Discord is adding video to their conference rooms. This should make live streaming easier.
Discord is expanding its conference rooms, its functionality to Clubhouses or Twitter Spaces, which allow a small group of speakers to broadcast a conversation live to a larger audience. Meeting rooms came about two years ago, back then it was an audio-only feature, but things are changing now with video streams, as well as screen sharing and text chat, of course.
Discord is adding video to its conference rooms
Up to five participants can share their video stream. Someone else can share their screen at the same time. And, as always, no other participant’s audio or video will be streamed unless specifically invited to join the speakers.
And since video uses much more bandwidth than audio, Discord has a number of limitations. All servers with free community features enabled can enable video and screen sharing in meetings with up to 50 people, including hosts. At the same time, Discord reminds that this is twice the view limit for video chat on regular channels. Extended servers can accommodate up to 150 in Level 2 meeting rooms and up to 300 in Level 3.
Text chat, on the other hand, is the same as voice channels. You can select “Show Chat”in the upper right corner of the screen and ask questions or leave comments about what the speakers are discussing. In addition, moderators have the option to allow users with certain roles to share their video or screen with the server.
While waiting for a conference to start, Discord will now also play music in idle mode. If you don’t like it, you can turn it off by pressing the musical note button.
This should make live streaming easier
While Discord users won’t be able to stream video conferences to as many people as possible on a platform like Twitch, this new feature should still be very well received by users. People used the conference rooms for Q&A sessions, fireside chats, live podcast recordings, beatboxing competitions, and more. Today, creators can use this feature for premium gameplay streams if they choose to.
Adding video to all of this gives users more flexibility, and moderators no longer have to fiddle with the “mute”option for many people. This is also very useful for general viewers, as it will now be more difficult to accidentally activate the microphone during a video presentation. Make sure the keyboard shortcut is not used often!