Tips and tricks for streaming quizzes

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Streaming your QuizXpress quizzes

There are several ways to stream your quizzes with QuizXpress, from simple screen sharing to advanced studio like setups. In this forum topic we invite you to discuss the different options and help each other with issues.

First of all there are a few things to consider:

As a company we will try to help you where we can but please be aware that the streaming solution itself is not part of QuizXpress and thus some support may need to be obtained from other parties. Also note that some tech skills may be required to do this successfully. Whatever streaming service you are going to use, there will always be a trade-off between quality and latency. For example when using Zoom you will have very low latency due to the nature of their solution but for screen sharing, don't expect a crisp full HD image for your clients when the screen is showing a video or a minigame. That would require a lot of bandwidth and processing power on their side. However, full HD on YouTube may work but you will get at least a 5 seconds delay (latency) on your stream. Getting both low latency AND high quality is possible but probably only with dedicated and very expensive services.

Lets get practical, first of all you will need a computer that is up to the task. What that means depends on what you aim for. When running Zoom and simply sharing your screen on 720p may work on a regular laptop. However, running OBS or VMix with complex scenes may require a more powerful system with a dedicated graphics card. So be prepared for that.

Obviously, streaming needs a solid and stable internet connection with enough bandwidth. What 'enough' means depends on the streaming platform and the stream video resolution (quality). You can find out about your internet speed by running a speed test from your browser. If possible, always connect your computer with a cable to your router rather then using a Wi-Fi connection. Cabled connections are more stable by nature.

There are different streaming platforms such as Zoom, YouTube Live, Vimeo, Twitch, Facebook Live and various commercial streaming providers where you can purchase private stream capacity for your events. Each platform has different aspects, requirements and pros and cons.

Players can participate in your online quiz using our buzzerpad website or by using our mobile Smart Buzzer app. The mobile app has more capabilities such as extended input types (numeric, text, first letter) but requires your players to install the app on their device. The buzzerpad website runs in any standard web browser. So think about what you want to use as it also impacts the quiz writing.

There are several ways to get QuizXpress visible on your stream. Here are a few to give you an idea:

• Simply share your screen with QuizXpress in a Zoom session.
• Use OBS/VMIX to create a scene combining your web cam and QuizXpress and feed that to your YouTube Live stream.
• Use OBS to compose various scenes and feed OBS output into Zoom using the Virtual Camera source
• Take the HDMI output from your laptop running QuizXpress, feed that into a video mixer, feeding that into your stream.

Its very important to keep in mind that all live stream platforms have latency. This means that the video images arrive at the viewer with a few seconds delay. This delay may vary between 0.5 sec (for example with Zoom) to even 20 seconds (Vimeo). Longer latency usually means you can provide a stream with higher quality but the long delay may be confusing to your players. For example, when a stream has 10 seconds latency, the players will be looking at a countdown clock of 10 sec while in reality the question is already closed. So when they provide an answer in those last 10 seconds, this answer will be ignored. QuizXpress communication with the mobile keypad itself has very low latency and works almost realtime. This has to be communicated with your audience. Fortunately there are some options in QuizXpress to deal with this.

Some tips:

• To find out the capacity of your internet connection always do an internet speedtest to prevent surprises. Just Google for 'Google Speedtest' to get to the speedtest built into Chrome Browser
• When possible always use a cable to connect to your router.
• When sharing QuizXpress always share your entire screen and not just the QuizXpress window or your minigames may not work.
• Inform your players about the latency to make sure they answer in time
• Preferably do not use decreasing points. As different players may have different latency on there stream this would be unfair.
• Use the option in QuizXpress to send a message to players when they are responding too late. This option is available in Director, Mobile tab, Settings button
• QuizXpress can compensate for the stream latency by delaying commands sent to the app. This does however not resolve the fact that players need to take stream latency into account at the end of the question. On the Mobile Settings dialog in Director there is a slider to delay all data sent to the mobile keypads so they behave more in sync with the stream.
• When you have a very high latency (e.g. 20 seconds) you can also opt for setting the countdown time of your questions to 0. In this case there will be no countdown timer and the host can decide when to close the question manually (for example when you see no more votes coming in).

We have written an extensive document about streaming quizzes with OBS. You can find it here:
https://www.quizxpress.com/files/Online ... 0Guide.pdf

To read about all the possibilities in the QuizXpress Mobile platform read this:
https://www.quizxpress.com/files/QuizXp ... upport.pdf

A document about monetizing your online quizzes with QuizXpress e-ticket support can be found here:
https://www.quizxpress.com/files/Tickets.pdf

QuizXpress can help dealing with stream latency, read about it here:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=36

OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) can be downloaded for free from here:
https://obsproject.com/

You can find the QuizXpress Smart Buzzer App here:
For Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... l=nl&gl=US
For iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quizxpres ... 1481468798

Got any questions or tips for others, please add below.

Happy streaming!