video production Archives - Mainstream | Live Video Agency

The Perfect Shot List for Corporate Webcasts

Nick Bacon — Tue, 03 Sep 2019 22:55:39 +0000

Every event presents unique challenges. Speakers pull out at the last minute, attendees don’t use your event app, a power outage pulls down the video feed of your special celebrity guest appearing via Skype. While Murphy wasn’t an event planner, Murphy’s Law seems to have been written specifically about live events.

When things start to go wrong, it’s important to have a plan in place that help you get back on track. Preparing a shot list for your webcast is one such strategy. In traditional filmmaking, shot lists articulate the cinematic strategy, so all crew can execute towards the same vision. In live streaming, a shot list distinguishes different shot types, ensuring that action is captured appropriately to convey the content.

When we produce a webcast, we utilize four main shot types: the Wide Shot, the Tight Shot, the Presentation Feed, and the Picture-in-Picture. Here’s an explanation of each of those shots!

The Wide Shot

A Wide Shot covers the entire area of action, establishing location and providing a safe shot that’s always available for a cutaway. Also called the Long Shot or Full Shot, a Wide Shot is a Director’s best friend. Since it often runs without an operator (making it “static”), the framing never changes. While less engaging than other shots, it is reliably available for coverage while other shots may be changing.

For a more engaging version of the wide shot, consider adding an operator who can perform slow zooms, pans, and tilts. But don’t overdo it: again, the most important feature of a wide shot is its availability, covering other shots if they are in transition.

The Tight Shot

Depending on framing, this shot might also be known as a Close (CU), Medium Close (MCU), or Hero Shot. Where the Wide Shot frames your action, the Tight Shot focuses on it. When fixed on a presenter, this shot often manifests with chest-up framing, a beat of headroom, and plenty of leading room if your presenter isn’t doing a direct address.

A Tight Shot requires a camera operator with a steady hand, and a camera on a fluid tripod head. This allows the cam op to follow the action. For best quality, there should be communication between the camera operator and Technical Director so they know when their shot is live.

The Presentation Feed

When presenting a PowerPoint or other computer presentation, a producer should always take a full-resolution feed directly from the presenter’s computer. This keeps the virtual presentation synchronized with the physical one. Additionally, quality tends to be much higher, allowing for full frame-rate playback of videos, and crisp text on-screen text.

Because this shot often does not show an actual person, audiences find them very disengaging. As such, they should be used sparingly. Even webinars would be better served by diminishing reliance on this shot.

Picture-in-Picture

When presentation feeds are combined with a camera feed into one shot, this is called Picture-in-Picture (or PiP). This shot is much more engaging than just showing a Presentation, for the simple reason that there is a person’s face on the screen. Humans learn better when they can see the presenter.

PiP shots normally include:

a big frame, which shows the presentation;
A little frame, which shows a camera feed;
A graphic overlay, which frames the two feeds and may provide additional information such as an event description, logo, or sponsor graphic.

Advanced Shots

Once your basics are covered with the 4 shots listed above, adding more dynamic shots can create a more exciting broadcast. Here are some other shots to try!

The Medium Shot

If you have a punchy panel on stage where you’re expecting a lot of back-and-forth debate, consider adding a third camera capturing a medium shot. Also called a “2-shot” or “3-shot” depending on the number of people in the frame, this shot creates a relationship between multiple subjects.

The Audience Reverse Shot

If you’re expecting the audience to participate, or if your presenter gets lots of laughs/questions then a reverse shot showing the audience response can add an interesting angle. This could be a behind-the-stage shot, showing a silhouetted speaker against a sea of people, or it could be a tight shot on specific audience members.

Canted Wide Shot

Often used as an intro, outro, or interstitial shot, the canted wide is an atmospheric shot that places a presentation in the context of its environment. It may even be blurred slightly, or part of the frame might be obscured by a large object in extreme close-up. This shot is often seen underneath graphic overlays such as titles, credits, or sponsor logos.

