"Clean" Start to YouTube Live Events

Does anyone have any advice on how to “professionally” start streaming to a scheduled YouTube event using a Webcaster X2? I’ve done dozens of livestreams, and they all seem to start with dead air, throat clearing, etc.
I set the event up in advance, then select it as my Publish Destination. I hit Start on the WX2, then go to the Live Control room on YouTube and start the Preview. I use Normal Latency (since I don’t interact with viewers live), so I see 10-30 seconds delay from live to broadcast.
When I hit Start Streaming in the YouTube control room, will my live stream start with what is currently on the YouTube Preview or with what is 10-30 seconds behind it on the WX2 HDMI Out?
Thanks in advance!

I don’t stream to Youtube in particular but I always go live at least 5 mins before the start time and just play some music and display an image or movie from one input and a separate layout.

When you are ready to go live for reals, do a countdown 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 .
2 and 1 are silent only mouthing the words.

On 1 or 0 switch to live cameras and mics on a different layout.

The speaker should be ready to speak before you start the countdown so no need to worry about clearing throats or shuffling papers.
Just 54321… “Hello and welcome to our live stream we have a busy agenda today so lets jump right in.”

You should be setting up at least an hour before and ready to go live 15 mins prior to start because you will be broadcasting 5-10 mins before the start time.
This of course depends on how much you have to setup but I find 1 hour is the minimum.

I appreciate you taking the time to reply. I recently picked up a Roland V-02HD mixer, and need to configure the footswitch to help pull this off. I am planning to do some testing with YouTube, to tighten up the timing and will report back here. Still open to suggestions from any others. Thank you.

Yeah, I also use a Roland V-1HD to switch content live.

Had some time to do some test live stream events in order to tighten up the starts and stops on YouTube. The key to trying to get a handle on this was checking the “Sync to Preview” from the Live Control Room on YouTube. When checked, the live stream starts and stops with what is showing on the Preview window.

Using my Roland V-02HD, what I did was throw a graphic up (with no audio) and wait for it to appear on the Preview. As soon as I saw the graphic in the preview I hit Start Stream. Then I dropped the graphic and went to a live camera. Due to the 10-30 second delay between live and preview, what you end up with is 10-30 seconds of graphic then a clean transition to live.

To decrease the amount of time a graphic appeared before going to a live camera, I tried to switch to a live camera 10 seconds after starting the graphic. I then kept an eye on the preview and hit start as soon as the graphic appears. But, that required taking attention away from an in progress live stream. The safer way to go was what I described above.

The same concepts apply to ending a live stream. I found the safest way to end was to go from live camera to a graphic, then hit Stop Streaming as soon as the graphic appeared in the preview.