HD broadcasting Archives - Mainstream | Live Video Agency

A Comprehensive (And Animated!) Guide to Live Streaming Setups

Nick Bacon — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 20:52:54 +0000

Determining Your Optimal Setup for a 1-Camera Live Stream

While the majority of Mainstream Media’s live streams are multi-camera configurations, there are numerous situations where only one camera is needed. Events such as online learning modules, press conferences, electronic news gathering, and internal corporate broadcasts can be really successful with a simple one-camera setup.

If you have been asked to produce a one-camera webcast for your company – or you just want to cover a cool event that’s coming to your town – but don’t know where to begin, fear not! We’ll walk you through everything you need to know in order to have a successful broadcast.

The Fundamental Setup

First, let us quickly dissect exactly what is required in order to broadcast a camera feed online.

Ultimately, the camera at your event needs to communicate with your streaming platform of choice in real time. Below, we will look at various setups as determined by your initial equipment.

First: cameras! We’ve included a few important reminders for each type of camera.

Choosing the right camera for your live event

It’s not always the case that you need a full HD broadcast camera to cover your live event. Sometimes, even a simple web camera will do. Or perhaps you’re limited to the technology your media services department has on-hand. Whatever the case may be, fear not! We’ll go over setups for webcams, DSLRs, smartphones, and broadcast cameras.

Option 1: A USB Webcam

If you’re using a USB webcam, you are probably planning on broadcasting webcasts or webinars that offer training or online learning courses. Chances are, you’re expecting a concurrent audience – that is, viewers simultaneously watching your live stream – of fewer than 100 people.

In order to ensure proper connectivity with your USB webcam, make sure that you have downloaded the most recent drivers for your device. If you plan on capturing audio through your webcam, confirm that the microphone works, too!

Option 2: a DSLR (such as the Panasonic GH2/GH3/GH4, Canon 5D, Sony A7s, or others)

Using a DSLR? By our estimation, that means you’re likely covering an event such as a wedding, a local music show, a live event, or an internal corporate broadcast. You may also be exploring long-form live streamed content, streaming a particular space for hours, days, or even weeks on end.

First of all, it is important to make sure that your DSLR has clean HDMI output. Many DSLRs now include this, but some- notably, Canon DSLRs – require third-party firmware such as Magic Lantern. Install at your own risk and make sure you’re comfortable with the new setup before your event begins!

Next, you’ll need to determine what type of output your camera has. There are three options: micro-HDMI, mini-HDMI, and standard HDMI.

Option 3: Smartphone

Perhaps you’re offering floor coverage a cool event, exploring a new art gallery opening, streaming your favorite band (with their permission of course!), or just connecting with your digital fan base. Whatever the reason, smart phones now have a plethora of live streaming tools at their disposal!

Prior to broadcast, make sure you are on WiFi with great upload speeds (for an HD broadcast, you should have greater than 5Mbps). While you can broadcast from a 4G/LTE connection, streaming consumes your data very quickly.

Check your bandwidth by using SpeedTest, and run the test multiple times to get a better sense of your average upload speeds.

Also: consider investing in an external microphone and a stabilizer. Your audience will really appreciate the added production value!

Option 4: Broadcast Camera

It’s a high-profile event, and you’re bringing the best gear you have. Or maybe you’re stuck at the back of a room and you’re relying on your broadcast camera’s low-light ability and its big zoom. Either way, you’re broadcasting in full HD and you’re not going to miss a single second!

Because you are likely far away from the presenter, plan on bringing some additional audio elements to handle capturing sound. Often, the venue will be able to run you an XLR from their house mixing booth; if you run this into your camera, you’ll be able to capture all speakers exactly as they’re being output in the venue. Just in case, make sure you bring your audio adapters, an extra XLR run, and (if possible) a wireless lavaliere transmitter and receiver set.

Next: let’s select your platform!

Selecting the Right Platform for your Event

In order to determine the correct live streaming platform for your event, ask yourself these questions:

Is your event private or public?
Will you require user registration, password-protection, or paywalls?
Does your IT department already have a platform in place?

If your company does not already have a platform in place, then follow the guide below for selecting the one that suits your event best.

