The genesis of live video streaming apps is much older than 2017. When Android was still young, there was a veritable chorus of choices – Ustream and Tango. Live video streaming apps couldn’t fit in neatly with Android phones as the phones weren’t smart enough yet. Today, Android phones have shown their prowess and free live streaming apps are too many. One of the foremost honorable mentions is Meerkat, which was initiated in 2015. In a display of pure and elegant streaming, this live streaming app took the web by storm. However, many apps raced ahead of Meerkat and soon, Meerkat was forced to shut down.
Before getting into the details of the best live streaming apps, here are a few stats:
9 in 10 American adults have a smartphone
By the end of 2020, more than 70% of the world population is estimated to have a smartphone. In other words, the number of smartphone users stands at an estimated 6.1 billion.
With smartphones becoming mini-TV destinations, approximately 53% of the total video content watched was watched on smartphones Ericsson Mobility report reveals that video traffic is all set to grow 55 percent every year till 2020.
All these stats substantiate that live video streaming through smartphones is yet to reach its saturation. This market is here to shine and prosper. That being said, let us now look at the 5 best live video streaming apps:
Periscope:
Periscope is a live streaming app for Android and iOS, owned by Twitter. Quite obviously, you should have a Twitter account to avail the services of this live streaming app. With this app, you stream videos either to a selective group or to all. If you wish to put on an exhibition of enchanting live video streaming, it is important to share the broadcast link on Twitter and other social networking sites such as Facebook. To view your live video stream, people need not download Periscope app. They can watch directly on their respective Twitter feeds. Viewers can like the videos and comment their thoughts.
There is a provision to replay videos for 24 hours only after the broadcast has ended. Another endearing option in Periscope is the presence of “Replay Highlights” which allows your fans and followers to re-watch the best parts of the concluded live video stream. And yes, this is a boon to all your followers who couldn’t catch-up live. There is also a provision to save your broadcast once the live video stream has concluded. To discover live video streams, make the best use of the Discover tab. One of the defining features of this live video streaming app is that it provides real time statistics on the number of live viewers, replay viewers, etc. Its web interface is genuinely intuitive and a few select partners can avail live 360 degree video streaming feature. If you are serious about Periscope, spare a thought for it and download it without any qualms.
Facebook Live:
Facebook is a true-blue social networking platform just like Twitter. Its service is not limited to social networking. Its services have gone into overdrive in the wake of live video streaming. Initially, its live streaming services were made available only to popular actors and performers. Today, it is no longer a celebrity service. Every Facebook user can avail its services. At the bottom of the screen, viewer comments can be seen. And of course, likes and emoticons floating all across the screen is commonplace. Apart from watching live video streams on the web, you can watch them on the official Facebook app as well.
There is a built-in provision to start live video streaming from the status box of the mobile application. To go live, choose “Go Live” option. It is as easy as it can get. Be informed that the maximum duration of any Facebook live video is capped at 90 minutes. There is also a provision to save videos for later viewing. Facebook has a massive user base of 2 billion active users and this is a propitious time to stay connected with your fans by creating events and groups. Broadcasting selectively to events and groups is very much in Facebook’s scheme of things.
Instagram Live Stories:
If you not much of a Facebook and Twitter user, then try Instagram Live Stories. Prior to 2016, this live streaming feature was absent in Instagram. Today, Instagram has become the symbol of instant gratification through its “Stories” screen and it can be used as a live video streaming app. Implementation of live video streaming in Instagram is different from that on Facebook and Twitter. For all intents and purposes, Instagram is a mobile-only application. Moreover, there is no option to save live video streams. Hence, it is impossible to save precious moments and this makes Instagram play second Fiddle to Twitter’s Periscope and Facebook Live.
Any live video can be streamed continuously for as long as 60 minutes. When you engage in live video streaming, your profile picture shall be tagged with a “LIVE” badge. Please be informed that your live videos will feature in “Stories” section.
