search
explicitClick to confirm you are 18+

Minds Streaming and Chat

Jaret ★★★★☆Jul 29, 2023, 4:56:37 PM
thumb_up4thumb_downmore_vert

Good morning, Mindsters.

I will get into the chat shortly, but first, I have read plenty of comments from those that do not seem to know about this new feature, so let me give you the Six W's:

  • Who: You
  • What: can now stream
  • Where: on Minds.com
  • When: since July 26th
  • wHow: thanks to a partnership with Livepeer
  • Why: for the same reason you are here in the first place -- decentralization.

Consider the alternatives -- which aren't alternatives at all, really. Would you rather stream on one of the current major streaming platforms?

Twitch is home to literally the biggest whore on the internet.

And Kick recently signed Amouranth.

 

The blog post announcement from Minds already explains all of the basics of how to set-up a stream, so you can just read it there. I only want to add a few points about this new feature:

  • Streams are not automatically saved -- you have to do that yourself
  • Stream key changes when you stream again
  • Old streams won't show your current stream but instead the "Stream is offline" screen, so don't bother pinning your stream
  • Stream delay is 30-40 seconds
  • End-of-stream delay is 1-2 seconds, so stick around for 30-40 seconds before ending the broadcast or else you'll get cut off
  • No live viewer count
  • No integrated live stream chat

Something can be done about that last one.

 

Adding Chat to Stream

A live chat is the reason why most streamers (and viewers) would want to make (or watch) a stream in the first place. Without streamer interaction, there is little difference between a live stream and a pre-recorded video.

Unfortunately, the Livepeer/Minds stream does not have its own, built-in stream chat. Fortunately, you can use the Minds chat, which means neither the broadcaster nor the viewers need any external accounts.

The Minds chat has been moved under the "... More" pop-up in the sidebar, or you could just bookmark chat.minds.com somewhere.

From there, it is probably best to create a New Room which can be used specifically for your streams, or at least generally for your channel.

Just press the + and give your new room a name. Make it public so that any member can join.

Copy the chat room link and paste it in your stream post whenever you go live on Minds.

For increased interactivity, you can overlay the Minds chat on top of your stream. If you stream with OBS, just use the same chat room link as a Browser source. Use Interact on the new Browser source to log-in to your Minds account in the OBS web page. Then, add a Filter of type Crop/Pad to show only the content of your chat room.

The default CSS is not enough to make the chat transparent, so additional elements must have a transparent background set in the Browser source Properties:

body { background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) !important; margin: 0px auto; }
ol, li, div { background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) !important; }

Because Browser sources in OBS do not support partial transparency, you might have to add a semi-opaque Color Source element behind the chat, e.g. black with 200 Alpha. This will ensure that the chat is legible, no matter what else you are showing on the stream.

Just make sure that the Color Source is below your chat, not on top of it.

Another possibility is to use the styling of the chat to give each individual message an opaque background while removing all other background colors. Replace the previous CSS with the following (and remove the partially transparent Color Source, if you added one):

body, .mx_MatrixChat>:not(.mx_LeftPanel):not(.mx_SpacePanel):not(.mx_ResizeHandle):not(.mx_LeftPanel_outerWrapper) { background-color: transparent !important; }
.mx_EventTile_line { background-color: #15191e; }

Note that the #15191e background color assumes dark mode, i.e. correct mode.

Unwanted separators (such as the date separator or the last read line) can be removed by adding the following lines, if you do not want to see these:

.mx_DateSeparator { display: none; margin: 0px; border: 0px; padding: 0px; }
hr { display: none; }

If having the opaque chat is too obtrusive for your stream, you can use CSS to automatically hide the chat messages after a short period of time:

.mx_EventTile { animation: 100s ease 0s normal forwards 1 fadeout; }
@keyframes fadeout { 0% { opacity:1; } 90% { opacity:1;} 100% { opacity:0; } }

By adding the above CSS, chat messages will remain visible for ninety seconds (90% of the total time of one hundred seconds) and then slowly fade away. (For whatever reason, partial transparency works here, although it doesn't work for backgrounds.)

 

There is certainly a lot more customization you could do to your chat, but this is more than an adequate way to integrate chat into your Minds streams. You do not have to rely on StreamElements or the like to have similar functionality.

Here is one finally CSS block with everything I have been using on stream -- which is the disappearing messages inside of opaque blocks -- just so you don't have to frankenstein the multiple code blocks above together:

body, .mx_MatrixChat>:not(.mx_LeftPanel):not(.mx_SpacePanel):not(.mx_ResizeHandle):not(.mx_LeftPanel_outerWrapper) { background-color: transparent !important; }
.mx_EventTile_line { background-color: #15191e; border: 0px; }
.mx_DateSeparator { display: none; margin: 0px; border: 0px; padding: 0px; }
hr { display: none; }
.mx_EventTile { animation: 100s ease 0s normal forwards 1 fadeout; }
@keyframes fadeout { 0% { opacity:1; } 90% { opacity:1;} 100% { opacity:0; } }
publicattribution-cc