How to Create Professional Live Event Streams for Facebook Live
By Jim Bask
This article makes the business case for using streaming Facebook Live and includes a video demo showing how to create professional-quality Facebook Live streams using Telestream Wirecast. In this article I’ll cover the what, the why, and the how of streaming to Facebook Live for online video professionals. What makes Facebook Live particularly interesting as a streaming destination compared to others? In particular, I’ll look at how to stream to Facebook using the Live API, in a quick video demo on streaming to Facebook Live using Telestream Wirecast.
A Brief History of Facebook Live
Facebook Live is really only about a year old, which means other platforms have a considerable head start on it, but obviously it has an 800-pound gorilla behind it, so it’s come far fast. In August 2015, it was opened up to celebrities. At that point, only celebrities and verified celebrity accounts could stream to it using their phones. I think Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was one of the first, if not the first streamer to Facebook Live
(Figure 1, below). 
Figure 1. Key points in Facebook Live’s brief history
In January 2016, Facebook opened up the door to ordinary account-holders. Between January and March, they started rolling out live streaming to all Facebook accounts in the U.S. and the U.K. Pretty soon, if you were a user in one of those countries, you would start seeing the ability to stream live using your phone.
Then, in May, Facebook approached Telestream and some other partners to introduce their Live API, so that other third-party software vendors and coders and streamers and switchers could start streaming to Facebook Live. They wanted to launch with some partners, some people who were known for streaming and have good products in that space. We at Telestream were very pleased to be included at the outset. The API launched in June. It’s been a fun ride ever since, because a lot of people have shown interest in Facebook Live as a platform. Now, anyone can stream from any device or any computer or encoder, as long as you tie in with the Facebook API.
Why does this matter? In early 2016 at F8, Facebook’s annual developer’s conference, the company estimated that half of all internet traffic was video-based–mobile traffic in particular. As early as 2018, according to the latest estimates, you’re going to see 70% of internet traffic being video-based.
Study after study shows that video is the most engaging type of content. Worldwide, viewers are watching about 3.4 hours of online video per day (Figure 2, below, shows the breakdown). In the U.S., the average is closer to 4 hours a day. That’s a lot of time spent watching videos across all devices. That’s a sixth of your life…[continue reading on Streaming Media]