Overview

Live Streaming is on the rise as organizations are becoming increasingly interested in delivering real-time content to their viewers. Live broadcast industry was worth more than $30 billion back in 2016 and is only expected to double to about $70 billion by the end of 2021. With this increase in growth, organizations are in a constant search of a seamless interface to schedule, conduct and manage their live streams with the ease of a few clicks. This helps them broadcast live sessions and reach their specific target audience with enhanced viewer experience and interactivity.  


For this reason, VIDIZMO empowers enterprises to broadcast live sessions with ultimate ease, allowing their streams to reach an unlimited number of public or private audience or selected users.


Before you start


Scheduling a Live Webcast

1. Click on the red Add New Media (+) icon towards the bottom right-hand corner.




2. You will be redirected to a new page, where you should click on Schedule Live Webcast.




3. Following four tabs in Live Session configuration are the same as used while uploading media.To know more about the parameters involved in these tabs, read Understanding Media Settings.

  • Basic Settings
  • Publish
  • Access
  • Custom Attributes


Here is a list of settings that exclusively apply while scheduling and setting up your live session:





Configure Live Source

4. Navigate to the Live Source tab:

i. Expand and select the Publishing Point for your live stream

ii. In case of selecting a Publishing Point that is configured against Wowza Cloud or Wowza On-premise Server, you will be able to Start and Stop the Publishing Point from here as well as Publishing Point configuration screen

iii. Make sure that you have manually Set Up your live Encoder to push the stream on the Ingest URL of your configured publishing point. You can use any encoder of your choice but as an example, read Setting Up Wirecast Encoder for the Live Stream

iv. If your configurations have been correct up until this point, you'll be able to Preview your live stream in the player




Enable Interactivity

5. In the Interactivity tab, you can enable following options for configuring viewer interactivity on the live session:

i. Select Enable Live Chat to enable chat for the session participants. This allows registered users to exchange information and remarks in the chat box during the live session, while anonymous users can specify a name via which their messages appear. Furthermore, participants can respond to specific messages, allowing the chat box to serve as a more collaborative medium for the viewers

ii. Select Enable Chat Archiving so that once the live session ends, the live chat appears as comments at the bottom of the playback page

iii. Select Show Yammer Feed to enable Yammer feed display during the live session. Enabling this option prompts the user to define Yammer Feed Type and its corresponding Yammer Feed ID. The types of Yammer Feed can be: My Feed, Group, User, Topic and their Feed ID can be accessed by navigating to the specific feed in the Yammer web application and copying it from the URL. As an example, see How do I find a Yammer group's feedID?

iv. Select Show Twitter Feed to enable Twitter feed display during the live session. Enabling this option prompts the user to define Twitter Embed Code. To know more about the types of timelines Twitter provides for embedding and how to generate one, read How to embed a timeline

v. Select Enable Q&A for viewers to enable a section on the live page which allows participants to ask their questions to which only Moderator+ roles can respond. However, all questions and their responses are displayed to all viewers of the live session

vi. Select Show FAQs to provide a section to the viewers where they can read FAQs related to the live session. Selecting this option prompts the user to enter the list of FAQs in a text editor which will be displayed as is on the live page


To know more details, read How to Enable and View Interactivity Options in a Live Session.

 



Schedule

6. Navigate to the Schedule tab to define the following parameters for the session:

i. Specify the Start Date for the session

ii. Specify the Start Time for the session

iii. Specify the Duration of the live session in Hours and Minutes

iv. Select Timezone for the region of the live webcast

v. You can enable/disable Daylight Saving as well

vi. Enable Show Event Agenda and enter an agenda for the session that would be displayed to the viewers

vii. Once done, click on Save or Save and Close




A notification is displayed stating 'Media has been Published Successfully.'


Setting Up Wirecast Encoder for the Live Stream

In order to successfully stream a live webcast, your encoder must be configured to push the stream to the ingest URL of your Publishing Point. The steps required to configure your encoder depends on the encoder you wish to utilize. As an example, the configuration of Telestream Wirecast encoder is done to demonstrate the steps, however VIDIZMO provides you support for any encoder of your choice.


