Saturday, April 23, 2016

Ad-Free Viewing for Subs

Ad-Free viewing for subs coming soon for all partner broadcasters on twitch.tv

During the Pax East Twitch town hall they announced a new feature that will be available to all partner broadcasters which will incentivize viewers to subscribe to channels to receive ad-free viewing.

Friday, April 22, 2016

Raid & Hosting guide

How to host or raid another channel on Twitch.tv using simple commands!

To host a channel its pretty simple, go to your chat room from your channel and type /host Channel




Replace Channel with the one you want to host.

If you do this successfully, the channel you are hosting will get a message show up in chat saying "*Channel* is now hosting you for X viewers."

Another way to know if you are currently hosting a channel is to check on your broadcaster dashboard page. It will show a box in the chat window saying, "hosting channel".



If you are receiving a host by many channels and what to know which, you can check this by looking at the dashboard page for the host panel.  Click on the "Host" and a list will show all the channels.



Its recommended not to randomly host others with out permission first.  Ask the broadcaster if they want to be hosted before you trigger it.

Here is a list of pros and cons of hosting.

PROs
  • Great for team building between different channels and different timezones.
  • Team groups can boost members ahead of non teams casters for the gaming category.
  • Can be use to influence other broadcasters for networking.
  • Coupled with loyalty systems, hosting can be turned into a weird legit viewbot boost tactic.

CONs
If you do not have permission before hand and host a channel that didn't want to be hosted they can report you.

Other
Be very aware of casters who use loyalty systems and host your channel. Loyalty channels have a huge amount of viewers who will sit in channels just to collect tokens. These casters know this and use this to influence or in a sense bribe other channels for a vast variety of things.

 Update 11/14/2017

How to raid a twitch.tv channel?

A new command has just been introduced called RAID and is available to be used by all broadcasts on Twitch.

The new command is similar to the /host command, but instead of /host channel name its /raid channel name.



Viewers will see a countdown progress meter to which they can join the raiding of the target channel.


All the PRO's and CON's that were previously listed for hosting apply to raid also, since its basically the same mechanic.

If you want to prevent raids to your channel, they have added the option to do that in the dashboard.

Go to your Dashboard, then click on SETTINGS, then RAIDS under Raid Preferences.



Other additional options:
  • Allow all incoming raids
  • Allow only raids from friends, teammates and followed channels
  • Disable incoming raids

Some update to this posting since some things have changed over the years with how raiding and hosting works on twitch. The commands all still work exactly the same as listed above and twitch has made more UI related tools for both raids and hosting channels.

Both hosting other twitch.tv channels and raiding can be done in your dashboard now via the quick action buttons. The buttons look like this:

raid button

host button 

If you do not have these buttons on the dashboard, you can add them in by clicking on the + button.

add new quick action button

When you click on either the raid channel or host a channel quick action button, it will pop up a window with a search text box that lets you enter in the channel you want to send your viewers.


Whats the difference between raid vs host?

Raiding sends your viewers into the targets channel and chat room. While hosting lets viewers see the targets live stream but does not send viewers into its chat, they stay on your chat room.

Additional settings for raids is available on your settings section via the side menu on the dashboard.

 Click on settings, then Stream and you will get the following options for raids.

  • Allow all raids
  • Only allow raids from friends, teammates, and followed channels
  • Block all raids

raid settings

How do you auto host channels on twitch?

If you want to automatically host channels, twitch has a bunch of options to do that via the settings sections on the creator dashboard. Go to settings, then channel and click on the section called featured content.

auto hosting settings

Then go to the section called "Auto Hosting" from there you will have the following options available.

  • Auto host channels
    • Automatically host channels from your host list when your offline
  • Host team channels
    • Include team channels in your host list
  • Host pre-recorded videos
    • Include channels streaming pre-recorded videos like reruns
  • Hosting priority
    • Host channels by the order they appear in the list
    • Host channels randomly from the list
  • Host list
    • Add and manage your hosting channels

If you have any questions or comments about this guide fill free to post them in the comments section below!
Monday, April 18, 2016

is twitch down

How to Check if Twitch is Down: A Comprehensive Guide

If you're an avid Twitch user, you know how frustrating it can be when the platform experiences outages or other issues. Fortunately, there are several tools available that can help you determine if Twitch is down and when it is likely to be back up. The first place to check for Twitch outages is the official Twitch Support Twitter account at twitter.com/twitchsupport or status.twitch.com. Twitch Support regularly tweets about any issues affecting the platform, including outages and other technical problems. You can also check the Twitch subreddit at reddit.com/r/Twitch/new for user-submitted reports of issues.

