Happy Friday! Time to round up the best content the Meld community has been putting out and watching this week.
Share your clutch moments, hilarious stream fails, insane highlights, heartwarming community clips, or just something you couldn't stop rewatching... drop it here!

How to participate:

• Share a clip or piece of content you loved this week.
• Tell us why it's worth watching. Hype it up!
• It can be your own content or someone else's.
• React to other people's clips, upvote, & comment.

A few things to keep in mind:

• Keep it related to streaming, gaming, or the Meld community.
• Be hype, be kind, and lift each other up.
• No dropping links with zero context.

Can it be done? If so, and how?

Has anyone else had alerts replay when switching scenes?

I’ve been dealing with this for a couple of weeks and I cannot figure out what’s triggering it. For example, if I’m in my Just Chatting scene and someone follows, the alert plays like normal. But then when I switch over to my Gameplay scene, the same alert plays again.

I’m not sure if I set something up wrong or if this is a bug, but it’s starting to drive me a little insane. Has anyone found a fix for this?

I've been streaming for a while but I'm new to meld and I'm curious what tips would you give to a new meld streamer? What hacks or tricks do you think more streamers should know about meld?

I saw that Twitch added custom badges and now I really want to reward my viewers with one. I'm thinking of a charity stream event next month and it would be neat to have a custom badge for those who show up.

Does anyone have any ideas what they're going to do?

This one has a lot of information so we'll start with:

TL;DR: A federal law that protects people from having private or fake intimate images shared without their permission just hit its big deadline today, May 19, 2026. Twitch and Kick both have to follow it. Below is what it means for you in plain English.

What is the Take It Down Act?

Think of it like this. Someone takes a private photo or video of you, or uses AI to create a fake one that looks like you, and posts it online without your permission. Until recently, getting that content taken down was a nightmare. Platforms could ignore your requests.

That changed when the TAKE IT DOWN Act was signed into law on May 19, 2025. The name is actually an acronym that stands for Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks. It's a law that forces websites to remove non-consensual intimate images, also called NCII, fast.

What is NCII?

NCII stands for non-consensual intimate imagery. It covers two main types of content:
Real images or videos of someone in an intimate or sexual situation that were shared without their permission.

AI-generated fakes such as deepfakes, where someone uses artificial intelligence to put a real person's face or likeness into sexual content they never actually took part in.

The law makes it illegal for anyone to publish, or even threaten to publish, this kind of content using any online service.

Why Should Streams Care?

Because streaming platforms are directly covered by this law. A covered platform is defined as any website or app that serves the public and primarily provides a forum for user-generated content, which includes things like messages, videos, images, games, and audio files.

Twitch and Kick both fit that description. Every clip, VOD, and piece of chat content qualifies as user-generated. That means both platforms have legal obligations they have to meet.

The 48-Hour Rule

This is important! Once someone submits a valid removal request, platforms must take down the content and make reasonable efforts to find and remove any identical copies, all within a 48 hour window.

Before this law, platforms could take days, weeks, and even months to act on reports like this. Sometimes they wouldn't act on them at all. Now there is a hard deadline with real consequences for ignoring it.

What Twitch is Doing

Twitch includes a clear reporting process, a system to handle and act on verified requests within 48 hours, and policies that specifically cover AI-generated deepfakes of real people, not just real footage.

You can read more from Twitch's own Safety Center here.

What Kick is Doing

Kick has also published guidance in their Help Center covering NCII and their Take It Down Act compliance. Even though Kick has historically had a more relaxed approach to content compared to Twitch, this law applies to them in the same way. There is no platform that gets to opt out of federal law, regardless of how it markets itself to streamers.

Real Consequences for Real People

This is not just about platforms. Individual people can face serious penalties too.

Anyone who is found guilty of knowingly publishing or threatening to share non-consensual intimate imagery can face prison time.

One thing a lot of people do not realize: giving consent to create an image is not the same as giving consent to share it. Just because someone agreed to something being recorded or photographed does not mean they agreed for it to be posted online.

Now that we got that out of the way let's move on to....

How This Actually Benefits YOU as a Content Creator

This is the part that we don't talk about enough. Most of the coverage around this law focuses on the legal obligations placed on platforms. But there are real, direct benefits for creators!

