How to Add Overlays in StreamYard (StreamYard Tutorial)

StreamYard overlay tutorial to walk you through using overlays in StreamYard on a livestream.

⏱️Timestamps⏱️
00:00 Start
0:34 Banner overlays
1:17 Customise banner colours
2:17 Overlay section
3:20 Adding an overlay
4:00 Backgrounds in Streamyard

▶️ Related resources and videos▶️
Create your own overlays tutorial: https://youtu.be/05NJExkL_TQ
Purchase Streamyard overlays: https://saranguyenonline.com/streamertemplates
Screenshare in Streamyard: https://youtu.be/gO_9y90OFDM
How to use Streamyard on a mobile device: https://youtu.be/29X8bVJk-LI
StreamYard Review and Demo: https://youtu.be/gZFjFu6bwIg
How to create a countdown timer: https://youtu.be/Et2sxQouTl8
How to create your own overlays: https://youtu.be/05NJExkL_TQ

How to Add Overlays in StreamYard (StreamYard Tutorial) – Video Transcript

Let me show you how to do overlays in StreamYard. I’m going to walk you through everything that you need to know.

I’m Sara Nguyen, and on this channel, I hope you build your business using video on social media with ease. Let me walk you through StreamYard overlays, how it all works. Let’s get right into it. Now, when it comes to overlays in StreamYard, there are a couple of ways that you can do this.

The first way is to go to the banners tab on the top right-hand corner here. And if you click on that, what you get are banners that are technically overlays, right? So if you click on them to show them, they will appear on your live stream.

And if you click off them, they will disappear. And you can simply create a banner by selecting, create a banner at the bottom here, and then adding the text that you want. So whatever, whatever the text is, you can add that as an overlay and then you select add banner.

And then like that you’ve got a series of overlays that you can show, and then you can hide them by clicking on the same banner at the same time. So that’s the first way that you can create overlays in StreamYard using the banners option.

Now, if you want to customise the colour of it, you would go to the brand tab on the right-hand side. So I’m going to click on that there, it’s the third one down. And then where you see brand colour and theme here is where you can choose different colours.

There’s lots of colours in the colour picker to suit what your brand, to suit your mood, whatever you like. And these will change over here. As you can see, it changes the colour of the banners there. So that’s one way that you can customise your live stream with overlays using these banners that you can add really easily without really needing to configure anything.

I use these banners a lot, not just as a lower third, but I use them as prompts when I’m interviewing people. And I have the question display during the live stream so that my guests can see it, I can see it, and obviously the viewers can see it as well.

The second way to use overlays is if you go back to the brand tab and you click on that, you’ll see this section that says overlay. And in this section is where you can add your own overlays, or you can use the StreamYard one. If I go ahead and select the overlay that StreamYard has already uploaded, you can see how it kind of works.

I have the overlay and this appears on top of my video. And basically it’s a graphic that you can design yourself that has a transparent element to it so that you can actually see yourself.

So overlays can be like frames to actually add some visual dynamics to your screen like this. So as you can see that the transparent rectangle in the inside allows you to still see me, or see the camera feed and you can use overlays in so many ways.

You can also use them on part of the screen to have text or to demonstrate a point, or you can also use them and set them up to showcase your products like I’m showing you here right now. So it’s all a matter of creating images that you can then upload because they’ve got a transparent element to them.

To add an overlay, you would simply go to the brand tab, go down to the overlay section, click on this plus icon here and it will prompt you to upload overlay. So click on that. Then you can select the overlay that you want to upload.

And once it’s available, you can simply click on it to display it during your live stream, click on it again to remove it. Or if you want to remove it from this section altogether to tidy things up, you would hover over the overlay and click on the little X icon here.

And this will prompt you to, if you want to delete the overlay or not, and then it will remove it from that section. Now, the last thing I want to talk to you about is kind of related to overlays, and this is backgrounds. So how does backgrounds work?

We’re still in the brand section in StreamYard, and when we scroll down we can see this background section. Now overlays appear in front of the video feed. The background appears behind the video, and you can use this, particularly if you are sharing a screen or if you have a guest and you want to add some colour and dynamic to the live stream.

So I’m sharing my screen at the moment so I can choose another layout setting that allows you to see the background. So at the moment, the screen that I’m sharing is taking up the entire screen. If I select another option like this one here, you can see that the background behind us is all black.

And this is because there’s no background uploaded at the moment. But if I choose another background, you can see how it will change like that. So you can see part of the background, add some colour to the live stream, and you can still see the screen share and me as well.

And it really is a matter of playing with the layout that works for you. So right now, the screen share is quite dominant. And the picture of the video feed is smaller. If I click on this next one, it was switched around.

Depending on the layout that you use, you’ll be able to see different amounts of the background. In terms of the background, how would you actually change it? We’re still in the brand section.

And if we scroll down to background, we can either choose the existing one that StreamYard has set up for us, which is this black one, or we can upload our own to use. And we would do that by clicking on this plus icon. And then this will prompt us to find the background image that we want to use.

Once it’s uploaded it will appear in your background section here, and you can switch between whichever background that you want to use. And to activate it, I would simply click on the background and it would swap it out like that. And if I wanted to change it, I would click on another one.

Or if I wanted to remove a background that I’ve uploaded all together, all I would need to do is hover over it and then click on the little X icon, and that will delete the background from the actual list of backgrounds that I have available. So that basically wraps up the three options that you have with overlays and backgrounds from StreamYard.

You can use the banners in the banner section here that allows you to add text over your live stream and click on and off them. If you go to the brand tab, then you can choose an overlay by uploading it in this section here. And that will once again, appear in the front of your video.

And then you’ve got backgrounds which will appear behind your actual video. If you found this video useful, give me a thumbs up and let me know in the comments, what overlays you’re going to create for your live streams. I’d love to know.

And in the meanwhile, why don’t you check out my StreamYard playlist, or grab a copy of my Facebook Live Cheat Sheets. It’s a super simple guide to get you up and streaming on Facebook live, even if you’ve never hit record before. Check out the links on the screen and I’ll see you in the next video. Bye for now.