Live Event Streamed to the Public

With a public event, you are hoping for as many viewers as possible. The last thing you want is for your viewers to crash the stream because you’ve run out of bandwidth, so let’s look at platforms that support unlimited viewers. In our view, here are the three best options:

YouTube is the top choice so long as you do not have copyrighted content and you’re ad-free. It’s free to use, you can embed your stream on your website as easily as you would any other YouTube video, and their servers will never crash.

If you have concerns with copyrighted content or that your content might conflict with YouTube’s Terms of Service, you can consider Livestream. The basic plan is free, though your users will be required to sign up for a Livestream account. Premium accounts, which allow you to embed the stream on your website, cost $199/month billed annually or $399/month monthly.

If your content is related to either music or gaming, then Twitch is a great option. Twitch has a highly active community of stream-watchers, is free to use, and is very straightforward to set up.

Of course, there are many other live streaming platforms available. When deciding which one to use, you should choose based on your audience: where will they be most comfortable? What platforms are they already using? Make it as simple for them as possible!

Live Streaming a Private Event

Depending on how private your event is, you have a few different options. For example, you can still use YouTube if your event is private: simply change the access from “public” to “unlisted”, and turn off “promote when this event is live”. Then embed it on a page on your website, and direct all traffic there.

If you need further protection – such as a paywall, or password-protection – we recommend DaCast. Their plans start as low as $25/month, though you’ll likely need to purchase additional bandwidth if you’re expecting a large audience.

For an event that is exclusively internal to your corporation, such as a CEO town hall, consider an enterprise webcasting solution such as MediaPlatform. Their Webcaster platform, for example, allows you to collect registrations, deploy Powerpoint slides and live chats, and many more features that would be of value for an internal corporate broadcast. However, these platforms are comparatively expensive, often costing in the thousands of dollars for single events.

Direct Connection to Fans

If you want your fans to look behind the scenes with you, then your best bet is a phone-based app like Periscope or Meerkat. These apps, which caught on in a big way in 2015, tie directly into your social feeds (in particular Twitter) and encourage you to interact with your audience while you’re broadcasting.

For a more intimate connection with your fans – maybe you’re sitting at your computer, rather than attending a major awards ceremony – you can set up a simple Google Hangout and invite them to attend. By the way, you can run Google Hangouts through YouTube – so you can talk with some of your audience directly while others simply spectate. And it’s archived on your YouTube channel automatically, as well!

Okay, you have your camera and you’ve chosen your platform. But in between lies a challenge – how do you connect the two? For that, we’ll need to select a capture device.

Selecting the Proper Capture Device for your Camera

Roving Cameras

If you need to stay mobile – for example, side-line coverage of a sports event, field reporting or electronic news gathering – then you can use an on-camera encoder to send your signal where it needs to go. For this, there’s really only one clear choice: the Teradek VidiU Pro. Technically, it’s not a capture device – it handles the capture, encoding, and streaming of your feed all-in-one. While it is costly ($999), it offers the ability to stream your camera feed via WiFi, ethernet, or 4G/LTE (via a USB modem, not included) directly to any platform of your choice. This includes uStream, Livestream, YouTube, and any platform that accepts an RTMP stream.

If you’re using an SDI camera, you might need to go with the more costly Teradek Cube, unless you feel comfortable converting your SDI feed to HDMI.

Stationary

You’re settling in for a long day of conference live streaming. You have your camera set up at the back of the room, and you’re on the edge of your seat awaiting the first keynote speaker. If you won’t be moving around, then you can feed your camera into a capture device such as the Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle or Blackmagic Mini Monitor.

For PCs, we recommend using the Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle or Blackmagic Ultrastudio SDI, depending on your camera. These offer USB3 connections from your camera to your computer.

For Macs, use the Blackmagic Mini Recorder, which have Thunderbolt connections.

Note: there are many types of capture devices available. Avoid the temptation of purchasing low-cost or generic devices: these regularly have issues with latency, or cause the audio and video to drift slowly apart. We recommend Blackmagic devices because we have never experienced these issues using them.

Encoding your Signal

Whether you’re using a Mac or a PC, capturing the camera feed is only half the battle. the other half is encoding that feed for your platform of choice. (If you’re using a webcam, you’ll also need to use one of these encoders.)

