To those who were able to stop by our official debut on Twitch.TV, thank you so much! We hope you enjoyed what you watched.

We also hope that you were also impressed by the level of seemingly professional video quality that you saw. I can’t speak for the level of video game talent and all that, but as far as progress towards a legitimately entertaining video game stream goes, I think we have made leaps and bounds from what we used to be able to offer. With 720p HD, commentary, picture-in-picture, and more, we are looking forward to providing you with more enjoyable content. Of course, things can be improved, so while we would really appreciate hearing your feedback about last night, recommendations for catering the show more to you are certainly welcome.

If you couldn’t make last night’s livestream, don’t worry! We archived all of what we did and made highlights out of the best matches from the tournament. Below, you’ll find the full replay of the draft tournament, so you are able to see the kind of improved quality that we’re talking about!

Playlist of highlighted matches

With our debut stream on Twitch behind us, I cannot help but reflect on it. Livestream’s services have served us well for quite some time, but I am truly considering making this migration to Twitch. I don’t want to have to deal with web-based streaming clients or programs that just suck up computer resources like Procaster anymore. The reason we moved to Livestream in the first place was that the stream’s chat allowed for anyone to contribute by typing – a feature that the previous Stickam service changed and neglected. However, streaming video has changed drastically since then. In this day in age, it is all about the services a website can offer. While Twitch does seem to require user registration in order to use the chat room, the features that Twitch offers are rather astounding, even compared to Livestream.

For those that do not know, Twitch.TV is becoming the place for gamers. Broadcasters can specify which games they are playing, which allows for users to search for channels that specify the game they’re looking for. Additionally, users can subscribe to channels, much like YouTube, and receive text notifications when their followed channels go live, among other alerts. However, I have been impressed by Twitch’s compatibility with YouTube the most. Twitch saves broadcasters’ most recent live sessions for those broadcasters to review and edit. From there, broadcasters are able to trim highlights of the best moments from the stream, like what we did with those tournament matches, and upload them to YouTube if they wish. This is something that simply was not possible on Livestream, as it would have required a lot of video editing work on our end. Simply, this has terrific potential for our YouTube content.

That said, this Twitch migration is not official just yet. I still want to go through a few more streams, including podcast recordings (imagine the highlight potential there!) before making that decision. However, I have been nothing short of impressed so far with this current setup. I’d like to think you all are as well.

I would recommend signing up for a Twitch account now and then subscribing to our channel, if you have not already. For developing news on this, future broadcasts, and more…all I can say is “stay tuned.”

As the school year winds down (for those in college, at least – high school SMYNjas, you’ll get there!), this summer break means a great deal to me. My course work for grad school is complete and I will soon determine a topic for my documentary thesis, which will lead me on the track to graduation in December. More importantly for the members of the SMYN community, however, this is the first full summer of the SMYN Network. As we know from years past, when SMYNjas have free time during the summer, they can accomplish some great things.

We continue to strive for improvements to our website, especially for a network that still does not make any money. Our front page is currently in the works of a facelift and we will be announcing a newer, more critical aspect to the SMYN Network experience soon. While I am excited to discuss that with those of you who do not already know about it, that is not what I am writing about today. In fact, I still can’t believe this worked out as well as it did.

Sure, we continue to have podcast streams every couple weeks or so, but that’s all about the audio, so the video portion is basic. We even have had streams of games in the past, but we would seem to keep running into problems. Frame rate issues, complex setups, issues with picture-in-picture, low video quality – it never seemed to work out just right. Fortunately, when you work a full-time corporate job outside of web-based projects, you have the budget to purchase devices and services that cater to your wants.

SMYNjas, I present to you all a first look at the future of our 720p HD, professional streams!

Livestream video replay of our final test

Now, this is just a starting point. Things can always be tweaked and improved. For now, we expect to continue broadcasting on our Livestream account because of chat flexibility, but TwitchTV is an available option, should that fail us. Still, this is a solution that fixes all of the aforementioned problems, with high quality video that doesn’t drop frames in a clean picture-in-picture design. For those wishing to emulate this, it’s amazing what a Hauppauge HD PVR 2 and an XSplit license can do. That said, we expect to have many gaming streams this summer and beyond, including the biggest anniversary event in July that we have ever planned! Stay tuned for details.

Anyway, from gaming streams to site/network improvements, we’re already starting to think about how we can make the most of our summer. Here at the SMYN Network though, we take the contributions of our fans very seriously. So, as the weather starts to get warmer, we have a question for you…

How will you contribute to the SMYNja community this summer?