Speedify LIVE: Chris “RockNRollGeek” Darbro

Chris Darbro a.k.a. RockNRollGeek is a live broadcasting producer and technical director. Chris is actually an early adopter of Speedify, having witnessed all the phases the service went through.

Find out about the gear and software Chris uses in his job and how to make sure your live stream stays online regardless of the Internet quality. He also has some very interesting takes on the future of live streaming and content creators. Make sure you watch this Speedify Live episode.

Here are our 5 takeaways from our chat with Chris Darbro:

1. Chris has been a long-time Speedify user and having witnessed various iterations of the service, he’s found it to be an essential, easy-to-use tool for livestreaming and just staying online. He’s even built his own Raspberry Pi Speedify router that he’s found to be a reliable IRL streaming tool! 
2. For his own livestream setup he uses a mix of everything: Elgato XL Streamdecks, Black magic cards, Magewell capture cards, Elgato capture cards, along with Nvidia graphics cards and an Intel CPU. Chris also uses Synology for storage servers, and mostly works on Windows. Software-wise he mentions Adobe Creative suite, DaVinci resolve, and VMiX or OBS studio, and Speedify, of course for stability. 
3. When it comes to the “perfect streaming tool” Chris says it all depends on what you’re doing. You need to find the right tool for the right job, both in terms of software and hardware. 
4. According to Chris, the future of streaming will see big streaming platforms invest in more live content, more collaborations between Twitch or YouTube creators and streaming platforms, because the key demographic already gravitates towards online personalities rather than traditional celebrities.
5. Chris generally recommends Streamlabs OBS to people getting started with livestreaming, because it has a lot of built-in features that give a fair bit of production quality to the stream without having to have a lot of technical knowledge. He says that once you know you want to keep going, you can move over to OBS.