With only one camera and no switching needed, you can feel safe using Adobe’s Flash Media Live Encoder. Select the appropriate input, type in your platform information, and then enjoy the fruits of your labor.

If, however, you need to do some occasional switching – maybe throwing in a “thanks for watching” graphic, or an occasional video, then you should plan on using WireCast. While costly ($500 for the basic version), WireCast is the de facto industry standard. It’s a great piece of software, and fairly intuitive to figure out. WireCast also offers other bonuses, such as being able to pull in smart phone feeds, a robust screen capture system called Desktop Presenter, and even social media integration with a live Twitter plugin.

As with all other categories, there are other encoding options available – notably, XSplit and Open Broadcaster System, which are both open-source encoders – but we believe WireCast and Adobe FMLE are straightforward enough that anyone can produce a simple broadcast with only a few hours’ training.

That’s it for this blog post! Thanks for sticking with us. As always, you can e-mail us at info@mainstreamchicago.com if you have any questions, concerns, or comments.

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Did Telestream Accidentally Create the Industry’s Best Webinar Production Tool?

Nick Bacon — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 15:10:07 +0000

Twitch Con, a conference celebrating the world’s most popular eSports streaming platform, is not the place where you would expect to see the launch of an incredible new webinar production tool. But this past week, that is exactly what happened.

At the event, Telestream launched its new stream production tool. Known as Gameshow, the low-cost tool – a stripped-down, sleeked version of its popular webcasting program, Wirecast – offers the gaming community the ability to create dynamic, interactive, high-quality streams at the bargain-basement price of only $9/month. It’s available for Mac & PC and streams directly to YouTube or Twitch.

Though unintended by Telestream, this tool can be a powerful asset for those who regularly produce webinars.

Webinar producers can learn a lot from the eSports & streaming communities. The two products – webinars and game streams – are structurally very similar.

Both webinars and game streams feature the following:

A screen capture – either a game being played, or a presentation being given
Live view of the presenters (via a USB webcam or full HD camera)
Interactive elements to drive engagement – Q&As, chats, and direct communication between presenter and audience

Besides the compositional similarities, there are similar goals in the positioning of the audience and the presenters. In both cases, presenters seek to be seen as thought leaders in a particular area. The audience sticks the presenter for an extraordinarily long time – Twitch users watch their favorite streams for an average of 109 minutes a day, while a typical webinar will keep a viewer engaged for over 30 minutes. Whether your goal is to distinguish yourself as an expert in generating PR for technology startups or in withstanding a 6-pool zergling rush in Starcraft, your method of attracting and engaging an audience is the same.

Even though Telestream’s “Gameshow” is geared towards streamers, it can also be a vitally useful tool for webinar producers as well. It’s designed from the ground-up to be streamlined into complex workflows: the last thing a gamer wants is to lose valuable clicks-per-minute on a clunky production tool. So production is as simple as possible. Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Select Your Template

With one click, select a pre-designed template. You can also build your own.

Step 2: Setup your platform

While Twitch is a great platform for streamers, most webinar producers will find YouTube’s interface much more suited to their goals. Input your username and give your camera and mic access, and Gameshow will prompt you to login to your YouTube account.

Step 3: Customize your broadcast

Gameshow’s user interface is incredibly intuitive – especially if you’ve used Wirecast. Customize each shot with screen /window captures, webcam shots, and a suite of dynamic interactive elements such as image carousels, web displays, social media icons, and more.

Step 4: Go Live

Once you’re all set, click the “Stream” button in the top-left corner. You’ll see a count-up timer start. If you go to your YouTube Live Dashboard it will look like this:

If the light is green, you’re good to go! Scroll down to the bottom of the page and go to the URL to your broadcast. You can then embed in your website as you normally would any YouTube video.

Using these tools to their fullest effect can have an immediate impact on your audience engagement, But there are key differences between the two industries to consider. While Twitch and YouTube are the platforms of choice for streamers, webinar producers have many more options. WebEx, GoToMeeting, WebinarPlatform, and more all exist and share a userbase. Currently, Gameshow only supports YouTube and Twitch, but with a “virtual camera” option, as we see in WireCast, webinar producers would gain access to the platform of their choice.

