Which Livestream Platform To Use? A View From Flux Rostrum

It’s clear that livestreaming, where a person can use a smartphone or computer, and a special software platform, to send out a live video to an audience over the Internet and mobile, is now part of the mainstream. There are a number of systems to use, from USTREAM to Qik.com, and others. But even with this proliferation of livestream platforms, there’s still confusion on what to use.

Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement have shown the way in how effective livestreaming can be. Riots, police beatings, and demonstrations have been communicated to audiences as large as in the hundreds of thousands via live stream broadcast. Thus, one would think a participant in the Occupy Movement would the best to consult on the matter of what to use.

In the Yahoo Group “Videoblogging,” “Flux Rostrum,” the founder of MobileBroadcastNews.com, and a man with an interesting story told, in part, here…

gives his view on livestream platforms.

Here it is:

LIVE STREAMING IS EGO CRACK. KNOW THAT BEFORE YOU START AND YOU MIGHT GET OUT OF IT OK.

Last winter I wrote up this guideline for folks wanting to get into streaming based on my experience with occupy wall street streaming with GlobalRevolution.tv
http://mobilebroadcastnews.com/NewsRoom/Forum/How-Set-Live-Streaming-Cell

I had been streaming events occasionally prior to OWS but last fall I got to try alot of configurations. I can not speak on the financial costs of using these platforms because I was given ad free accounts with all these companies as they vied for the newly found indie journalist streaming market.

Since then things have changed a little.

LIVESTREAM
hada great platform. the Event structure of the “new” livestream … sucks. you can’t embed “new” livestream and viewers have to register with the site just to watch. I have a grandfathered add free old livestream account. that I use to display multi camera and event streams. It’s good for this but the last event I did the archive did not record the livestream generated lower 3rds so I have 4 hours of endless nameless speakers instead of a well produced show.

Livestream lost a lot of ground early on to Ustream because they failed to come out with a cell phone app until very recently and now they have an iPhone app but no android.

Livestream Procaster is quite handy for screen caping presentations or mixing multiple streams to one channel.

USTREAM
Hasthe bulk of the cell phone streaming market. It is easy to use for iPhone or Android and has all the basic social media integration built in. They are constantly making “improvements” some of which are actual improvements for the user and some of which are solely meant to address their bottom line. I use to use Ustream but during the Occupy Wall St anniversary weekend the audio from my ustream feed disappeared and has never returned. I now use Bambuser with the same phone and have no issues.

Ustream has also had issues of archived videos being deleted, scrambled feeds, dropping connections etc etc.. these issues seem to occur consistently at “the worst possible time”.

BAMBUSER
ismore widely used outside of the US. In war zones and low bandwidth areas. The quality I believe is equal.. the interface has less bells an whistles than Ustream but so far has not given me any real problems and seems to have everything you really need. The on screen interface for Bambuser is much easier to read and provides more information to the streamer than Ustream. It is just as easy to use for iPhone or Android.

Another program you might want to look into is XSPLIT. this allows you great flexibility to combine text, streams, youtubes, screen caps, live cams etc into one stream and then send that combined stream to multiple outlets (ustream,livestream, bambuser, justintv, blog tv) xSplit currently only runs on PCs. http://www.xsplit.com/

Solidarity,
~ FluxRostrum