Edgy Veg turns up the heat on their book launch with a live video stream

These YouTube creators find that a simple, reliable live streaming encoder lets them focus on the fun stuff (content) instead of the challenges of technology.

Edgy Veg is a YouTube channel dedicated to teaching people to make delicious, carnivore-approved vegan recipes that you “actually want to eat”. Candice Hutchings and James Aita, the dynamic pair who run this channel, recently published a cookbook of their favourite recipes and fun food facts. For the launch of their book, they wanted an exceptional way to share their excitement and interact and with their quarter million subscribers.

Conveying excitement with a live stream

As Candice explains, they wanted to talk to their subscribers without the normal edited format. “Being genuinely excited without a filter, without editing, was really important to us.” They had tried live streaming in the past, but found it often came with problems. Using their mobile phones, they found the results were poor. And with a more complicated encoder, they spent two days getting the setup right, but despite all their efforts they were unable to get audio and video sync.

Webcaster X2: the simple, reliable live streaming solution

James said they heard about Webcaster X2 from some friends: “We actually had it recommended from some other YouTuber friends who said, ‘This is the device that you need.’ It was a total gamechanger for us.”

With Webcaster X2, the Edgy Veg hosts successfully live streamed their book launch and met their goals of focusing their energy out to their audience instead of worrying about the technology. “We needed something really, really reliable and that we knew wasn’t going to cause problems in the middle of our show,” explains James. “Webcaster X2 was everything that people said it was. It’s only device we needed.”

See how it was done

For the book launch live stream to YouTube, Candice and James connected a shotgun mic via XLR to a Canon C300 set up with a 50 mm prime lens. They connected the Canon to Webcaster X2 with an HDMI cable that brought both audio and video to the encoder. A small external monitor was connected to the Webcaster X2 HDMI OUT port for configuration and monitoring by a friend during the live show.

A few days before their event, they set up and tested Webcaster X2 for the first time. “All we needed was a wired Internet connection. We connected it to our account and did a dry run test. It worked great!”, says James. Also in the days before the launch, they created their event on YouTube and shared the YouTube link to build their audience. On the day of the show, they configured Webcaster X2 to stream to that particular event and at the designated time, went live with just one click.

Let content creators focus on what they do best

Compared with the other streaming solutions they tried, Candice and James found the simplicity of Webcaster X2 is its true appeal. “We’ve tried live streams a bunch of different ways, none of them performed the way that we wanted. Webcaster X2 was even easier than I thought it was going to be. Plug and play, and away you go,” said James.

Candice, points out that Webcaster X2 gave them the ability to enjoy the moment rather than focusing on the implementation details of the live stream. “You lose the spontaneity of a live stream if you have to set up like 5 different things to get there.” With the focus on the content creators instead of the technology needed to create the high quality live stream, Candice and James were able to share their excitement with their subscribers, answer questions from the live chat, and generally have a really successful launch event. “We had no technical problems today, at all. It was great!”

Thank you Candice and James for sharing the behind-the-scenes details of your Edgy Veg book launch with us. We look forward to more live streams on your channel!