From the course: Live Video Streaming: Essential Skills

Integrating presentations, live surveys, chat, closed captioning, and more

From the course: Live Video Streaming: Essential Skills

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Integrating presentations, live surveys, chat, closed captioning, and more

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- Now that we've moved beyond the big budgets and bright lights of the enterprise show, let's bring the discussion back down to earth a bit. This section is focused on integrating presentations and getting interactive with live polling and social media feeds. And for our government friends, I'll also cover 508-compliant closed captioning for live streaming. Let's begin with integrating presentations such as PowerPoint, Keynote, or Prezi. We've all been in situations where a presenter changes their deck right before they get to the podium, or better yet, doesn't let you know there's a presentation to begin with. The way we manage this is to connect the presenter's computer via hardwired cable to our switcher encoder. We convert the signal from whatever the laptop provides for a display out to an SCI signal using a conversion box like this one made by Theatrixx. By converting to SDI we can then treat the computer feed as a camera input and switch to it as if it were another camera source. With that Livestream HD550 unit we can also connect the same laptop over a wireless network if they have the Livestream producer software installed. It's a great option if a hard wire connection isn't possible. For integrating a live polling platform like Poll Everywhere, we essentially follow the same procedure. Poll Everywhere is a cloud based platform that features a PowerPoint app that displays responses in real time within your slide deck, on the house projection screens, and within your webcast. If you're looking to integrate social media into your Livestream, many platforms have features that display Twitter feeds and Facebook posts. Our Livestream HD550 has some prebuilt options that work well and can transform your event into a conversation with the audience. However, social media can be a free-for-all so be sure you have someone assigned to police the feed for inappropriate comments. It's helpful to do this so you avoid an embarrassing situation. Last but not least, for viewers in the public sector, 508 closed captioning is a requirement for both live and on-demand content. There are many software solutions and AI plugin's available. But in my experience, the tech just isn't there yet. It will be sooner than later, but until then I prefer to rely on a closed captionist to transcribe in real time. Some CDNs have the ability to feed captioning directly while others may require a plugin on a website. How you deliver 508 compliant captioning will depend on your CDN capabilities. You may need to install a plugin below your player on a web page if it doesn't support integrated captioning. For viewers, the possibilities to add interactivity and benefits beyond the video content are almost endless. If you're just starting out with webcasting take a crawl, walk, run approach. Start simple with integrating slide decks, and then build on that foundation to add more complexity as you become more confident.

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