Conclusion

A shot list takes the guesswork out of live stream production and frees up a stream producer to focus on the important things: engagement, content development, and the myriad problems that inevitably arise at the last minute. We hope you find it helpful!

The 2017 Guide to Streaming on YouTube

Nick Bacon — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 20:24:02 +0000

Welcome to 2017, everyone! We thought we would kick off the New Year by brain-dumping everything we know about setting up an event on YouTube Live. It’s a great platform that, in our estimation, covers at least half of all use-cases with a live stream. As mentioned in past articles, it is not without its shortcomings. But at the end of the day, YouTube Live is a powerful platform for streaming just about any live event.With that said, let’s dive right in!

Getting Started

First things first: you will need to enable your account for live streaming. You can do this by going to your Live Events Panel and clicking on “Enable Live Streaming.” You’ll need to verify your account, so have your cell phone handy.

If you wish to embed your stream somewhere other than YouTube, you’ll need to link your YouTube account to Adwords. The approval process can take up to 48 hours, so make sure you get this done well before you intend to stream!

Once approved, you’ll simply go into Creator Studio > Channel > Status and Features, and turn on embedding.

Next: selecting your streaming software!

Choosing the Right Streaming Software

There are more and more software packages available that offer streaming to YouTube every day. Luckily, YouTube keeps a list of recommended software. All recommended software integrates natively, meaning that by inputting your YouTube login credentials, you will be able to stream to YouTube Live directly. This is actually A Big Deal: it takes out the complex (and error-prone) process of entering your RTMP address and unique stream key.

Want our recommendations on which software to use? Well, sure! Here you are:

Streaming from your iPhone? Use WireCast Go. Very robust for a free app and for $6 you can turn it into a mini live switcher.
Prefer open-source software? Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) is for you. It’s well-documented and the gaming community loves it.
Want to use the industry standard? Stick with WireCast Pro. Version 7, their latest release, has some remarkable features. . You can get an overview from our friends over at the Tech Buzz here.

Let’s Go Live!

So we have enabled our account, and we’ve selected our software. We’re now ready and able to start streaming! If you look in your Creator Studio > Live Streaming sub-menu, you have two options: “Stream Now” and “Events”.

Using the “Stream Now” Option

Selecting the “Stream Now” Option pushes you directly to your public live stream control room. Here, you control your entire public broadcast. (If you want to create a broadcast that isn’t publicly available, you’ll want to read about the “Events” Option.)

Your stream will show as Offline until you start pushing content from your encoder. Prior to streaming your show, it’s helpful to change your video title and description. This will display on your stream’s watch page as well as the archived recording of your event.

When you begin pushing content, you will see a light turn green. At this point, in the parlance of Google, “people can totally see you now.”

Links to share your stream are located at the bottom right of the page. You can use that link to go directly to your stream’s watch page, where you can also get its embed information. IMPORTANT NOTE: this code will change every time you go live, so you can’t just continuously embed your public live stream. If you are embedding regular streams, remember to swap in your new embed code!

During the stream, you can also manage your chat from the same Control Room.

BONUS TIP: If your YouTube Live event becomes popular, you will see it pop up on YouTube’s Live Stream front page This can introduce your event to a whole new audience!

So, “Stream Now” is great if you want an impromptu, public event. However, if you need control over who sees your stream or when it begins, you’ll need to manually create an event.

Using the “Create Event” Option

First: schedule an event. When creating your event, you’ll enter the same info as you would any YouTube video: title, description, keywords, and so forth.

Next: choose your sharing options. If your event is meant for a closed audience, then select “unlisted”. That keeps your event from being indexed for search, though it does not prevent people from publicly sharing your link.

