Swim meets are hard to follow on a stream. Eight swimmers in caps and goggles look the same from the stands, races finish in under a minute, and a meet can run dozens of heats. What makes a swim stream watchable is knowing who is in which lane and seeing the times and places the moment the heat ends. This guide covers where to put the camera, how to load the meet program, how to put lane names in the water and how to keep results and team standings on screen.
Before the meet: permission and the pool deck
If it's a school meet, confirm streaming rights with your athletic director or state association first. Our guide to high school streaming rights covers what to ask. For club meets, ask the meet director or host team.
Then talk to the meet referee about the deck. Many meets limit where cameras and crew can stand, especially behind the blocks during starts, and flash is generally not allowed at starts. Agree on your camera spot and your cable run before warmups. A few pool-specific cautions:
- Water and power. Keep laptops, power strips and cable joins well away from the pool edge and off the wet deck. Tape cables down where officials and swimmers walk.
- Humidity and heat. Natatoriums are warm and damp. Lenses fog when you bring a cold camera in from the parking lot, so unpack 30 minutes early. Laptops and phones run hot here, so give them airflow.
- Locker room areas. Never point a camera toward locker room doors or changing areas, and check the host's photo policy for swimmers.
Where to put the camera
The best single angle is high on the side of the pool, near the finish end. From there you see every lane, the start and, most importantly, the touch at the wall. A bleacher top row or a balcony works well. If you can only get the end of the pool, shoot from behind the finish end, looking down the lanes, but stay out of the officials' working area.
- Lock the camera. Don't pan or zoom during the meet. A fixed, wide shot of the whole pool is what makes in-pool lane names work (more on that below).
- Set exposure manually. Pool water reflects overhead lights, and auto exposure will pump every time swimmers churn the surface.
- Audio: natatoriums echo badly. Put the announcer on a headset mic close to the mouth, and ask for a feed from the PA if the meet has one. The start beep and the crowd near the finish are the sounds worth keeping.
Import the meet program
ScoreCastr has a swimming dashboard that loads the events, heats and lane entries from the meet program file, so nobody types every swimmer by hand. Ask the meet director for an export from their meet management software. ScoreCastr imports:
| Format | File types | Common sources |
|---|---|---|
| SDIF | .sd3, .cl2 | Hy-Tek, Meet Maestro, Swimmingly, TeamUnify |
| Hy-Tek | .hy3 | Hy-Tek |
| Lenex | .lxf, .lef | Splash, Swimify |
| CSV | ScoreCastr template | Any spreadsheet, for small meets |
Entries change on meet day: scratches, deck entries, reseeded heats. Get an updated file from the meet director before the session starts and import it again. Re-importing keeps the results you've already entered, so you can do this between sessions without losing anything.
Set the lane count to match the pool. The dashboard supports 6, 8 or 10 lanes.
Draw lane names in the pool
This is the feature that makes a swim stream readable: each swimmer's name appears in their lane, in the water, so viewers can follow one swimmer through the race.
- Frame and lock the camera on the final shot you'll use for racing.
- Take a screenshot from OBS. Right-click the camera source or the preview and use OBS's screenshot option.
- Mark the four corners of the pool on that screenshot in ScoreCastr. It uses those four points to work out the angle of the pool and place each lane's name in the right lane.
- Check it on the stream during warmups, when swimmers are in each lane, and adjust the corners if names sit on the lane ropes.
If someone bumps the tripod, the names will drift. Take a new screenshot and mark the corners again. It takes a minute, so do it during a heat change, not mid-race.
Times, places and lane status
After each heat, the operator enters each lane's time from the timing system's display or the pool scoreboard. The lane board shows times, and places are worked out automatically. Each lane also has a status:
- OK for a normal swim.
- DQ for a disqualification. Wait for the referee's call before you show it. DQs often come a minute or two after the touch.
- NS for a no-show.
- SCR for a scratch, ideally set before the heat starts so the lane is shown as empty.
The event and heat show on screen, and a winner lower third can follow each heat. Show results only once the timing operator has confirmed them. Times sometimes get adjusted from backup buttons.
What ScoreCastr doesn't do for swimming: there are no splits, no live race clock and no diving. If your meet includes diving, plan it as a break in the graphics, or show the camera only, and tell your announcer.
Team standings and breaks
Team standings keep a dual or championship meet interesting even when a viewer's swimmer isn't in the water. Bring them up between events, and at the end of each session.
Swim meets have more natural breaks than most sports: between events, during diving, between sessions and during any meet-wide pause. Those are the right windows for sponsor spots. Our guide to running sponsor commercials covers how to play them in OBS. If you want the overlay in OBS from scratch, start with adding a scoreboard overlay to OBS.
Meet day checklist
- Rights confirmed, camera spot agreed with the meet referee.
- Gear unpacked early so lenses stop fogging, power kept away from the water.
- Latest meet program file imported, lane count set.
- Camera framed and locked, OBS screenshot taken, four corners marked.
- Lane names checked during warmups.
- Timing display or scoreboard visible from the operator's seat.
- A 20-minute private test stream, watched on a phone.
- Updated file re-imported before each session.
- DQs held until the referee confirms them.