Broadcast Me:
Broadcast Me is available as a free live video streaming application for Android enabled smartphones. For iOS enabled platforms, it is available as a paid app. To function properly and seamlessly, this live stream app leverages a multimedia server which supports RTMP (Real Time Messaging Protocol) publishing. To use this app for stable and professional streams, there is a mandatory requirement to be fulfilled in its entirety: Encode your live vide stream with H.264 video codec and AAC audio codec.
Live.ly:
The team behind the popular Musical.ly app has announced itself on the world live streaming stage in 2016 through Live.ly app. Not only does this app enable you to watch live streams but also broadcast live. You can join live conversations by posting comments. And yes, there is a provision to send loves to your dear viewers. Another noteworthy feature is “Daily Leaderboard” which helps you identify, browse and follow the top contributors. If you happen to have an account in Musical.ly, it connects Musical.ly to Live.ly and your profile page will feature posts of Musical.ly. This viable live stream app also has a feature to find and send invites to friends through your phone contacts. Of course, you can find them through their user names as well.
StreamNow:
It is time to stoke the embers of grey cells as it is extremely important to have your own live streaming Android and iOS app to stay in touch with your enthusiastic users. StreamNow lets you monetize your live video streams by drumming up subscription based revenue generation model where users will be persuaded and convinced to pay monthly or yearly or as per session fees. For instance, if your live streaming session is on Investment Banking- Merger and Acquisition of two reputed airlines, your users can pay per session basis. There is another monetization feature called Pay per View wherein you can charge live streaming broadcasts every time a user watches your video. Here is a pro tip- Provide free access for one-time viewing. If the users intend to watch again, charge them a certain fixed amount of money.
To do away with the hassles of filling long Sign-in forms, StreamNow is equipped with Social Login feature which can be used by users to secure login from their respective social networking accounts such as Facebook and Twitter. Just like Periscope and Facebook Live, StreamNow has a commenting system which takes social engagement to the next level. To increase your conversion rates, it is important to keep your audiences posted about your upcoming live video streaming events. Hassles in payment processing can un-nerve your users. To address this, StreamNow is built with PayPal payment gateway wherein payments across the globe can be processed without any hassles.
StreamHash is also available as a desktop software. It is essentially a Node JS platform hinging on Laravel 5.2 framework. To make it UI responsive across multiple screens and different resolutions, Bootstrap is used. Popular browsers such as Safari and IE do not support WebRTC streaming protocol. This can cause serious concerns to Safari and IE users. To help you strike the perfect chord with your target audiences, StreamHash converts WebRTC into RTP protocol by using Kurento server. This live streaming software further converts RTP protocol to RTMP by using Wowza server. To know more about its features, visit StreamNow.
StreamNow has one of the best customer support teams. All technical issues are handled by the technical support team and web developers. Hence, bouncing of tickets is minimized. If you have any doubts or concerns, feel free to drop a line or two in the comments section. I shall reply in a day or two. Keep watching this space for insights on live stream tv apps and live video streaming. Do subscribe to our newsletter. My best wishes are with you and your live video streaming venture. Cheers!
For many Christians around the world, Sunday morning is a time dedicated to worship. But for most, the rigmarole of reaching church with a tiny brood in tow can be rather draining. You’re likely familiar with the drill; tired eyes and temper tantrums, mini meltdowns and dreary moods. Of late, an increasing number of churches have innovated to be as inclusive as possible. No more coaxing the kids out of bed, herding them into the car and containing their restlessness through sermons. Now, with the advent of live streaming services for churches, a whole new wave of worship has emerged. Church live streaming has opened doors for the elderly, new moms with little babies, and many other worshippers who would normally favor staying in their homes during Sunday worship. What’s more, affordable and effective technologies like StreamNow now make it possible for churches of all sizes to live stream their sermons. By streaming your church service, you can deliver your address to a wider range of people while lending a whole new meaning to worship.