You will then want to check out your Advanced Settings. Here you can enable or disable chat, prevent the stream from being promoted on your page, and so on. For an unlisted stream with no chat, here is how we commonly set our advanced settings:

Once that’s done, choose your encoding options: Google Hangouts or custom. Google Hangouts recently folded some of its technology into YouTube Live, so if you are planning on broadcasting a conversation between you and up to 10 Google Hangouts participants, you will actually create that event through YouTube Live. We have used it to host some great Q&As. Here’s an example of it in action. For most broadcasts, however, you’ll use the “custom” setting.

On the next page, we’ll set our ingestion settings. Choose a thumbnail if you have a special one for your event; if you do not, YouTube uses your profile image as a place holder. Next, set the maximum sustained bitrate for your encoder. Very recently, YouTube Live has enabled 4K Live Streaming – which is very exciting! There are very few places that can support a 30Mbps upload speed, but we hope to see it more widely adopted in the future.

YouTube provides its own guidance on the relationship between bitrate and resolution, but our experience has led us to different conclusions. Here is our loose guide for choosing the correct resolution and bandwidth. If your venue has:

15Mbps upload speed or better: use 1080p
10-15Mbps upload speed: 720p
6-10Mbps: 480p, though there are some cases where 720p is okay (i.e. not a lot of animation or dramatic scene changes)
3-5Mbps: 360p-480p
Under 3Mbps: 240p

In most cases, you should not have to use custom ingestion settings: just select one of YouTube’s presets. In fact, many encoders will not like custom ingestion settings and may throw an error at you when you attempt to broadcast.

When you have selected your bitrate, then you will be prompted to select your encoder. If you are using one of YouTube’s (or our) recommended encoding platforms, you should just leave this set to “other encoder”. IF YOU ARE USING WIRECAST PRO, DO NOT SELECT THE “WIRECAST FOR YOUTUBE” OPTION. I know that’s confusing, but “WireCast for YouTube” is a different piece of software entirely, so just leave the settings as is.

Once you have authenticated YouTube in your encoder, you should be able to see your event as a stream location. Simply select it, press stream, and you’re good to go! To confirm your stream is working, go to your event’s Live Control Room. It might take a couple of minutes for your stream to come through once you have begun streaming from your encoder, and you may have to refresh the page a few times. (Don’t worry! Refreshing the page won’t break anything!) When the signal comes through, you will see the green light.

Click on “Preview to send your stream to the Preview window. Again, you might have to refresh a couple times before it actually plays, and that’s perfectly fine. Once it’s there, you’re good to go: hit start streaming, and you’re live!

BONUS TIP: Use YouTube’s Live Editing Feature! It’s especially useful if you’re producing a long day full of numerous sessions (a conference with many panels, a tournament with many games, an awards ceremony with tons of speeches) – you can upload those individual clips in real-time to your channel. Very handy!

Engaging the Audience

There’s nothing like connecting to an audience in real-time and interacting with them directly. What a powerful tool that we use, where we can connect to thousands of people instantaneously!

The standard tool for engagement is the Chat window. Chat is a fantastic tool to engage your audience or to let your audience engage itself. Unfortunately, you cannot save the chat logs after an event: however, you can add moderators, who can highlight questions, ban bad actors, and so on. This is especially important if your event has a Q&A aspect to it.

Another engaging tool that is unique to YouTube Live is Interactive Cards. This will throw an overlay atop your live stream that directs your audience into action. Features include:

Video or Playlist: link your audience to another video
Channel: Promote another channel
Donation: Raise funds for a verified non-profit (more info here)
Poll: Get your audience’s opinion in real-time
Website: link to an approved website

Summing Up

YouTube Live has made some great updates this past year, and still largely remains unchanged from a functional perspective. With plenty of other players entering the market, it will be interesting to see how Google responds. One weapon they have added to their arsenal: VR live streaming. We are very interested in seeing that space develop!

Questions? Comments? Hate mail? Feel free to send it to nick@mainstreamchicago.com. Happy New Year, everyone!

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.

