Looking to find a solution for GamingLyfe Network Head Quarters in the eSports capitol of the world Las Vegas Nevada.
At first glance the El Gato Stream Deck seemed like the right solution for the GamingLyfe Headquarters PC stream setup and we were right. GL HQ runs a duel PC stream setup with a pair of each Intel Kaby Lake CPU’s, GTX 1080 TI’s, 3800hz Corsair ram, and 200hz Acer Predator ultra-wide monitors. Each PC faces each other (as seen below) which was the best option for space but made it hard to run a stream by yourself. Granted you could make room on your desk for another keyboard and try and hotkey as many functions as possible but you are still losing tons of functionality. It would be nice to have a video production staff for every stream, wouldn’t it? Queuing your intros, playing your commercials, generating custom alerts, adjusting your volume too perfection… and then we all woke up and bought a Stream Deck.
Before we talk about what a great solution the Stream Deck was for GL let’s look at what the hardware does. The Steam deck is a small device made up of 15 LCD keys boasting the ability to be able to launch 210 different type of actions. You can change scenes, queue videos/audio, adjust volume settings, record, pause your stream, Twitch commands, add visual elements, automated alerts, the list is just endless. The best part for GL was you get a visual confirmation on the actual hardware device once activating a function, this eliminates having to look at the monitor for confirmation. Everything you need to create a professional quality stream is right at your fingertips. Now you have the video production crew you always wanted without the massive cost!
Initially we had a tall task on our hands in migrating our entire production from Xsplit over to the new El Gato Broadcaster software. We decided to run some tests before we started our migration, we ran into a lag issue on our gaming PC when Gsync was activated. Luckily El Gato support is very easy to get a hold of responding quickly helping us get to the bottom of our issue in a timely manner. Luckily a patch was released on August 15th which granted support for Xsplit and solved all our problems! We do love our Xsplit software but to be fair we didn’t get enough time to dive into the El Gato broadcasting software to make a fair assumption, our production was already setup in Xsplit we felt it was the best decision to keep it there. Lag issues were also fixed with this patch everything was running at 100% spot on and looking professional grade.
El Gato really hit the nail on the head with this product whether you are a casual, hardcore, or sponsored streamer there is no replacement at this price point for this kind of functionality. We believe the Stream Deck is a must have for any streaming setup, so suck it up and spend the $149! If you need more information or are ready to make a purchase visit https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/stream-deck. You know what they say right? Look good, feel good!
