Best Streaming Software for Broadcasting
By Adam Noyes
Wowza ClearCaster is a tremendous streaming appliance, which allows for streaming to multiple CDN’s and advanced monitoring capabilities.
Check out this article from Wowza, about how to use your ClearCaster with multiple different software.
From home, from the office, or even from the home office, more live streams are being broadcast today than at any other time in streaming media’s two-decade history.
One reason for this is the relative ease of software solutions through which a live broadcast can be streamed. But the choices can seem a bit overwhelming, especially to those who are new to the whole concept of streaming.
Live encoding software is essential for compressing your video feed and editing it on the fly, but the best fit depends on your unique broadcast. A wide range of streaming software can be integrated with Wowza’s full-service platform, so let’s take a closer look.
What Is Your Workflow?
The first question to think about when considering a live broadcast tool (or even a toolbox of multiple software titles) isn’t the software features. It’s the workflow in which you’ll be using the broadcast tools.
By workflow I first mean business questions about monetization as well as creative questions around the format — will it be a single-personality, single-camera approach, or will it involve in-house or remote co-hosts and guests — and the intended audience.
While these are business and creative questions, not technical ones, they still need to be answered before you choose streaming broadcast software. Otherwise you’ll spend a frustrating amount of time compromising your vision with software that wasn’t intended for the type of broadcast you want to present to the world.
At best, you’ll spend an inordinate amount of time trying to bend your technical workflow to your creative one, and more than likely you’ll give up in frustration without realizing you needed a “wrench” when all you had was a “hammer” at your disposal.
Once you’ve addressed the business and creative workflow questions, then it’s time to turn your attention to the proper software tools for the job. Since there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to live streaming broadcasting, we’ll use a few examples of typical broadcast scenarios.
One to Many
If you’re doing a solo broadcasting gig, there are a wide set of options, mostly differentiated by the level of production value and number of cameras.
For instance, if you just want to broadcast an event from a single, stationary camera, there are a number of software applications for your Android or iOS smartphone or tablet that can do the trick. You’ll probably be unable to do lower-thirds graphics (titles at the bottom of the screen) or crawls (a ticker-type band at the very bottom of the screen with key information or breaking news) using these applications, but you will be able to broadcast live to a reasonably sized audience with no more effort than naming your stream and clicking the “broadcast” button.
Here’s a personal example: I got married about two days before the start of the COVID-19 self-isolation mandates. Since we’d had friends and members of the wedding party from abroad who couldn’t attend due to border closings, we proactively disinvited a number of our elderly or immuno-compromised friends and began searching for a way to stream the ceremony.
Working in the streaming industry doesn’t necessarily make it easier to think through the workflow of something as important as your own wedding, but my fiancée and I were looking for an easy-to-implement option that didn’t require much configuration or headache. We considered Facebook Live and a few social media live-streaming apps, but didn’t want to limit viewing to those with accounts. We ultimately went with IBM Video Cloud after an industry friend offered a temporary account.
This worked well for our one-to-many broadcast. That said, it might not have been our one-stop solution if we were looking for real-time interactivity and advanced mixing.