TL;DR:

View post on imgur.com

The Must-Use Tools for Live Stream Production

Nick Bacon — Sat, 10 Jan 2015 00:05:43 +0000

With innovative products and platforms in the field of live streaming emerging at an exponential rate, it’s tough to keep up with what works, what doesn’t, and what might if it got a little bit more love. With that in mind, we compiled this review of some of our favorite tools of the trade!

Want to see more posts like this? Subscribe to our newsletter and we’ll let you know as soon as they’re published!

[email-subscribers namefield=”NO” desc=”” group=”Public”]

Hardware

Blackmagic Decklink Mini Recorder

Why? Over the last few years, the cost of live stream production has plummeted, largely thanks to technical innovations from companies such as Blackmagic. Gone are the days where complicated switcher setups are required just to perform a simple 2- or 3-camera stream. With HD-SDI and HDMI inputs, the Blackmagic Decklink Mini Recorder is a powerful tool – and at under $150, the price is hard to beat!

Best for: Custom-built live streaming computers (you need to plug it into the PCIe slot on your motherboard)

Not recommended for: Folks streaming from laptops, or who require an output feed from their capture card.

Worth mentioning: Don’t have a PCIe slot? Just get a Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle (USB3 or Thunderbolt)!

Runner up: Teradek Bolt Pro

Why? Oftentimes, the most time-consuming and frustrating aspect of live production is running, hiding, and securing the miles and miles of cable necessary to connect all your components. The Teradek Bolt Pro removes the need for big cable runs, and at a reasonable cost (under $2,000) it’s affordable for most production companies.

Best for: events where running cable might be problematic, like live music events; events that require lots of camera movement within a compact space

Not recommended for: long events (the internal battery on the Bolt Pro lasts about an hour, although it has a 0B 302 series LEMO connector for external power); events where line-of-sight between receiver and transmitter may be compromised by structural elements

Worth mentioning: Teradek makes three models of the Bolt Pro: the 300, 600, and 2000 – with the number corresponding to the total range (in feet) of the device.

Software

Wirecast 5

Why? Wirecast is the de facto standard for live streaming software, and has been in the game for a very long time. Wirecast 5 can stream to any live encoding platform with the exception of New Livestream, and offers fully manual control over everything from the resolution to the bit-rate and everything in between. With up to 5 layers of elements, you can create rich, engaging broadcasts very intuitively. You can even pull other RTMP feeds as an input!

Best for: Anyone who wants to produce a live stream on any platform other than New Livestream.

Not recommended for: New Livestream users.

Worth mentioning: 5 had a good run, but was lacking in some key features. Wirecast 6, which came out in November 2014, added pretty much everything Wirecast 5 was missing: playlists, instant replay, a Twitter feed, and better hot keying!

Runner up: Livestream Studio

Why? Okay, we’ll admit it. Livestream Studio is really great live streaming software. Its interface feels like a sexy control room, you can output to any platform you want, and it comes standard with everything that Wirecast was lacking. While it’s a bit of a resource-hog, it’s a fully capable live streaming solution and would make for a smooth transition for anyone coming from the analog broadcast world.

Best for: New Livestream users, broadcast engineers

Not recommended for: Mac users (there’s no Mac version), any computers that aren’t top-of-the-line or custom-built.

Worth mentioning: Unlike Wirecast, Livestream Studio does NOT give you fine control over resolution and bit-rates of your stream. Rather, it comes with several output profiles from which you can choose. Annoyingly, you can’t output a single HD stream.

Camera

Sony EX-1r

Why? This camera is a workhorse. Arriving on the scene in 2009, you still find these cameras in the field everywhere, and for good reason. Its low light capabilities are top-notch, the zoom is nice and smooth, and we’ve never experienced any back focus issues as with other similarly priced camcorders. One of the first cameras to feature dual-slot recording, you could record for an entire day and never even have to switch out cards!

