Streaming Tech: YouTube Premiere
We are always looking into techniques and tech for video and recently that has meant lots of time focused on streaming live content. We just wanted to share a few of our favorite recent deep dives... YouTube Premiere and using Zoom or Teams as a streaming meeting platform.
YouTube Premiere
First lets take a look at a really cool YouTube feature called YouTube Premiere. The reason it came up while researching live platforms is that it provides a very similar experience to a live stream, which you can also do on YouTube. But the main difference is that it has to be a pre-produced video that gets uploaded to the channel that is set to be "premiered."
Feels Live, but Isn't
So, for instance, we could produce an awesome, high-end video for your company, and you could decide to use this YouTube Premiere to debut it to anyone with the premiere link. What is really great about this is that when you log in to the premiere there will be a big countdown displayed and live chat just like any other live streamed video. And when the countdown ends, the video basically acts like a live video in the browser. Viewers will not be able to skip or scrub ahead - meaning they all will experience this video at the same time and be able to chat about it while it is happening. The concept of this is just so fun to me and it's really the best of both pre-produced video and live event worlds! You can create a high-end, well-executed video to announce big news for your company (or any big news at all) to make sure everything is professional and perfect, but then you get to have everyone watch it as if it were live, too! It really takes the experience of the announcement to a fun new level. But it isn’t even just that, this feature has a ton of prospective uses. You could recap an entire event and get it cut together exactly how you want it, and then play it through a premiere as a “look-live” video. A look-live video is something that was shot and edited to look and feel as though it is happening live, even though it's really not. And then once the video is finished its "live run" - it will live on as a regular video that people can view normally on YouTube.
Using YouTube Premiere
A really cool example of this type of video was sent to me - our friends at the Akron Rubber Ducks simulated an entire game of theirs on MLB The Show 2020 and added in all of their live game day promotions. They even did a pregame in which the Governor of Ohio threw the first pitch! How cool is that? And perhaps even cooler was how well YouTube Premiere worked with this style of video. People watched the game in real time and got to see some of the fun pre-recorded promotions from past Rubberducks games mixed in. It was as close to a live sporting event as you could get. This example is a near perfect use-case for Youtube Premiere.
Making it Perfect
One good reason to do this versus trying to stream live is you can edit and adjust and make sure that every fade and every shot is perfect instead of relying on everything going right while streaming it live. One thing to note though, is that this idea was technically possible before YouTube Premiere by starting a live stream and just playing a pre-produced video the entire time. But YouTube Premiere streamlines that process though. You no longer need to set up a stream box with a playback solution and rely on solid upload speeds. Now you can upload the video in advance and it will just play back at full quality in a really cool "live" setting.
Zoom or Teams as a Meeting Streaming Platform
Another thing we have been looking into is using something like Zoom or Microsoft Teams as streaming solution for corporate meetings. A very cool piece of hardware we use at PEG is our Blackmagic Web Presenter. It allows us to set up our normal, full live production hardware (2-3 Cameras, a playback laptop, soundboard and mics, switcher, recording decks, etc.) and then we can take the output of our switcher and plug it into our Web Presenter and then plug the Web Presenter into the host computer. Long story short - once all of this is done, the computer will see our switcher output as a webcam and audio source. What this allows us to do is pipe our production feed into a Zoom or Microsoft Teams call very easily, basically as if it was a "participant" on the call. So, you could, in theory, set up a zoom call for your entire company and live stream a full quarterly meeting to them remotely with the security of a standard Zoom or Teams call. How easy is that? What I found in my research of this is that Zoom is generally a better solution for this because of a couple key features:
- Zoom allows a scaling amount of people to join a call while Teams is limited to 20 people.
- Zoom allows you to disable the other callers video and audio permanently, putting them into a “view-only” state. Teams does not have the same capabilities, so it would make it harder to organize and control the event.
All in all, this seems like a very good way to stream an entire informational event to your team. If your team (or your corporation's IT department) is already very comfortable with Zoom or Teams it will feel very natural for them to use instead of needing to view the content elsewhere. We'll keep looking at all types of ways to get your content out there. So, what live stream tech do you want us to talk about next?