Parameters required from VIDIZMO


1. With a Manager+ role, navigate to your Control Panel > Live Streaming > Publishing Point

2. Select the Publishing Point against which you wish to cast your live stream

3. From its editing screen, copy the following parameters:

i. Ingest Point

ii. Stream Name

iii. Username

iv. Password




Configuring Wirecast Encoder


Launch your Wirecast application and follow the steps:

1. Configure Output Settings for the stream by using the parameters noted from VIDIZMO such that:

i. Select RTMP Server as your Destination

ii. Under Encoding, you need to select one of the renditions that you have allowed within your Streaming Provider configuration.

iii. Paste your ingest point URL under Address

iv. In the Stream field, you need to enter the Stream Name you copied from VIDIZMO Publishing Point configuration

v. Lastly, if you have enabled authentication for streaming, then use option to Set Credentials to enter the Username and Password you have copied from VIDIZMO Publishing Point configuration.



2. The content that you want to stream live is referred to as shots in Wirecast. See: Shot Editor to learn more about how you may configure your input stream in Wirecast

3. Once your shots have been set, read about Broadcasting your stream to the destination set up in step 1.



Live Streaming

Once you have scheduled the live webcast and set up your encoder, you can navigate to the live playback and see its details. Following are the options that a Moderator+ role encounters on the live playback page:




Start or Preview Session:


The Player provides the following options:

i. A Countdown Timer that shows the time left until the session starts

ii. A button to Start Session that allows you to start the live broadcast 

iii. Preview Session allows you to preview the live stream to make sure that the viewers will be experiencing the expected stream




Provide Feedback:


There's a feedback bar that provides you with different options depending on the ones that were allowed while scheduling the live stream: 

i. like/unlike the session,

ii. share it with specific viewers and groups. To know more, read Share/Advertise your Live Session,

iii. favoriting it,

iv. adding it to your calendar and

v. embedding it.




Share/Advertise your Live Session:


You can also share your live session with different viewers by:

i. referring the session to someone by specifying their email address, this is shared via your VIDIZMO ID. For details, see: How to Refer Media to Viewers,

ii. sharing the session with a limited audience for a defined time period. For details, see: How to Share Media with Specific Users/Groups or External Viewers and

iii. choosing the option to share the live session via your personal email address. For details, see: How to Share Media via Mail.




Interactivity Pane:


The interactivity options that were enabled while scheduling the webcast will be shown here in the right pane. For more details, see How to Enable and View Interactivity Options in a Live Session.




Analytics:


You can also view analytics of the live session which explains:

i. Total Unique Users: It represents the number of unique users that have joined the live session

ii. Total Connected Users: It represents the number of users who are currently watching the session

iii. Total Views: It represents the number of times users have landed on the live session page. For instance, it could be that one user lands on the live page three times, so it'll be counted as one unique user but three total views




Pause/Resume or Stop Session:


Once the session is started, Moderator+ roles can:

i. Pause/Resume the session: This pauses the live feed for all viewers, displaying a message 'Session is currently paused and will resume shortly.', until a Moderator+ role resumes it. Pausing the session also pauses live chat and Q&A section.

ii. Stop the session: This stops the session and displays a message to all viewers that 'Session has ended.' You will not be able to resume the session after you stop it so pause the live stream if you wish to wait for some time until you resume streaming. Moreover, stopping the session ends the live chat and Q&A section and both are archived for the users to view later on if archiving has been enabled. 


Note: Pausing, resuming or stopping the session from the playback screen has no effect on the configured Publishing Point.




Recording:


VIDIZMO allows you to record your live sessions using any of the streaming server providers of your choice, below is an explanation of how the configurations differ for every choice.


Using VIDIZMO and its seamless integration with Wowza Streaming Engine and Wowza Streaming Cloud, now you can record your live broadcast session and save it as an on-demand video to be published and accessed directly from your portal just like any other on-demand content.


In case you do not opt for Wowza Streaming Servers, you can still opt for server-side recording using a streaming server provider of your choice. For General Streaming Servers where you provide the configuration details from your provider, you must manually configure your streaming server to record the live streams and publish/upload them to VIDIZMO.


Additionally, you can also perform client-side recording by enabling live encoder to record your streams. This can be done through Wirecast by following the steps given at Record to Disk. In case of client-side recording, you need to make sure that you have enough disk space and RAM to record your live sessions. It is better to opt for server-side recording unless your streaming provider does not support it, in which case you may use your live encoder for recording the stream.


To learn more about how to proceed with your live session recording, see: Save Session via Recording.


With live streaming becoming such a common mode of communication in the realm of enterprise video, VIDIZMO provides its customers a smooth and high-quality experience with its live streaming features. To know more, read How to Upload Media.