Best for: ENG production, camera rental facilities, press conferences, back-of-the-room event videography

Not recommended for: cinematic production

Worth mentioning: While the EX-1r uses annoying expensive SxS cards, a simple SxS->SDHC adapter allows you to use SD cards! It also pairs well with the Teradek Bolt Pro, as both can run off the same battery for around 3 hours.

Runner up: Panasonic GH2/GH3

Why? The Panasonic GH2 is a phenomenally versatile camera with an excellent community of support, but one of its best features is probably its most overlooked: clean HDMI output. With the ability to give crystal-clear, 1080p, menu-free video from its mini HDMI port, the GH2 is a great camera for folks looking for a simple one-camera HD live streaming setup. The only downside: it won’t output audio, so you’ll need to figure out an alternative method to run audio into your computer.

Best for: Folks looking to upgrade from webcams or consumer camcorders like the Canon Vixia HFS200; b- or c-cam shots.

Worth mentioning: Because quality degrades rapidly over HDMI, you shouldn’t use an HDMI cable longer than 10 feet for any HD broadcast.

Video Streaming Platform

YouTube Live

Why? Another major contributor to the decrease in cost of live streaming, YouTube is the first major platform to offer its services completely free. As of December 2013, any YouTube account in good standing is eligible for live streaming. And it’s free to embed!

Best for: Branding your live content and embedding in your website

Worth mentioning: As discussed in this previous post, be VERY CAREFUL if your broadcast contains any copyrighted music. You might get yanked from the air!

Also worth mentioning: Like other platforms, YouTube Live occasionally struggles with audio and video sync issues if you’re using the x264 codec. We recommend sticking with h.264 for now.

Runner up: DaCast

Why? DaCast is a true white-labelled platform. For an incredibly low cost (about 5-10% of what other platforms charge), you can embed ad-free streams directly into your website. While the analytics are still questionable at best, DaCast is a truly powerful platform at a very attractive price point.

Best for: Regular production of live events with audiences <100

Worth mentioning: While DaCast does have the ability to create multi-bitrate streams, your computer has to output each stream separately. This puts a greater burden on your computer – so be careful!

Also worth mentioning: We really, really would love to see DaCast implement DVR sometime in the near future. Everyone else does it! C’mon, DaCast!

Communication Platform

Twitter

Why? Because of this:

Got a shoutout on @Toontrack live stream of Devin Townsend’s concert today. Indeeeeeed #Ziltoid #toontrackmetalmonth pic.twitter.com/F6nU5JqhIf

— Storyboard Concept (@storybconcept) November 27, 2014

With more platforms adopting Twitter APIs to allow for broadcast integration, Twitter is the go-to way to have a live discussion with a global audience about your event. Bonus points if you’re able to show their tweets on screen!

Best for: Quick interactions with fans, media, or interested parties Worth mentioning: Hashtagging your event and building up a conversation takes time – make sure to engage with your audience regularly before, during, and after your event!

Runner up: Instagram

Ozzie Guillen and his wife on the red carpet. #Emmys2014 #EmmyChicago A photo posted by TV Academy (@chi_natas) on Nov 1, 2014 at 2:38pm PDT

Why? Conversation flows freely on Instagram, where people love to give love. While it might not be the best platform for live audience interaction, it’s a great platform for your fans to interact with one another!

Best for: #Hashtags. #Lots #Of #Hashtags.

Worth mentioning: Don’t forget – you need a smart phone to sign up for Instagram!

So, did we miss anything? Let us know what you think!

Congratulations – you’ve reached the end of the article! But that’s not the end of the story. Subscribe below and we’ll keep you up to date!

[email-subscribers namefield=”NO” desc=”” group=”Public”]

Live streaming the 2014 Midwest | Chicago Emmys

Nick Bacon — Wed, 05 Nov 2014 18:25:19 +0000

Want to see more posts like this? Subscribe to our newsletter and we’ll let you know as soon as they’re published!

