So, I streamed my first Periscope earlier today…and man oh man, that’s a sentence I never imagined typing even a month ago!
You’re supposed to watch (and interact) with ‘scopes live, but the stream is archived over at the Where I Write page. You can check it out below or here.
I learned some things about Periscope on this first outing, some of which are my fault, some of which are problems with the app/service. In the interests of blathering on, here they are:
- For reasons I don’t understand, the microphone cuts out when you swap cameras. I’m not sure why. Only the image should be changing, not the audio. As a result, there are some words cut off in the video. Given that switching back and forth is probably a pretty common thing, given the nature of Periscope, the developers should work on providing a constant audio stream, no matter which camera you’re using. In the future, I’ll pause when I flip cameras.
- Double-tapping the screen to swap cameras doesn’t seem to work. Or at least, it didn’t for me. I had to wait for the UI to change and then tap the swap button instead. Maybe I was tapping wrong or something, but I feel like it’s tough to screw up a double-tap.
- Speaking of cameras… There should be an option to choose your camera before you start streaming. If you want to begin the stream on yourself, there’s no way to do that. You have to start with the back camera and then flip cameras. Ugh.
- Questions from viewers disappear way too quickly. I honestly thought no one was asking any questions, but it turns out they were — they just flew by so fast I didn’t see them. Maybe there should be an option to have questions persist until dismissed by a tap, or maybe they just linger a little longer.
- Vertical video sucks. Seriously. It’s 2015, people. Let us rotate the camera. Gross.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmVuM82aHRE&w=450]