In addition to these official resources, there are several third-party websites that track Twitch's status and provide real-time information about outages and other technical issues. One such site is twitchstatus.com, which offers information about Twitch's servers, ingest servers, and chat servers. This site is a great resource for Twitch users who want to stay up-to-date on the platform's status.

Another useful tool for checking Twitch's status is isitdownrightnow.com/twitch.tv.html. This site provides real-time information about Twitch's status, as well as a history of outages and other issues that have occurred in the past. 

By using these tools, you can stay informed about any issues affecting Twitch and take steps to mitigate any disruptions to your streaming or viewing experience. So next time Twitch seems to be down, don't panic - just consult one of these resources to get the information you need.

Twitch App for mobile phones, ipad, tablets and more.

Watch Twitch.tv from your mobile, ipad and tablets via the Twitch app for iOS and Android. Use the following links below to download the app to your iOS or Android enabled device.

Features of the Twitch App
  • Browse channels by game directory
  • Search by channel, people, games 
  • Full chat functionality
  • Watch VODs, broadcasts and highlights
  • Apple Airplay compatibility for iOS
  • Android - Chromecast support
  • Video quality setting 
App Details / Requirements

iOS

Compatibility: Requires iOS 11.4 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Apple TV.
Size: 16.3 MB

Android
Compatibility: Varies by device
Size: Varies by device

Download the Twitch App
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/twitchtv/id460177396  https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/twitchtv/id460177396  http://www.amazon.com/Twitch-Interactive-Inc/dp/B007SOQBCM


Please note the following:

This app is age rated for 17+ as noted on the apple app store. It is listed as free but has in-app purchases such as sub tokens and bits.

It supports the following languages: English, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Vietnamese

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Text to speech chat reader

How to get your very own text to speech chat room reader for Twitch.tv!

First step is to download mIRC and get it all setup for your channel.  Instructions on how to get mIRC working with twitch can be found in a previous post.

Next inside the mIRC client there is a section for speech under sounds.
  • Go to Tools, then options ( shortcut key is alt-o )
  • Then under Sound has a speech section, click on that.
  • Press Enable speech
  • Once that is on, anything in chat should be read back by the tts.

Other options to consider when using the text to speech on twitch.tv.

In the same speech options screen, there is a button called Lexicon. You can use lexicon to filter words to prevent people from trolling the tts. I personally use it to counter troll, so when people type a bad word, instead of saying the bad word it says something funny.


Other things you can also do to prevent spam is to use the ignore command inside mIRC.  If someone posted up a wall of text spam, just go back to the Enable Speech and uncheck it, it will stop the tts, then you can just restart it back up.

Keep in mind, if you plan to use TTS alot, you should consider making a different twitch account for the mIRC and not use your own main twitch username so you can ignore the tts user and not yourself.

Thanks for reading, if you have any questions or comments fill free to address them here in the comments section!
Friday, April 15, 2016

Setting up mIRC

Guide on how to setup mIRC to work with Twitch IRC chat service.

 Step 1.
  •  Download and install mIRC

 Step 2.
  • Launch the program
  • Click on Tools, then Options
  • On the side menu click on Connect
  • Enter your twitch username in lowercase for Nickname


 Step 3.

  • In mIRC Options, click servers
  • Delete all the folders, entries that are listed by default
  • Once the IRC Server list is clear, click ADD
  • For Description enter: Twitch
  • For IRC Server enter: irc.chat.twitch.tv
  • For Ports enter: 80
  • Leave Group blank
  • For Password you need OAuth Token, use TwitchApp to generate it or the Twitch API
  • Press OK 


Step 4.

  • In mIRC Options, click Connect
  • Under that is Options, click on that
  • Then click on Perform Button
  • Check the box that says Enable perform on connect
  • Add in the following inside the text box: raw CAP REQ :twitch.tv/membership
  • Then press OK, then again OK to leave Options window.
 

Step 5.

  • Click on Favorites in the menu bar
  • Then go to Organize Favorites
  • If this has a list of favorites already populated, delete all of them
  • Once you clear the list, press Add
  • Enter the channel you wish to connect, for example I want to join my channels irc, so I will enter #daopa in the channel text box, then press option to Join on connect.
  • Add whatever channels you use to join, with option to auto connect if you prefer it to join like that.

Additional Server Settings (if above settings do not work)

  • Server: irc.chat.twitch.tv
    Ports: 80, 6667
    SSL ports: 443, 6697
  • Server: irc-ws.chat.twitch.tv
    Port: 80
    SSL port: 443