[email-subscribers namefield=”NO” desc=”” group=”Public”]

This Halloween, Mainstream Media’s costumes featured black ties and snazzy dress shoes. The spooky party we attended was the 2014 Midwest Chicago Emmy’s at the Radisson Blu Aqua Hotel, and we had been asked to produce two live streams: the Backstage/Red Carpet Show and the main Awards Ceremony.

A week earlier, we received a call from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Midwest Chapter asking for our assistance in streaming their event. While our name, “Mainstream Media”, has always been a bit tongue-in-cheek, we saw this as a great opportunity to work with the some of the more talented broadcast professionals in the region. Furthermore, the project presented some exciting challenges for us:

How do we produce two HD live streams simultaneously?
How quickly can we capture and post clips from the live streams to the Chicago Emmy’s YouTube channel?

With little time to prepare, we had no choice but to get to work right away. As with all live streams, the first issue we wanted to resolve was on-site bandwidth. Coordinating with the hotel’s Director of Event Technologies, we secured a 100Mbps up/down broadband connection. Occasionally it happens that venues over-promise the speed of their connection, underestimating the amount of bandwidth it requires to stream in full HD. So imagine our pleasant surprise when we set up our computers and got this readout from speedtest.net:

Our reaction:

The next step was figuring out which platforms to use for our streams. We knew the goal was to ultimately get everything to YouTube, but because the Awards Ceremony was going to include some performances that might ping YouTube’s copyright infringement algorithms, we had to come up with multiple solutions.

For the Awards Ceremony stream (generously fed to us as a complete line cut from Chicago’s PBS affiliate, WYCC-TV), we opted to go with our tried-and-true white-labeled streaming partner DaCast. (DaCast, by the way, has recently made some updates to their API that we’re quite fond of. Way to go, DaCast!)

Main #broadcast area for #Emmys2014. Live in a couple minutes!

A photo posted by Nick Bacon (@kosher_bacon) on Nov 11, 2014 at 4:58pm PDT

We used YouTube for the Backstage/Red Carpet stream, as it would not contain any copyrighted material (so we hoped). The streams were then embedded in the Chicago Emmy’s website (which you can see here).

Having decided on our platforms, we went onto the next issue: how on earth do we pull, edit, and upload clips in real-time to the Chicago Emmy YouTube Channel? Here’s where we learned something new: YouTube’s live streaming platform has a built-in feature allowing you to publish highlights from your event as you stream! Here’s a video showing how to do so:

For the Awards Ceremony stream coming from DaCast, we had to add a couple extra steps. We wanted to allow for review of copyrighted material prior to posting, and we also had to account for the fact that our stream was coming from a different room than where our editors were posted.

To accommodate, we created a WireCast project file that would record clip segments to a DropBox folder shared between our streaming computer and our editing laptop. With the two computers synced via DropBox, our editor received the clips almost instantaneously and he was able to quickly review, edit, and post to YouTube.

Having resolved the technical challenges of the project, we were free to focus on producing a great event. Our field producers did an amazing job of keeping our hosts busy with great interviews. Our hosts for the evening – Tammie Souza, Stephanie Mansour, and Mike Beier – kept our backstage stream engaging and entertaining over the course of the night – 6 hours in total! And thanks to WYCC-TV, we never had to worry about the quality of the clips coming from the Awards Ceremony.

And we are live! #emmys2014 #mainstreamchicago #livestreaming A photo posted by Nick Bacon (@kosher_bacon) on Nov 11, 2014 at 2:31pm PDT

Over the course of the night, we posted 119 event highlights to the Chicago | Midwest Emmy YouTube channel. Here are some of our favorites:

A special thanks to our remarkable crew for an amazing night. Comment on your position and experiences below!

Congratulations – you’ve reached the end of the article! But that’s not the end of the story. Subscribe below and we’ll keep you up to date!

[email-subscribers namefield=”NO” desc=”” group=”Public”]