Reasons Why You Should Live Stream Church Service:
Church live streaming is a brilliant way to spread your sermon across households not only in your vicinity but across the world. Worship was never meant to be restricted to a geographical vicinity, and by streaming live church services, you can capture thousands of international worshippers. The relevance of live streaming services for churches is vast. Here are some reasons you should consider broadcasting your sermons.
Increase Access:
By streaming live church services, you can penetrate households that may want to seek a path of worship but may not have the time, energy or wherewithal to make it to church religiously. By breaking geographical barriers, you can spread your message far and wide. You can also look at linking your live broadcasts with social media pages on relevant platforms. Facebook and Twitter, for example, are ideal forums to inform your followers about the dates and timings of events and special sermons, as well as specific updates at church.
Keep Your Community Connected:
When people spread across the globe, they seldom forget their roots and where they came from. By adopting the cutting-edge live streaming technology, you can help pull your community closer and keep your cultural and religious fabric intact.
Generate Income:
Generating funds to power the functioning of a church can be an exhausting affair. With so many overheads to foot, it would appear that the only source of income for a place of worship is donations. Not true. Church live streaming can prove fruitful in income generation. By selling portions of your stream, you can achieve significant earnings. Plus, you can add an additional avenue of income by onboarding sponsors whose logos you can display during a live sermon.
Focus Less About Physical Capacity:
Church live streaming makes your audience limitless and eliminates the problem of a limited seating capacity. Even if your seats fill out, you’ve got a virtual audience that can connect anytime, anywhere. Time, place and distance become immaterial when you live stream church service.
Interactivity:
It’s likely that you’re sceptical about church live streaming because you feel that the personal touch is lost. On the contrary, live streaming is an ideal way for you to connect with your virtual audience, ask for thoughts and messages and connect with individual users who may be situated thousands of kilometers away.
Infrastructure Required For Church Live Streaming:
Before you live stream church service, you should have your elementary infrastructure in place. Here’s what you’ll need:
A Camera:
Make sure you invest in a superior quality professional camera to capture your church services. The kind of camera you choose can go a long way in retaining the attention of your audience. Scan Amazon for its most popular variants and zero in on one that suits you best. Alternatively, if you would rather go for a more professionally covered stream, reach out to a production company. Such companies expertly cover events by capturing footage from various angles through multiple cameras. Unless your service is extremely small, it’s worth considering outsourcing the videography. By filming various elements of the service concurrently, your stream can be stitched better.
A Personal Computer or Hardware Encoder:
A computer or encoder can help convert your sermon into an appropriate format for live streaming. Link your camera to the computer or encoder and you’re good to go. Remember, at this stage, you could integrate your sponsors into your feed, by seamlessly integrating their logos onto your stream. You could also add subtitles, captions and an array of other elements to your broadcast.
A Sturdy Internet Bandwidth:
Pick an Internet connection that is robust. This will prove to be an essential link between you and the world, streaming your service effectively to your online video platform.
An Online Video Platform:
Your internet connection carries your stream to an online video platform, which will then transmit this data to a worldwide web of networks. It’s important to pick an online video platform that is powerful and effective. StreamNow has found acceptance among many institutes of worship and is an ideal solution for churches big or small. The platform allows you to integrate a live stream onto your website, plug it into your social media pages and even embed it into emails. Remember that with a live stream, there are aspects that can go wrong before or during a sermon. Consider going for a video platform that offers around-the-clock technical service. StreamNow is crafted especially for church live streaming and offers all of these elements and more.
Manpower Required for Church Live Streaming:
A typical live stream of a church service needs three kinds of manning. First, each camera needs to be controlled by an operator. Second, an engineer needs to be available to control the live stream and sew the various cuts together. Third, you may need labor to help you erect and disassemble equipment. Of course, if you decide to hire a media company, these elements will be absorbed in your bill, in which case you needn’t worry about investing time and energy in building a streaming team.
