Web Strategy and Development Blog

Live video streaming now available

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LivestreamThe office of web and new media is now offering live video streaming as part of our video services.

The University has set up a Livestream account and all streaming will be hosted here. Please see our Livestream page for examples of past events we have streamed.

Streaming services are dependent on the physical location of an event we are filming and the availability of an internet connection in that location.

Cost

Live video streaming is available for $50/hour. That is the cost if we are only streaming your event; if we are streaming in combination with other filming and editing duties, the $50/hour cost will be appended to the final production cost.

Archiving videos

We are able to archive your unedited video on Livestream by default, and you also have the option of archiving the video from your event on YouTube or iTunes U. Any additional production and editing fees will apply to videos that are later edited and being posted to YouTube or iTunes U.

Embedding your video

Embedding is not allowed from our Livestream account, however we can embed any archived videos from YouTube.

Live Video Streaming

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We undertook our first real test of live streaming an event on campus during the Spring 2011 Commencement ceremonies. Seth Odell’s Real-Time Campus Event Coverage session I attended at the CASE District VI conference last January was enormously helpful in guiding us on a successful path to begin more streaming of events on our campus.

We utilized the Tricaster system already set up in the production room of JQH Arena, and used Ustream as the streaming platform for this event. We also used the Ustream Facebook app to allow users to watch the live stream on our Facebook Page.

Since we considered this a test run, there was no advertising of the fact that we’d be streaming the Commencement ceremonies before the event took place. Once we started streaming and we knew that everything was working fine, we then started to post updates to Facebook and Twitter that the event was live. Updates included notices at the beginning of each Commencement ceremony informing users that the event was now streaming, as well as at the end of each ceremony which pointed users to the archived videos.

Graduates at Commencement

Over the three Commencement ceremonies, we had 501 total viewers, which exceeded our expectations for such a low-key test. There have been over 1200 views of the archived videos on Ustream.

Some of our key takeaways included:

  • Using the UStream Facebook App is a great way to add a second location for users to watch your streams. The app also allows users to comment and interact using their Facebook profiles.
  • Ustream allows the embedding of your streaming video on external sites; we plan on investigating this further for future events.
  • A great extra feature of Ustream is that archived videos are immediately available to users once a stream is completed. This is great for posting a raw video of an event immediately after its over while you are editing a well-produced video for final consumption.
  • Ustream is free by default, though this includes advertisements on your stream. Typically users watch a 30-second commercial at the beginning of the stream and also have small text ads pop up at the bottom of the screen during the stream. Ustream does offer premium services to remove the ads, which we will be investigating more in the future as well.

Missouri State on CDNTwo

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Missouri State is now featured on CDNTwo, an online podcast manager for the Roku. This means that users with Roku set-top boxes can now stream Missouri State academic and course content on their television sets.

All of our content featured on CDNTwo  is being fed in from Missouri State on iTunes U. We plan to update the content available on CDNTwo as we add more content to our iTunes U site. We are one of only four institutions featured on CDNTwo, with two of the others being Yale and Berkeley.