The other key difference is the “formal”-ness of the presentation: whereas streamers tend to show content off the cuff and in a less structured schedule, webinars tend to feature rehearsed presentations at a very specific pre-appointed time. You have to tune in at the right time and watch an entire webinar in order to get the most out of it; streamers encourage folks to tune in and out as they please, catching a few minutes here and there. You don’t have to watch Naniwa’s entire 8-hour stream to enjoy it; you can watch him rip apart an enemy for one match, crack a couple jokes in the chat, then go on to the next channel.

Webinar producers can learn much from the streaming community. Creating accessible, irreverent, yet high-quality broadcasts would cast a wider net and help create a more focused, engaged audience. Producers should also adopt the filmmaking mantra “show, don’t tell” – rather than deliver a rehearsed pitch, put your presentation into practice and let your audience come along for the ride. If your webinar discusses how to increase sales effectiveness, stream yourself as you call, qualify, and sell your product. If you’re leading an e-class on how to develop an electronic press kit, let them watch as you develop the actual materials in yours.

By adopting some of the tools and ideas from the streaming community, webinar producers can drastically increase their impact and effectiveness. See you at Twitch Con 2016, and if you need help producing your webinar, reach out to us!

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Field of Streams: Comparing 4 Remote Live Streaming Methods for 2015

Nick Bacon — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 22:08:06 +0000

In a perfect world, all live stream productions occur in a controlled environment, away from the elements, with access to an ultra-fast and ultra-reliable Internet connection. The world we live in, however, is not perfect. Broadcasters are regularly asked to stream HD content from remote locations and in less-than-ideal conditions. Last year, we received such a request: to stream a massive parade on the Southside of Chicago. While that particular project didn’t pan out, we spent many hours researching remote broadcasting. And we would love to share that research with you!

Besides parades, there are numerous outdoor events that might call for special broadcasting tactics. These include:

Music festivals, such as Lollapalooza;
Political rallies or field reporting from national events, such as the Ferguson protests;
Sports, including mainstream, alternative, and e-sports;
And many, many more!

There are many methods to send a broadcast signal, and we’ve chosen to go over a few broad categories. Special thanks to Reddit’s /r/videoengineering community and the broadcast experts mentioned below for their input!

Remote Broadcasting Options

Option 1: Run a dedicated line from a local business or building

If your event is near a friendly building, you can run an Ethernet line from their hub. The maximum distance for an Ethernet cable run is 90 meters, or roughly 295 feet.

This is the least expensive solution for a remote broadcast. If you’re familiar with setting up live streams inside a building, then the process is essentially the same. However, there are several issues to be aware of:

Internet speeds can fluctuate depending on the network pull. If you’re coming from an office with many employees, you might see your bandwidth reduce dramatically over the course of your event.
You will need to run a full test before the event: make sure there are no corporate Firewalls blocking your streaming platform or limiting your upstream bandwidth!
You will need access to the building, which might be difficult to coordinate during your event. Make sure to discuss this very clearly!
You will also need to secure your cable run – make sure your Ethernet cable is protected from the elements!

Option 2: Use a 3G/4G/LTE mobile hot-spot

If there are no businesses nearby, you could simply turn your phone into a mobile hotspot. (Here is a great explanation on how to do that). This is by far the easiest solution, but also the least reliable.
Here’s the thing about public events: a lot of people show up. With so many folks pulling signal from the same cell phone antenna, you will find it difficult to produce a steady, reliable stream. There just isn’t enough bandwidth.

Additionally, broadcasting uses lots of data. This can result in expensive overcharges on your cell phone bill.

(Check out our calculator to find out how much bandwidth your event will use!)

Best advice: use with caution, only if there are no other options, and not at a well-attended event.

Option 3: Cellular Bonding

Put simply: cellular bonding is when you split your broadcast signal over several cellular networks. (For a more technical explanation, check out this article over at TVTechnology.

While technically more complicated and expensive than the previous options, cellular bonding is much more reliable. If you have mission-critical broadcasts that are going straight to the web, cellular bonding is the best solution.

One thing to keep in mind: you will need to get data plans with multiple cellular networks. According to Mushroom Networks’ CEO Cahit Jay Akin, “clients can use anywhere from 2 to 8 3G/4G cell cards, depending on their project requirements, but [we] recommend no fewer than 4 cell cards.”

