Hangouts On Air Guide

by Yoshi Creelman, Keeper of the Triton's Blessing (@yoshicreelman)

One frequent request for folks new to gaming online is: “How do I record my Hangouts session?” Things have changed over the years and they will change again (there will be another UI change later this year that’s already being beta tested and foreshadowed). Even if you don’t want to record your hangouts session, this method of setting up the session will get you a more fully featured hangouts.

For example two additional features are:

1. The ability for the host to adjust volume and mute other participants.
2. Keyboard shortcuts. For example, for muting yourself: Ctrl+D. The 'normal' Hangout doesn't have that and the additional 500 millisecond it takes to click the button to mute yourself make such a difference when playing.

Google has recently announced that hangouts will be discontinued in 2020. While nothing is certain, this method will likely survive, as it uses YouTube and is integrated into the new beta UI.

Account Setup

To facilitate and run your sessions through the procedure described below you first need to have a verified Youtube account.

Verification works through a phone number and takes 24 hours.

So do the verification some time in advance.
This is where you find it in the Youtube Creator Studio menu. Click on the camera symbol in the upper bar of your Youtube main page. Select Go live.

If you are already verified, you can continue as described under STEPS. If you are not yet verified, it will bring you to a page explaining the verification process to you:

The verification process looks like this:

When you have entered the verification code the 24 hours waiting period begins. ​

Have a good time waiting. Then continue with the next steps. ​

Steps
1. Go to YouTube and click on your profile image and select “Creator Studio”.​​

2. Click on “LIVE STREAMING” to expand it. This will actually navigate you and load the page, not just expand the accordion section. You will automatically be dropped into “Stream Now” of the live streaming section.

If you are already in the new UI (such as the beta), you won’t see a “LIVE STREAMING” Section. You can also hover over the “Other features” then click “Live Streaming”, which will get you the same place as above (in a new tab).

Click on “Creator Studio Classic” and go back to the old UI and retry this step. This will change the default UI setup you use back to classic. You will have to fill out a “why reverting” form.

3. Click on “Events”.

4. You probably don’t have any scheduled events yet, so let’s create one. Click the “New live event” button in the upper right hand corner.

5. Fill in the form with appropriate information. Don’t worry too much about the details. You can change all information including the title after the session. The “Go live now” button will change once you add a time.

will change to

   a. If it’s a multi session campaign I put the session number in the title, like “(1 of 5)”. If the session is not in English, you might want to put something like ‘[German]’ in front of the title.
   b. I like to add an “End time” but it’s not needed.
   c. In the description I like to include things like:

• ‘This session was organized through the Gauntlet Community’s gaming calendar.’
• Content warnings, which can be edited after you’ve recorded, so while you might not know you’re going to talk about self-harm now… you can update after a recording.
• Where to purchase the product and who created it.
• A short synopsis of what happened. I try to write this after the session (while the video is processing). One, so I can remember what happened (especially when looking at it later trying to prep for the next session). Two, it will help for posting the video to the Gauntlet Blog, or just other advertisement you would like to do.
• I usually add some tags… even though I set my videos not to be findable by YouTube UI… I still do it. You could use this list and copy-paste it as a starting point RPG, TRPG, TTRPG, roleplaying, Tabletop RPG, The Gauntlet, Gauntlet Hangouts, Gauntlet Community, Story Games, Story Game, Indie RPG.

• I change the access to “Unlisted”, because I mostly don’t care about building up my own YouTube presence. But you can leave it as Public (which means others can find and watch your streams and the resulting video and those who have a subscription to your channel will get a notification and can watch you play live - please ensure that all participants have agreed beforehand that they are fine with being live on Youtube) or you can change it to Private (which means no one can watch it). Unlisted means they need a direct link to watch, but it won’t be publicly findable through YouTube UI. Unlisted means I can post a direct link to it, and it can get incorporated into The Gauntlet’s playlist, but folks can’t just search for it or find it through my page. ​
• I leave “Type” as “Quick (using Google Hangouts On Air…”

• There is also an “Advanced” tab for settings. Take a look at it, but I mostly leave those as they are. The only one you may want to consider is the license. Only the Standard YouTube license allows others to make use of your material.

6. You now have an event. You can start it early (or at the time of the event) by clicking the “Start Hangout On Air” button.

7. I like the “Control Room” on the left hand panel which gives the host the ability to mute and adjust the volume of participants.

• Right side gets a panel.

8. Once started the green “Start broadcast” button on the bottom will start the recording, it takes a few seconds once the button is clicked before recording starts.

• You’ll get a pop up. ​

• The dots in the lower left are you current audio output.

9. Click the red “Stop broadcast” button when done, it will take a few seconds for the broadcast to actually stop.

10. The video will now be moved out of your “Live streaming” section and into the “Video Manager section. ​

11. Wait for the video to stop processing. It can take a while. So don’t worry if your video doesn’t appear yet or if the recording time seems much shorter than what you expected. It will eventually be complete and ready to be edited.

At this time you can still click “Edit” and change things like the Title, Description, Tags, and findability. This is when I go in and modify the description with what actually happened in the session and possibly new content warnings. I also typically remove the “#hangoutsonair”, “Hangouts On Air”, and “#hoa” tags, as I personally do not care for them. ​