Costs of Live Streaming Services for Churches:
At this point, you may be disillusioned that live streaming involves astronomical costs. It doesn’t. Even if you consider infrastructure, manpower and an assortment of other costs, live streaming can still prove economical. Broadcast costs have fallen tremendously over the past ten years, owing to more reasonably priced equipment. Amazingly, even the coveted equipment for 4K streaming is attainable. A moderate church service, for example, can be streamed at about $4,000. A larger scale event could stretch to about $20,000. These are ballpark figures and the pricing depends greatly on the nature of the service, the number of cameras employed, the size of the church and the elected broadcast resolution.
Expected Revenue from Live Streaming for Churches:
Live streaming can generate enough funds for you to cover the costs of a production team. If you plan your monetization well, you may even have funds left over to devote to other aspects of your church. By employing a platform like StreamNow, you can generate revenue in three ways: advertising, pay-per-view (PPV) and subscriptions. A live streaming model pivots on selling access to the stream through tickets, much like a physical venue. With StreamNow, you can avail a paywall to leverage PPV and subscriptions.
How to Stream Church Service:
With the dawn of live streaming, church services are lending hope and faith to more and more people. Now, your messages of resilience and resolution can reach the people that need it most. Spread the love through technology, sermon after sermon, time after time.
Live streaming is a versatile tool to pull a large audience together, even if its members are scattered across a vast geographical diaspora. It is capable of carrying live sports matches, live sermons and live lifestyle events. You name it, and it’s likely that it can be streamed. But as the scale of a stream magnifies, there is a pertinent question that must be answered: how much live streaming bandwidth do you need to live stream? There is no sacrosanct internet speed for live streaming that determines the success of a stream. The truth is, creating the best internet speed for streaming is dependent on a variety of attributes.
Variable 1. Upload and Download Speeds:
When you conduct a live stream, its seamlessness is a product of your upload speed and your viewers’ download speeds. So, what’s the difference? Well, upload speed speaks of the rate at which you can upload data to the internet, whereas download speed is the reverse; it implies the rate at which data stored on the internet can enter your virtual vicinity. Upload and download speeds are generally referenced in Kbps, and sometimes in Mbps. Once you have your bandwidth locked, you can then go on to pick a premium interface for your live stream. StreamNow, for example, is a versatile tool that lets you plug your stream right into your device and reach thousands of users via multi-bitrate streams. Whether on desktop or mobile, StreamNow is an ideal solution for budding broadcasters.
Discrepancy Between Upload and Download Speeds:
When it comes to live streaming, both upload and download speeds play an equal role in determining how well a stream is received by an audience. An upload speed serves as a conveyor of data from your network to a server. For a broadcaster, the higher the upload speed, the more data that can be streamed at one go. Download speeds, on the other hand, are relevant for users who consume a broadcast. The quality of a stream is directly proportional to the live streaming bandwidth. A higher bandwidth can eliminate buffering and lags. Typically, upload speeds are far lower than download speeds. So, remember that you may not be able to broadcast fast enough through your internet connection just because your downloads are seamless.
Live Streaming Bandwidth Catches:
While internet companies promote certain speeds, you should know that these numbers are usually yardsticks that indicate the upper limit of a live streaming bandwidth. So, if you’re being offered 40 Mbps, you may not necessarily receive the entire bandwidth; you may receive only half, or perhaps even a quarter of the speed. What helps regulate your upload speed is a platform that effectively controls your video transfer. With a software like StreamNow, you can optimise your streams with minimal live streaming bandwidth.
Variable 2. Type of Live Stream:
Live streams can be classified under various buckets, each reflecting a different broadcast quality. For instance, if you’re looking to stream at a basic resolution, say 320 x 240 pixels, your data requirement would be fairly low. For video recorded in high-definition resolution, however, the live streaming bandwidth threshold would be much higher.
High Definition Video:
Let’s focus on high definition (HD) a little longer to spotlight the difference in data consumption between standard definition (SD). HD videos boast of a quality ten times superior to SD. This means that a world of possibilities can be unlocked through HD. 4K video, for instance, is setting a precedent for HD videos as viewers are embracing advanced versions of the video.