Mushroom Networks, Teradek, and others produce cellular bonding hardware. Again, according to Akin:

The Streamer by Mushroom Networks provides a transparent bonded tunnel that works seamlessly with your existing streaming setup. The solution comes pre-configured, so all you need to do is to unplug that imaginary wired Internet cable and plug the Ethernet cable from the Streamer.

Mushroom also has the Streamer PRO version that comes with a built-in adaptive state of the art encoder, so that you can plug a video connector directly and webcast to the CDN of your choice.

Option 4: Rent a Satellite Truck

If you are delivering your live feed to broadcast networks as well as the web, you might consider going the traditional broadcast route: renting a production truck and broadcasting via satellite.
To touch simply on a very complicated subject, satellite works by beaming your signal to a satellite (your “uplink”) and then back down to an ingest location (the “downlink”). Each link requires specialized equipment, which can be very expensive: a day’s truck rental in Chicago can cost anywhere from $2,500 to well over $10,000 (depending on volume, availability, and complexity of broadcast).

There are multiple bands from which you can broadcast, with the most common being Ku-band, C-band, and Ka-band. Here is a white paper that offers a full comparison of the various satellite bands.

Dan Biggar, Executive Vice President at Satellite Technology Systems, has this to say:

Ku-band is 99% reliable. Once in a great while if you have a strong storm cell with heavy rain it could wipe out your signal either at the uplink or downlink location. Rain fade usually clears within 10 minutes… Also for a few days in the Spring and Fall you can get a solar outage when the rays of the sun line up directly with the receiver dish.

C Band is 99.9% reliable. There is no rain fade with C Band. If there was a catastrophic failure with the truck you could lose the feed but that is rare. On some big money major sporting events aired on Broadcast TV the network will book a second satellite truck as backup.”

It’s also important to book your satellite time well in advance. Biggar notes, “on a major news day like the US Presidential election, all the KU satellite space gets booked up a month in advance.”

Satellite rental is recommended for mission-critical events.

Ranking your Remote Broadcasting Options

Every crew and every production is different. As such, the method you choose for your remote broadcast will depend on a variety of factors. In an effort to help you streamline your decision-making process, here are our rankings for each method, according to cost, complexity, and reliability.

Cost

Your options can range from under $100 to into the tens of thousands. Choose the option right for your budget!

Dedicated line from local building – under $100. Just convince someone nearby to let you top into their high-speed Internet, grab for your 90m Ethernet cable, and you’re all set!
4G modem – under $100 depending on total data broadcast. (Verizon charges $15/GB – be careful!)
Cellular bonding – around $3,000 for the hardware, plus data plans with 2-8 mobile networks. The hardware is a one-time cost.
Satellite truck – starts around $2,500 per link (and you’ll likely need an uplink and downlink), plus satellite rental time (upwards of $450/hour).

Complexity

To understand the complexity of a given solution, you must have knowledge of that solution’s failure points. While initial set up for each solution is straightforward, being able to troubleshoot on the fly can be difficult. Keep that in mind when using new technology!

4G modem – Simply turn your smartphone into a wi-fi hotspot and you’re all set! (Just don’t expect to have reliable, consistent bandwidth.)
Dedicated line – You’ll need to coordinate with the building’s IT department, but this is quotidian for live stream producers.
Satellite truck – Sat trucks can become complicated, but the engineering side is pretty straightforward – and some include an engineer/operator for the day!
Cellular bonding – Pre-configured out of the box, cellular bonding hardware is simple to navigate. What’s difficult and annoying is setting up data plans with multiple networks. Furthermore, some cellular bonding solutions require setting up server software, such as Teradek’s Sputnik Server.

Reliability

It does not matter how cost-friendly or easy-to-setup your solution is if it doesn’t produce good results. For mission-critical events with hundreds or thousands of anticipated viewers, reliability is the most important factor!

Satellite truck – If your pockets are deep, then satellite trucks are the way to go. Trust the solution that’s been trusted by giants of industry for decades.
Cellular bonding – While 4G/LTE bonding is comparatively new, the technology is mature and reliable.
Dedicated line – It works great if you have unfettered access to the host, but there are many failure points – long cable runs, potential inaccessibility, and network fluctuations, to name a few.
4G modem – It’s almost guaranteed that your signal will drop out at some point – and broadcasting in full HD is completely out of the question.

