-setup\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Live Sessions Setup"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We don\u2019t have it quite perfect (yet), but we\u2019re pretty happy with our live streaming setup for our live coding sessions<\/a> (weekdays at 1pm, Irish time).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since we toyed with a few variations on the tech, we figured we\u2019d write up what we went with, in the end, in case anyone else found it useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Session<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The basic session is about half an hour of coding and working through the material in the Everyone Can Code Puzzles book<\/a> from Apple in Swift Playgrounds<\/a> on an iPad. I tend to give a brief intro, on camera, to the session, then we dive into the iPad for exercises and illustrations of that lesson\u2019s concepts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s designed for kids from age 8 or so to 108, so long as they have an iPad and an internet connection. Ideally you\u2019d have another screen, like a TV or laptop or other iPad to watch the coding session on while you follow along on the iPad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The course material is geared towards people who have a limited understanding of what coding is. It introduces computing concepts in as painless a way as possible and is a great intro to programming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gear<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For the basics we have a MacBook Pro from 2015 running Catalina and a couple of our 2016 iPads we use in our Code Hub classroom for Swift Playgrounds and the Books app (and occasionally a couple Keynote slides). And I have an iPhone X that I use as my camera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The recording setup<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I bought a Shure MV 5 a few years ago and it works like a champ for a good quality external mic. The mic is just off camera, pointed at my face, and it\u2019s very near where I work through the day\u2019s code on the iPad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also have a 7-port, powered USB hub for charging and maintaining The Code Hub iPads, and it\u2019s been pressed into service as my hub for connecting the iPads and iPhone, which has been a life saver if I need to change between multiple iPads and have all the other stuff connected, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lastly, I have a USB-powered light\/phone holder from TK Maxx (I still find it weird to say or type TK and not TJ). We bought it for a lark just before things shut down, but it\u2019s been pretty great for lighting video calls and the sessions, as well as a camera mount. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Software<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve floundered around most with the software for our setup, for sure. I tried a number of streaming apps for the Mac, including some that did multi-streaming, but in the end I really like OBS Studio<\/a>\u2019s feature set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the beginning, I just used OBS to stream to Twitch, and I used the scenes to switch between different elements, like an image I captured of a Keynote slide for the intro, video capture from my phone, connected by USB, just from the normal camera app previewing me, then the screen capture from the iPad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I think I\u2019ve got it a *little* better. I use OBS Camera<\/a>, which has a plugin for OBS Studio<\/a> and an app for the phone, which presents a much better video feed of me. My scene switching has gotten a little better, but I\u2019m sure there are loads of tricks I\u2019m missing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

OBS Studio is configured to save the recording to disk as well as stream it, in mkv format, which YouTube will accept. After each session I upload the saved video to YouTube and chuck it in the kids.code()<\/code> playlist<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I watched this video to help me use the software a little better (but I could probably do with watching it again:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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