This means that your face and likeness are protected. AI tools have made it easy to create fake content using a real person's face. As a streamer, your face can be on camera constantly (if you're using a camera). This law gives you a legal path to get undesirable content removed fast.

Deepfake content of a streamer can do real damage to their reputation, ruin relationships with sponsors, and be detrimental to the growth of a streamer's channel. Having a fast removal process means less time that damaging content is live and searchable, helping to protect you and your brand.

Bookmark the reporting pages on Twitch and Kick so you know where to go if you ever need them. Submit a verified removal request to the platform directly and remember they are legally required to act within 48 hours.

So as the title states i am coming over. But I need the ability to send the program view to a seperate monitor like we can in ecamm live and OBS. Is there a way to do this?

This question comes up constantly, and honestly the recommendations you see online are all over the place because most of them are outdated or written by people with a preference baked in. Let me break this down as clearly as possible.

The short answer first

These three tools are solving different problems for different types of streamers. The "best" one depends entirely on where you are in your streaming journey and what you actually need from your setup.

OBS Studio

OBS is the gold standard for a reason. It is free, open source, and extraordinarily powerful. If you want total control over every encoding setting, scene layout, and plugin integration, OBS gives you that.

The trade-off is the learning curve. OBS was built for people who are comfortable digging into settings, troubleshooting bitrate issues, and figuring things out themselves. There is no hand-holding, and the interface has not changed much over the years. For experienced streamers or anyone technical, this is a feature, not a bug.

Best for: Experienced streamers, technical users, anyone who wants maximum control and does not mind the setup process.

Streamlabs

Streamlabs took OBS as a base and layered a more polished UI on top of it, along with built-in alert overlays, themes, and monetization tools. For a long time, it was the go-to recommendation for beginners because it made streaming feel more approachable right out of the box.

The downsides that come up repeatedly in communities like this one: it runs heavier on system resources, some features are locked behind a subscription, and it has had a complicated history with the OBS community around how it used the OBS brand.

Best for: Streamers who want alerts and overlays built in without a lot of setup, and who have a mid to high-end PC.

Meld Studio (newer generation of streaming tools)

Meld sits in an interesting spot because it genuinely works well across the experience spectrum, which is not something you can say about OBS or Streamlabs.

For beginners, the setup process is fast and straightforward. You are not hunting through menus, decoding encoder settings, or watching a 45-minute YouTube tutorial just to go live for the first time. Meld handles a lot of the technical decisions in the background so you can focus on actually streaming.

For more advanced creators, the value shifts. Instead of spending mental energy managing the technical back and forth of your setup, you get that time back to put into your content, your presentation, and growing your audience. The tool gets out of your way.

The production quality you can achieve with Meld also does not require you to be a technical expert to unlock it. Things that would take significant configuration in OBS or a paid upgrade in Streamlabs tend to just work, which matters more than people realize once they are a few months into streaming and tired of troubleshooting.

The honest pitch is this: Meld removes friction without removing capability. Whether you are setting up your first stream or you have been at this for years and want a cleaner workflow, it scales with you in a way the older tools were not really designed to do.

Best for: Beginners who want to hit the ground running, intermediate and advanced streamers who are tired of their setup getting in the way of their content.

The real question to ask yourself

Before picking a tool, ask yourself these questions:

1. How much time do you want to spend on the technical side of your setup?
2. What does your hardware situation look like?

If you are solo with a strong PC and enjoy the technical side, OBS is hard to beat. If you want something more turnkey with built-in alerts, Streamlabs gets you there faster. If you just want a modern tool that does not require a manual and has everything built directly in, Meld is worth a serious look.

Happy to answer specific questions in the comments. The "which one is better" debate usually ends the moment someone gets clear on what they actually need.

A note on transparency: This post is from the Meld team. We obviously think our tool is great, but the breakdown above is as honest as we can make it. The right tool really does depend on your situation.

My mic picks up my keyboard clacking, fan noise, and my ac. I want to suppress all of that without sounding weird and robotic. Every filter chain I've tried either leaves background noise in or makes my voice sound chopped and metallic when I get excited.

What's actually working in 2026? RNNoise inside OBS is free and a lot of people swear by it and I was wondering if Meld had something like it. What does your full filter chain look like for a clean voice? Order, settings, attack and release values if you have them. The goal is no fan or keyboard, but my voice still sounds like a human when I yell in games.