Conclusion – and a bonus gift!

Hopefully, we have been able to take some of the mystery out of remote broadcasting for you. Have more questions? Feel free to e-mail us (info@mainstreamchicago.com) and we will do our best to respond right away!

As a bonus, we’ve created this bandwidth cost calculator to help you determine your budget. This is meant more as an estimate that an exact amount, but hopefully it helps!

[CP_CALCULATED_FIELDS id=”6″]

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A Comparison of YouTube and Livestream’s Live Video Services

Nick Bacon — Thu, 12 Jun 2014 19:16:28 +0000

December 12, 2013 was a day that will live in infamy for live streaming producers: it is the day that YouTube opened up its Live Video service for all YouTube accounts in good standing. For free.

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While support for the platform still lags behind other streaming service providers such as Livestream and uStream, recent rumors around YouTube’s negotiations to buy twitch.tv suggests that they’re willing to make the necessary investments to turn its service into a ripe economy of live producers. All that is well and good, but how does YouTube live currently compare to its competitors?

As a company specializing in live streaming services for events, festivals, and other web broadcasts, we felt it was our duty to compare and contrast YouTube’s current feature set to its competitors. Today, we’re going to focus on YouTube vs. Livestream’s Premium Package (which costs $399/month). We’ll try to be as thorough as possible.

Category #1: Features

Here’s a rundown comparing the feature sets of Livestream Premium and YouTube Live. Differences in bold.

Features	YouTube	Livestream Premium
Ad Free
Unlimited Event Pages
Unlimited viewers and storage
Unlimited On-Demand Embedding
DVR
Adaptive Bit Rate
smart device compatibility
Cloud Recording
Live Chat with moderation	No
Live Blogging Tools	No
Unlimited Event Archive
Vanity Account and Event URL	No
Local Publishing Server
Google Analytics Integration
Unlimited Embedding of Live Video Player
Event Page Facebook Application	No
White Label Player and Embeds	Kind of	No
Multi-camera		No
Highlight clips
Ad Insertion	InStream, commercial breaks, pre-roll	No
Call to Action overlays		No
Closed captioning		Available to partners; add’l production costs

As you can see, the basic offerings of both platforms are effectively the same. Both allow for ad-free, full HD live streaming with adaptive bit rates and DVR. Both purport to work on smart phones and tablets, although anecdotally we have had some issues with Livestream’s mobile broadcasts occasionally dropping out without explanation. At the Premium level, Livestream allows you to embed events in external web pages; so, too, does YouTube. Without taking into account the cost of the services, they are effectively a wash.

There are, of course, key differences to note. Livestream’s strengths lie in creating single event pages with full branding and live chat and blogging tools. YouTube features more robust options for ad insertion, includes call-to-action overlays, and has a more streamlined integration with closed captioning.

Advantage: YouTube. While the live blogging tools for Livestream are a neat feature, these can be easily replicated with a YouTube live stream by simply embedding your video on your own web page and incorporating whichever social media and blogging tools you prefer.

For example, one request we see quite often from clients is to embed a Twitter widget on their page. (Here is a recent example.) When embedding a feed into your website, implementing such a tool simply requires dropping in an extra line of HTML. This extended functionality increases viewer engagement with the event, while giving them the flexibility to join the social media conversation. While “old Livestream” used to have the ability to drop in a Twitter feed, “new Livestream” does not.

Category #2: Ease of Production

When Livestream switched over to its new platform, appropriately dubbed “New Livestream”, it dramatically changed the entire production workflow for stream producers. In essence, new Livestream is a closed system: in order to use it, you must use the tools that their company provides. This means you’re unable to use streaming standard software such as Telestream Wirecast, XSplit, or the open-source Open Broadcaster Software.

To get live video to New Livestream, you have two software options: Livestream Producer (free, Mac and Windows) and Livestream Studio (free or $799 for Pro, Windows only). Both applications have very limiting parameters.

Livestream Producer has dramatic limitations – only one camera input! – which means if you want to produce multi-camera events, you need external hardware such as a Tricaster or Blackmagic ATEM TV Studio.

