back in march of 2017 elgato released the stream deck an utterly unique 15 key
keypad with screens on each key designed for live streaming it's got integration
with obs twitch twitter Windows elgatos
and products and in august 2017 they added xsplit allowing for us to finally
use the stream deck for our weekly podcast the WAN Show but i rarely stream
so why is my twitter feed full of requests to review this thing i'll tell
you why because they know i don't care what anything was designed to do
i care about what it can do and so as the king of macros i'll be looking at
this product from two angles its intended use and how i use it
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opening up the stream deck software for the first time you'll be greeted by a
bunch of actions on the right just drag them onto the buttons on the left try
them out in real life and they all pretty much work exactly as you might
expect you can control your twitch chat post pre-written messages on twitter
change scenes sources and mics in obs and xsplit take screenshots record your
screen and even record the last x minutes retroactively if you also have
an elgato capture card sweet and there's a whole lot more but you might be
thinking wait taryn can't we already do all that stuff using keyboard shortcuts
well no not all of it for one thing keyboard shortcuts aren't always easy to
remember and depending on your game they can end up conflicting with other
commands furthermore because of the magic of API integrations it can even do
things like toggling slow mode in twitch chat
without you having to manually alt tab to the chat window and position your
cursor and then alt tab back to where you were so the stream deck just makes
it a lot easier to execute these commands when you're live streaming a
game or whatever else and i was also pretty impressed by the ease of the
setup and configuration process but let's go deeper what if 15 actions isn't
enough for you fear not you can put actions in folders to fit up to
actions onto a single stream deck wait did i say 210 i mean unlimited a recent
update allows you to nest folders inside of other folders
dog anyway what's the stream deck like to use while streaming not sure what to
tell you without sounding repetitive assuming you've set everything up
correctly it works exactly as you'd expect also the automatic dimming of
inactive scenes and sources makes it really easy to tell what's going on just
by glancing at the stream deck it just works
so for serious streamers the value is pretty clear and that's been thoroughly
covered by people who are a lot more into that scene with that said it
wouldn't be a taran video without a list of complaints and suggestions so here we
go the current gui doesn't make it obvious that you can right-click here to
get more options the web-based image creator is cool but it requires you to
save an image onto your computer before you can put it onto the stream deck
which adds an extra step the integrated cord is too short the concave keycaps
can cause reflections making the screens hard to read there's significant
parallax on the keys which combined with the stand's limited adjustability means
that finding a good viewing angle can be quite difficult
the stand flops around when you pick it up and it also doesn't really work in
portrait mode which is also not supported in the software one of my
units suffered from image retention which elgato insists is rare having
never been a hardware issue but i still wish there was an automatic sleep mode i
wish we had options for font size color and position and simple background
colors on the keys i wish i could dynamically change a key's image and
function based upon say an ini file
somewhere as controlled by a script of my own making i wish that multiple
stream decks per computer were supported and i wish that gifs were supported even
though it would mostly just be used for fun but despite all this i still really
like the stream deck and i've been using it daily at work for several months now
but not for twitch streaming i use it for video editing and folder navigation
you may have seen my diy 87 macro keyboard video a while ago there have
been several developments since then and i have more macro keys on my desk than
ever before so the stream deck fits in perfectly it's Windows integration means
that you can assign websites hotkeys and even the direct opening of programs
scripts or files an extremely powerful feature in the right hands
and these are the right hands wink so after painstakingly
restructuring all of my autohotkey scripts to work in such a way that
individual functions with parameters could be launched directly from single
keys on the stream deck i was able to consolidate my peripherals from this
to this and all of the code for that is on my github linked below by the way i
only did it that way because i literally ran out of key combinations but you can
probably just use the hotkey command and have that trigger a script that's a lot
more simple now if 150 dollars sounds
too expensive and you don't think you need all these features you certainly
could create a poor man's stream deck by binding some
keyboard shortcuts onto a decent numpad like this one and you could use auto
hotkey for application directing and or detection you could also add lua macros
or interception to make it independent from the normal numpad
and then you could print out little images onto envelope stamps cut them out
and paste them onto the keys you'd end up with something that looks like this
and for only 17 but it's a real pain to get all of that
working so while it is more expensive i'd definitely consider the stream deck
worthwhile for productivity freaks you guys know who you are and serious
streamers alike i still wish it supported gifs though
but you know what else doesn't support gifs the massdrop exclusive sennheiser
hd 6x headphones currently available for
only 200 with free shipping to the usa these are based on the sennheiser hd
650s which are still widely considered to be the best headphones under a
thousand dollars by the audiophile community they sound smooth and laid
back with balanced mid-range and a natural sounding bass
sorry i mean bass there have been no adjustments to the sound signature from
the hd 650 to the hd6xx the visual aesthetic has been updated to
a deep midnight blue with black name plates they've got soft ear pads with
elliptical ear cups that follow the ear and a detachable six foot cable so go
check them out on mass drop at the link below thanks for watching give the video a
like dislike get subscribed get belled or don't whatever you can buy the stream
deck on amazon if you want also check out our merch store and community forum
we have so many things let's see i think i have a macro for ending the