Advice for broadcasting a funeral

[darwinbaps]

Hi forum!

I've been looking into the 3 popular live broadcasting services online lately as I've just had a request to broadcast a funeral to a couple of places interstate so that family and friends can take part. I usually do just A/V from small events so I have all the audio gear, & a couple of passable cameras, but I don't have much experience with live streaming, so I have some questions that I hope you can answer (everyone locally is closed, and the funeral is in 2 days).

1. I'm considering the premium channel plan for $350 - can I purchase this as a "once off" or do I have to sign up for a longer contract? I'm happy to "downgrade" after the first month.

2. I have access to 1500/256 aDSL - I assume my live stream will be served from livestream.com's server and not routed locally?

3. Are there any access restrictions in place to Australia? I think ustream would randomly deny overseas connections based on current load - hopefully livestream doesn't do this?

4. Most importantly I would like to put a simple restriction on the event - such as a password that I email to everybody who wants to take part. Can this be done, or does everyone need to sign up with a livestream account, and then wait for me to authorise them?

I appreciate your time - I couldn't find enough detail about this in the user manual. Please feel free to move my post to the correct place / ignore me

thanks,
Iain.

[darwinbaps]

So I tested it last night with my webcam and the on-site internet connection - looks passable. I'm testing the real camera via firewire tonight. Hopefully that coupled with the premium account will improve the quality.

I would still love to know about the access restriction thing - does every viewer have to sign up to livestream first as this would be a real pain to coordinate. From what I can see on the password page (marked "premium") I can set one password for all viewers.

Also, it looks like I could play a short video loop until the event by using some video libraray feature I saw somewhere - is this right?

And finally I created an event, but the timezone says EST - what is EST? I've set my timezone to Australian CST which is GMT+9:30 so hopefully there isn't going to be a "countdown" directing people to the wrong time!

thanks

[ernielive]

Hi Iain,

The password protection feature is only available to premium customers. It will allow you to place a password gate over your channel which forbids access to any without the correct credentials, which you create. Viewers do not have to sign up for a Livestream account unless they plan on commenting using Livestream chat.

The video loop you're referring to is the functionality our auto-pilot offers. When logged into your studio, click the 'Control Auto-pilot' tab, which will allow you to add clips to be played on continuous loop when a viewer visits your channel while you are not live.

Unfortunately, you cannot change the time zone of a created event, it will always display as EST; Eastern Standard Time. This function will likely be added as part of the New Livestream, which you can see in beta form at new.livestream.com

[darwinbaps]

Hi Ernie,

I signed up for a premium account, but I'm dissapointed the minimum term was two months! For one hour of streaming this is a bit harsh.

Also, the procaster stopped working late last night, so I had to switch back to the webcaster, which doesn't allow me to capture the computer monitor...

Originally Posted by ernielive

Hi Iain,

The password protection feature is only available to premium customers.

great, I've set a password. It works as I hoped - one password for everyone. We had about 500 hits to the website after the stream was announced so I'm expecting a bit of a following...

The video loop you're referring to is the functionality our auto-pilot offers. When logged into your studio, click the 'Control Auto-pilot' tab, which will allow you to add clips to be played on continuous loop when a viewer visits your channel while you are not live.

thanks - I knew I had seen it somewhere! Can I time the start of a video so that it ends at the right time? ie. a countdown?

Unfortunately, you cannot change the time zone of a created event, it will always display as EST; Eastern Standard Time.

EST of which country?

thanks

[ernielive]

darwinbaps,

I'm going to include links to download the latest beta version of Procaster for Mac and PC. Install the one for your OS, and if you have any further problems, please open a support ticket at the following URL: https://secure.livestream.com/myacco...ter/openticket

Procaster 20.2.43 (Win): http://www.livestream.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7604
Procaster 20.2.36 (Mac): http://www.livestream.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8557

The auto-pilot function cannot be controlled to start or end at any particular time. The auto-pilot content begins playing when the first viewer visits your channel while offline, and stops shortly after the last viewer has left the channel, or you begin your broadcast.

EST refers to North American Eastern time zone, GMT-5