# What Streaming platform are you using?



## gafftaper (Sep 24, 2020)

We are looking into live streaming events here at the school. We want to use something besides Facebook Live and Youtube Live. Something with no commercials. We want to be able to post a link and parents can watch a presentation about applying for scholarships, a PTSA meeting, or a presentation from the principal live. If it has the ability to have a chat box for questions that would be great as well. What are you using?


----------



## macsound (Sep 24, 2020)

Here's a free service that acts as a wrapper to Youtube or Vimeo live. It's geared toward churches but the "churchy" features can be turned off. https://open.life.church
The nice thing is that it's truly only a wrapper, giving you the control to host where you want and decide for yourself if you want the streaming service to be free or paid.
It also has an Intercom-like chat function where mods see the backend and can share the load of blocking people and doing 1 to 1 chat for direct questions. The chat can also have built in functions like pre-built links that are 1 click to send to all viewers.

Looking at youtube though, don't assume all youtube videos and live events are the same. 
You can have a Private stream where only those who have the link can connect and ads are a choice you can control. If you don't want to monetize the channel, just uncheck the box. They do need to login to google in order to chat. 
You can also make the stream unlisted but not private, so then you can embed the stream (just like you would a regular youtube video) onto any website, like the school website. In that case, you can utilize a chat that isn't part of youtube, like a free Intercom alternative - Drift. 
The advantage to embedding the stream into your own website, even if its just a squarespace site, is you can control the chrome - what people see surrounding the video. You can have your own pertinant links, images, calendar for upcoming events etc. 

So if you really don't want to you youtube there's vimeo, but adding your other features, it's kind of build as you go.


----------



## MRW Lights (Sep 24, 2020)

Live events on YouTube do not have to have ads.... Moreover though it sounds like you're interested in a Webinar style platform. Does your school have Zoom/WebEx? The webinar tools in those platforms are a little more friendly to your goals than moderating chat in YouTube, but can definitely be done.

Maybe this is one of those questions better answered by asking, what are you using now and what's not working for you?


----------



## gafftaper (Sep 25, 2020)

MRW Lights said:


> Live events on YouTube do not have to have ads.... Moreover though it sounds like you're interested in a Webinar style platform. Does your school have Zoom/WebEx? The webinar tools in those platforms are a little more friendly to your goals than moderating chat in YouTube, but can definitely be done.
> 
> Maybe this is one of those questions better answered by asking, what are you using now and what's not working for you?


So we do use Teams and they have a Live Events feature which would be perfect. However getting permission to use it is difficult.... getting permission to use any software is difficult actually! So I'm just looking for another option to throw out there. I don't think the powers that be will go for Youtube. They are VERY particular about these things.


----------



## dbaxter (Sep 25, 2020)

You might want to look at Jitsi.org. The free meeting setup is similar to Zoom, but since you can set up your own host, it might be possible to configure it more like a presentation.


----------



## gafftaper (Sep 25, 2020)

dbaxter said:


> You might want to look at Jitsi.org. The free meeting setup is similar to Zoom, but since you can set up your own host, it might be possible to configure it more like a presentation.


Thanks, I've heard of Jitsi. The powers that be might like the flexibility of hosting it ourselves.


----------



## TheaterEd (Sep 25, 2020)

I'm looking at using Streamyard to stream to Broadway on demand, but it can also stream to youtube, or wherever you want. You might consider this as a way to make your stream more professional looking with its logo overlays and whatnot.

I haven't tried this before, but can you embed your youtube live stream into a district site?


----------



## Catherder (Sep 25, 2020)

I was going to suggest Teams depending on your answer to MRW's question  . Who can't you get permission from - your district IS guys or Microsoft?


----------



## josh88 (Sep 25, 2020)

I know of a friend's theatre that has been using streamyard and been pretty happy with it. We're going the vimeo route (with some free, open facebook streams too) to host videos and sell access. I will note that we needed to change our music rights contract with BMI because of using the Vimeo platform. It lets us link back to vimeo or throw a player on one of our pages and has all kinds of analytics.


----------



## gafftaper (Sep 26, 2020)

Catherder said:


> I was going to suggest Teams depending on your answer to MRW's question  . Who can't you get permission from - your district IS guys or Microsoft?


It's a mess man but the short version is there are a lot of laws about the internet and kids and my District is run by lawyers. It doesn't matter if I plan to have kids on screen or not. They don't do anything quickly.


----------



## TimMc (Sep 26, 2020)

gafftaper said:


> It's a mess man but the short version is there are a lot of laws about the internet and kids and my District is run by lawyers. It doesn't matter if I plan to have kids on screen or not. They don't do anything quickly.


I presume this is a privacy/access issue. There's a certain irony to prohibiting videos of public performances or outdoor events (sports) that meet the "plain view" criteria. How do they handle parents and students live-streaming to FaceSpace or posting videos to InstaBum? This genie has been out of the bottle for some time.

I'd imagine the district has parent/teacher/administrator software in use. Could the district host the storage and have the link available only through the parent access portal?


----------



## blueeyesdesigns (Sep 29, 2020)

We have a LiveStream account that we have been using to stream events since before all this went down. It's not the most sophisticated platform, but it is very robust and easy to feed our production feeds into it. AFAIK a stream is either public or private, one-way, and there's no good way to do ticketing. Chat is available, but no Q & A. 

We also use WebEx Events. It has the benefit of being able to control access (ticketing, etc), has polls, Q & A, chat, lots of analytics, etc. On the other hand, it's really difficult to do a highly produced live event - it won't take "virtual cameras" or video feeds, so we can't route say, out of our production switcher and into the stream. We've tried cheating it by using an external video interface and making the computer think the feed was a camera, but it was glitchy and now I think they might have even dropped support for it (I have this second-hand, ymmv). You can't hide presenters without camera feeds, and you can't hide the "backstage" folks that are there to facilitate the event, like you can in Zoom or GoToWebinar. [If anyone knows any tricks for solving any of these issues, I would love to hear them. We're largely learning-by-doing over here.]


----------



## gafftaper (Sep 29, 2020)

TimMc said:


> I presume this is a privacy/access issue. There's a certain irony to prohibiting videos of public performances or outdoor events (sports) that meet the "plain view" criteria. How do they handle parents and students live-streaming to FaceSpace or posting videos to InstaBum? This genie has been out of the bottle for some time.
> 
> I'd imagine the district has parent/teacher/administrator software in use. Could the district host the storage and have the link available only through the parent access portal?


Backing off on my complaining about the IT department... The feds have actually put a lot of restrictions on schools with FERPA (An educational privacy law similar to HIPPA in the medical world), CIPA (which controls student access to the internet), and COPPA (which protects children's online privacy). The intention was good behind all of these laws, but it makes the process of adopting any new technology very slow if you are going to do your diligence and make sure you follow all of them. 

As for what happens when a student whips out a phone and live streams something during lunch, or Grandpa posts videos of the choir concert... they pretend that doesn't happen.


----------



## bderuiter (Sep 30, 2020)

We use BoxCast. It's a paid service that allows for embedding in your website and/or simultaneous streaming to Facebook, Youtube, AppleTV, Roku, etc. It has the option for make events private and password protected.


----------

