HowTo Do an OB From Your Laptop

Usually for an OB you'll be using the OB PC in The Rhino. Sometimes, however, The Rhino is totally overkill for your use case - sometimes a single laptop with a mini-mixer and one or two microphones is perfectly fine. This guide will tell you how to set up your laptop for it, and how to conduct the OB.

Things You Will Need

• A laptop (duh)

Note that this guide is written for Windows PCs - it can probably be adapted to work on macOS or Linux but you're on your own there.

• An audio interface (unless you're using a mixer with a built-in one)
• A mixer (not always necessary)

Setting Up The Laptop

This is a bit of a long section, but you only need to do it once.

To do an OB from your laptop, you'll need a piece of software, butt - it stands for "Broadcast Using This Tool" and its acronym makes it hilariously un-Google-able. Track it down and install it.

Once you've got it, crack it open (ha!) and set up the profile. Click the settings button, and under "Servers" click "New". Fill it in with the following details:

Name: whatever
Type: IceCast
Address: dolby.ury.york.ac.uk
Port: 7070
Password: ask your friendly neighbourhood compuneer
IceCast mountpoint: OB-Line (caps matter!)
IceCast user: source

Save it all. While you're at it, head over to the Audio tab and set streaming bitrate to at least 192K. Also, check it's using the right audio input - it should be your mixer or audio interface.

Streaming

Now you're ready to start the stream, whether just to test it all works, or to actually go live! To fire it up, click the play icon in butt (not the record icon - common mistake). After a few seconds the "Stream Time" should start ticking up. To check that everything has gone to plan, go to [1] and check that the OB box at the bottom has lit up. If it has, you're good to go! When the time comes for your OB, just switch the studio (or, more likely, ask Computing to do it) and you're live!