How To Assemble the Perfect Production Platform for Facebook Live

Jim Bask — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 15:49:11 +0000

How to Assemble the Perfect Production Platform for Facebook Live

Streaming live video to Facebook is easy, but if you want professional results you’ll need to build a professional system first. Here are the best products to consider.

By Jan Ozer of Streaming Media wrote this intriguing article.

Facebook Live has taken off like few platforms before it. One reason for its success was broad compatibility with existing live streaming tools and infrastructure: in particular, any product or service that could send a stream to a standard RTMP streaming server could broadcast to and through Facebook Live. However, by opening up Facebook Live’s application programming interface (API), Facebook spawned a range of integrations that both simplify and enhance its customer’s broadcasts. This article identifies some of the key products and services with these integrations in multiple product categories.

Before getting started, let’s have a quick look at the restrictions Facebook imposes on products and services that integrate with its API, which is shown in Figure 1. The first indicates that Facebook is a jealous master, saying, in effect, that Thou Shalt Not Worship at Any Other Live Platform but Facebook Live. Logistically, this means that if a product or service is streaming to Facebook Live via Facebook’s API, it can’t stream to another service via its API simultaneously and will display an error message if you try. While you may be able to use a tool’s generic RTMP interface to stream to other services, you’ll lose whatever features were integrated into that product or service via other platforms’ APIs.

The second restriction is Facebook protecting its mobile app, which is unfortunate, because as video apps go, the Facebook App is pretty basic. Essentially, Facebook is forcing you to use a lower-quality product just to protect an app that everyone is going to have anyway. As we talk about in that section, there are some workarounds here, as well.

Facebook’s API

Facebook has greatly expanded the features available via its API over the last few months, and it will likely continue to do so. That means that many more features will be available through 2017 and beyond. To start at the beginning, the simplest form of integration is a Facebook Live-specific preset that lets you log into your Facebook Live account from a product or service, saving you the trouble of copying and pasting RTMP stream addresses and credential information into your streaming tool. This level of integration usually lets you specify a page, event, or group to send the stream to, and it provides an encoding preset that meets Facebook’s requirements.

More advanced integrations allow you to choose the title and description for the event, as well as privacy settings, as you can in the Telestream Wirecast Facebook destination preset shown in Figure 2. In essence, these configuration options replace those you would use to create the broadcast if you did so within the Facebook Live user interface on the web.

Read the full article here.

Facebook Live Streaming – 5 Tips for Creating Professional Live Events

Jim Bask — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 14:52:04 +0000

Simon Malone from Tricaster operator lists 5 tips for creating professional live events!

The tips below are based on my experience of creating professional Facebook Live streaming events for companies and creative agencies in the UK. These tips are really intended for organisations who are happy and prepared to invest some time and money into creating a professional production, rather than creating DIY broadcasts using mobile phones or tablets.

All the examples (good and bad!) I’ve included in this post are from Facebook Live events that have been produced by organisations using professional equipment. I hope you find these 5 tips for creating professional Facebook Live streaming events helpful.

Tip 1: Plan the production and rehearse the flow of the event

The temptation with Facebook Live is to hit the “Go Live” button on the page and just go for it! For a lot of pages, this off the cuff style might work well, but if you want your brand or product to look professional and be taken seriously, this approach can more often than not come across as amateurish. The huge increase in online video has increased the audiences expectations in terms of production values and the harsh reality is that if people think the live stream isn’t up to scratch, they’ll just switch off.

I always recommend a run through of the content with the presenter, a plan of what camera will be used at specific points and clear cues if a video or image is planned to be shown during the broadcast. Also, a clear cue for when the stream has begun always makes for a great start to the broadcast.

The clip below shows how untidy a broadcast can look if there is no clear cue that the presenters are on air and no rehearsal or planning on how to introduce the live event:

Tip 2: Use good quality audio and set it up properly

A really important part of any live production that is often overlooked is the audio quality. Viewers will forgive the odd camera judder or slightly random shot while they are watching a live broadcast, but one thing they won’t put up with is bad audio. If they can’t hear the content properly, they’ll just switch off. We’ve all heard online streams which sound like they’ve been recorded underwater or where it sounds like the microphone is ½ a mile away from the presenter. The reality is that it’s pretty cheap and easy to use professional mics

during a live broadcast and it really does make all the difference. Here’s a Facebook Live video where the message is totally lost due to a number of different issues going on with the audio:

Tip 3: Select an appropriate background for your Facebook Live Broadcast

When thinking about creating professional Facebook Live Streaming events it’s worth considering that the majority of Facebook Live streams are over 10 minutes long. As a result the background the viewer sees during the broadcast is really important. It’s great that there are so many options available and if the background can reflect the key point of the broadcast then it’s even better. We’ve all seen examples of random backgrounds that look messy and untidy and they can be really distracting to the viewer. The good news is that it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money to fix this and all the examples below were either filmed on location or required very little budget to pull together.