Frame Rate:
It isn’t only the resolution of a video that determines its size. Frame rate is a term that encompasses the number of concurrent still images that comprise a one-second video frame. Scour the web and you’ll notice that virtually every video is composed of thirty frames per second. A frame rate depends on the nature of the live stream. Fast-moving video streams loaded with graphics are often encoded at higher frame rates, ballooning the size of a video.
Variable 3. Bitrates:
When you stream live, a codec breaks down your video into smaller consumable nuggets that can be easily transmitted to a viewer. The H.264 codec can deliver the best internet speed needed for live streaming, primarily because it is so versatile.
Ratio Between Bitrate and Upload Live Streaming Bandwidth:
A codec allows transmission across a wide array of devices. But that’s only one-half of the story. What really determines the quality, and consequently the size of a video, is the bitrate that is used. What’s a bitrate, you ask? It’s the quantity of data that is slotted into a single second of a video. A bitrate is indexed in Kbps or Mbps and influences the amount of upload live streaming bandwidth you’ll require. A bitrate of 200 Kbps, for instance, requires an upload speed of 200 Kbps. But that’s not all. An upload speed almost always vacillates on a per-second basis, and it’s important that you keep a buffer between your bitrate and your upload speed. The ideal ratio is 1:2.
Types of Bitrate:
It’s a given that your live stream will be received by various kinds of users. Of those, some may have high download speeds, while others may not. That’s where multiple bitrates gain significance. These stream video to various devices at differential rates. So, if you’re viewing a live stream on your mobile, it’s likely to be a product of a different bitrate than the one on your lightning-speed Roku box. Multiple bitrates tailor a live stream to the infrastructure hosted by various viewers. To employ multiple bitrates, broadcasters must stream several feeds simultaneously. Luckily, the latest broadcasting tools in the market, such as MPEG-DASH, HLS and Microsoft Smooth Streaming, adapt a single stream to suit various viewers’ bitrates, saving viewers the trouble of engineering a variety of streams. This is called adaptive bitrate streaming.
Multi-Bitrate Streaming:
By now, you probably know that multi-bitrate streaming requires far more upload live streaming bandwidth than conventional streaming. Because each stream requires a separate amount of live streaming bandwidth, the total live streaming bandwidth requirement can be fairly high. A 4K stream, for example, needs an average bitrate of 15 Mbps to stream effectively. That would mean that you need an upload live streaming bandwidth of 30 Mbps. For a multi-bitrate stream, you’ll need to use a relatively robust laptop that has the ability to juggle various live streams. If you’re streaming an important live event, you may also want to consider building in redundancy by employing a hardware encoder. Matrox, Niagara and Teradek are excellent options. Each of these tools is nimble at condensing large video streams into smaller units, to ensure fluid, free-flowing content.
Variable 4. Formats:
There are a number of conventional streaming formats that have been used over the past few years. Flash, for example, has proved immensely popular. However, as technology evolves, many traditional software have fallen behind. While Flash can deliver the best internet speed for streaming on personal computers, it hasn’t quite captured the mobile space. Considering that more than half the video market is consuming content on mobiles, this is a space that holds ample opportunity.
The HLS Format:
Flash is rather obsolete in the iOS context, and so HLS is quickly being adopted as a streaming format by broadcasters. HLS can be played by several flash players and reduces the need for a multitude of formats. Plus, it allows streaming to almost any device and is ideal for iOS streams. HDS is a more recent offering from Adobe’s repertoire of products and is a perfect software for non-iOS devices.
MPEG-DASH:
MPEG-DASH can help control the live streaming bandwidth required when multiple streams are being broadcasted, saving you from blowing your upload bandwidth.
Building Your Own Live Streaming Platform:
For many new broadcasters, determining the right mix of live streaming variables can create a much-needed foundation for a live streaming interface. StreamNow is an ideal addition to your kitty when you embark on your broadcasting journey. Then, by handpicking your live streaming attributes, you can furnish your platform completely. It all boils down to the details. With this little guide, you’re sure to have yours in place.