Livestream Studio, while more robust, lacks Mac compatibility. If you have a Mac-based live streaming setup then you’re pretty much out of luck here.

YouTube, on the other hand, allows for the full spectrum of software- and hardware-based encoding and streaming solutions.

Advantage: YouTube. The issue with Livestream is that if you have already developed a streaming workflow, you will need to radically readjust your setup in order to produce high-quality streams. Additionally, YouTube’s Live Control Room allows you to preview your stream privately before pushing it live to your audience. With Livestream, there’s no good way to preview a stream before it goes live: you have to create an unpublished draft event, stream to that, verify that it looks good, then switch back to your main event. It’s a cumbersome process.

Category #3: Customer Support

According to GetHuman, the average wait for YouTube’s customer support is over 37 minutes, and has a frosty 1 out of 5 star rating. This can be an excruciating problem for live event producers, where a minute’s delay can cost thousands of dollars.

On the other hand, Livestream receives top marks for its customer support. Premium users are given a unique PIN number and phone number to call for any support needed; calls are answered promptly, and in my experience, the staff is very knowledgeable about how to fix common issues.

Advantage: Livestream.

Category #4: Copyright Infringement and Enforcement

As anyone who has uploaded a video to YouTube probably knows, Google is absolutely draconian in terms of enforcing copyright violation claims. This carries over with substantial implications to its Live platform.

If YouTube thinks that you are streaming copyrighted content, you are given roughly two minutes to take it down. Failure to comply results in your stream being removed immediately, and a strike being issued to your account. Three strikes and your account is suspended for 6 months.

This is a big issue for event producers because there is no simple process for purchasing broadcast rights to copyrighted content. (And if YouTube is really interested in purchasing Twitch and becoming a major player in the eSports/live streaming industry, they should address this issue right away.)

Here’s a pseudo-hypothetical situation: let’s say you’re streaming a great local event (like one of our favorites, the Chicago League of Lady Armwrestling). Prior to the show, the venue plays house music. If YouTube identifies any of that music as being a match in their Content ID database, they will take down your stream right away.

Livestream also has a ‘no copyright infringement’ policy, but they are not quite as severe or fast-acting as YouTube.

Advantage: Livestream. YouTube’s harsh copyright enforcement policy doesn’t translate to live streaming, and absolutely needs to be addressed.

The Bottom Line

While both services offer competitive feature sets, the fact that YouTube’s service is free while Livestream costs nearly $5,000/year makes YouTube a clear winner. If you have even moderate web development skills and your Google-fu is strong, then you can replicate all the additional features that Livestream offers on your own web page with a YouTube embed.

However, if you plan on streaming copyrighted content (provided you have purchased the legal right to do so) then YouTube’s nigh-on-ridiculous copyright enforcement policies prevent it from being the de facto platform for streaming.

Winner: YouTube. For most streams, copyrighted content should not be an issue and can be easily substituted for royalty-free or unique material. The vast difference in price and compatibility puts YouTube way ahead of its competitor.

Interested in streaming your event over YouTube? We can help. Shoot us an email at info@mainstreamchicago.com and we’ll get you started!

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HD broadcasting Archives - Mainstream | Live Video Agency

A Comprehensive (And Animated!) Guide to Live Streaming Setups

Determining Your Optimal Setup for a 1-Camera Live Stream

The Fundamental Setup

Choosing the right camera for your live event

Selecting the Right Platform for your Event

Selecting the Proper Capture Device for your Camera

Did Telestream Accidentally Create the Industry’s Best Webinar Production Tool?

Step 1: Select Your Template

Step 2: Setup your platform

Step 3: Customize your broadcast

Step 4: Go Live

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Field of Streams: Comparing 4 Remote Live Streaming Methods for 2015

Remote Broadcasting Options

Option 1: Run a dedicated line from a local business or building

Option 2: Use a 3G/4G/LTE mobile hot-spot

Option 3: Cellular Bonding

Option 4: Rent a Satellite Truck

Ranking your Remote Broadcasting Options

Cost

Complexity

Reliability

Conclusion – and a bonus gift!

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Recent Posts / View All Posts

In-House or Agency? How to Choose the Right AV Partners For Your Next Event

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A Comparison of YouTube and Livestream’s Live Video Services

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