I always wondered how Twitch Streams work behind the scenes. I record my YouTube videos using Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) which also is a popular choice among streamers.
Twitch Countdowns
We all know that the more popular streamers start their stream, send out notifications on all their social profiles that they’re going to be live and the viewers slowly but steadily turn on the stream.
If you see a notification and directly stop whatever you’re doing and start watching the stream, the chances are that you’ll see a countdown screen. The countdown tells the viewers how much time to wait until the streamer finally turns on the camera and starts gaming.
Popular Solutions
I was wondering how streamers create and use countdowns like this in their streams. I came across Streamlabs and Streamelements which both provide a rich feature set for streamers.
For professional streamers which already have all their tools set up this is a routine task, and I guess that most successful streamers never think that they need yet another countdown solution.
The Developer’s Solution
But as a software developer, I wanted to see how much time it takes to create a countdown myself. And guess what… it is not that complicated.
I recorded a YouTube video where I explain in detail how I created a .NET console application that creates a countdown and how that countdown can be integrated into OBS to show the countdown on the screen.
I show and explain the code which is necessary to parse the console input arguments, to calculate the time, to write a file which will be loaded into OBS and how everything works together.
The source code is also freely available on GitHub. If you feel inspired, you feel free to experiment with the code.
Feel free to ask questions about the video; please provide some feedback in either the video comments on YouTube or below this article.