I keep seeing all these people on twitter talking about streamelements shutting down. I remember them raising money a couple months ago which feels like that was the beginning of the end. Do you think they will actually shut down or do you think they are going to get bought out? Also who do you think will buy them out? I wonder if meld thought about it at all

Just upgraded to a dual monitor setup and I want one screen to be my game and the other to be everything stream related. Chat, meld, alerts, music, Discord, the works. The problem is every time I add a second display it either gets captured by my display capture or my preview window starts mirroring across both screens.

What's the cleanest way to set up a second monitor as a stream control surface that no one sees on stream? Do you use window capture for your game so the second screen is invisible by default? Some kind of virtual desktop trick? Stream Deck plus a tablet running chat?

What does your second monitor look like during a stream?

So ive been streaming with meld for a few months with no issues, but recently im getting real bad screen tearing, just on twitch's end my game looks fine and my screen on meld looks fine, but its happening only sometimes, sometimes i can stream marvel rivals fine and sometimes my chat can't even see

I have a pretty good pc I think, pretty good wifi, usually I can stream whatever I want with no issues, and sometimes it looks like this:

Screen Tearing Clip

doesn't matter what the game is or anything

https://preview.redd.it/1wrav6akx71h1.png?width=574&format=png&auto=webp&s=8a4836f0ee7eb7bb1591c83d325390cf5d0bda4e

So I've been streaming with Meld for a while now and I keep going back and forth on this. Some nights I'll hop on for like 90 minutes and feel like it was a really good stream with lots of back and forth with chat, lots of interaction and just a great time. Other nights I'll do anywhere from 4 to 6 hours and wonder if anyone is even watching after the first hour.

So the short answer is that I learned session length matters less than retention for me personally. A 90 minute stream where viewers are hanging out will be better than a 4 hour stream where it seemed like most of my viewers left early.

But also with that being said, longer sessions do give you more surface area. I think I saw somewhere that a 4 hour stream is the sweet spot because then you're not going for too long but long enough that your community and new viewers can find you. Like it increases your chances of getting someone new watching.

Shorter streams with higher engagement give you more clipped moments I feel and then you can take that time you were going to spend streaming a game and instead edit and post those clips. Plus if the stream is short enough then downloading the VOD doesn't bog down your pc. I know I could record while streaming but I don't like doing that it's just not for me I would rather highlight and download highlights or grab the whole VOD if it's small enough and turn it into clips and youtube content. I'm still learning youtube long form videos though so that's a work in progress. If anyone has advice for youtube I am all ears

So what works for everyone else? I'm curious if you find shorter streams better or if you just like to stream for like 9 hours a day lol

Hey so I stream off and on but want to be more consistent with it. I hover around 6-10 viewers depending on the day. I'm still working on building a community but I don't know if there is any realistic path to making any money at this size or if monetization is basically just not in my wheelhouse until I get bigger.

I am a Twitch affiliate so I'm in that program and get subs and bits occasionally but I know money is tight for a lot of people in this economy so I don't wanna push viewers too hard. Also I have streamer friends who sub to me and I sub back and it feels like we're all just wasting money and giving 50% of it to Twitch, but we want to show each other support and be able to watch without ads and use each others emotes. (these are real friends not any follow 4 follow sub 4 sub bs btw)

I know people use patreon and have merch but those all feel like things that only work once you have a big audience who wanna rep your brand. But maybe I'm wrong?

Guess what I'm getting at is I wanna know how do you make money and at what viewer count did you start really seeing any change to this? How do you get sponsorships and make money if its not thru Twitch?

Also I'm not looking to get rich and leave my job just get some extra money that can be used to get better streaming gear and buy games with. Maybe even some money to put into giveaways.

wondering if im doing something wrong - everytime i hit go live, its goes to twitch and kick but youtube doesnt do anything. if i logout and log in it works but i have to do that everytime. not sure what wrong?

I've been loving Meld Studio the second I started using it. The ease of use is what made me want to give it a try. Everything is simple enough to find and adjust. Therefore, there are a few feature request that I hope will be integrated. What do you want to see added?

* AV1 encoder

* Custom canvas resolutions

* Global hotkeys

i run dual pc i have a go xlr and gc7 that i use for the artiswar 7.1 surround tune for gameaudio on cod how do i make it where i can hear the tune on my gaming pc but my stream heres normal audio threw obs on my streaming pc