August 10, 2018
If you’ve reached this blog, you’re probably wondering why you should implement multi-camera live streaming into your digital marketing strategy and how to pull it off.
Firstly, if you feel overwhelmed by the amount of technical terms, don’t worry about it. There is a lot of science behind it, so it’s normal. Somehow, we’ve all been there at the beginning of our search, but this is no reason to give up!
Nowadays, it’s actually much more simplified compared to what it was in the past…
Do you remember the early days of television when engineers were going around their huge studio buildings with lab coats on?
Well, forget it! All you need now is a small all-in-one box for the professional set-ups and even no box whatsoever for wireless set-ups, where you can use your own phone or tablet camera to produce your own “low-cost” live.
So yes, today anyone can create a multi-camera live with the right tools and knowledge. You might not even need to go bankrupt, but don’t be lazy on the prepping.
The first rule is: plan it in advance!
Plan your target audience, plan your script or treatment, plan your set and finally plan the physical execution.
It’s important to understand the basics. You are going to need:
- A camera (yes, you can have two or more different shots out of only one camera frame if you downsize from UHD to HD for example), or more than one if you feel ready to experiment with your editing style.
- Cables, or wireless connection if available, to connect your camera to your suite.
- A microphone (or multiple microphones) and a audio/recording mixer.
- A vision mixer/switcher to perform the live edit or switching between the different cameras and audio-visual content. This can be a proper switch board or just a computer interface.
- A video converter/encoder to take the video signal from the switcher and “transform” it, encode it, into the widely used online standard codec better known as h.264, at 29.97 fps in HD 720p resolution.
- A streaming interface to actually put the video on your social media feeds – there are also some free ones like OBS
- A recorder (optional) if you would like to store a copy of your live feed. Luckily most of the builds let you do this within the software.
There are plenty of options out there. Now it’s time to think about what you really need and, for one last time, PLAN IT IN ADVANCE!