Prevention Strategies for Live Streaming Issues
You are at front of house in the middle of a nice audio mix when several people come to the booth and say, "the web stream is not working.” Now you are trying to figure out how to fix the stream while maintaining the in-person experience. By the time you get situated to figure out the streaming issue, you get a repeat visit telling you the web stream is working now. While this situation is stressful, it's also typical. Web streaming relies heavily on the end user’s computer, internet and other variables that can make it difficult to understand whether the exact issue is on the transmission side or the end user's side. What can you do to help alleviate this problem?
1. Test the stream
This seems so straight forward but testing a stream can be harder than you think. If you stream on your website via a streaming provider, you need to create a backdoor to your stream, where you can access the stream without it broadcasting on the website to your audience. This allows you to turn on the stream and make sure it's working without showing that to the world. If you stream on YouTube, they give you a preview, which performs this same function. Facebook, at this point, has a complicated way of testing before you go live, but it can be done. The goal is to test all of your streams the day of your service. Make sure they work and all the routing to them is correct. If you can't test the day of, at least do a once a week test to make sure all systems are functioning.
The statement "all systems are functioning" means you are watching the stream on a network outside of your internal network. Don't test on the same system that is broadcasting, view the stream from a home site that is not at the church. All systems functioning also means you are testing everything on IOS, Android, Mac and Windows. I also recommend watching on a few of the popular browsers to make sure everything functions as it should.
2. Start the stream early
This may be the most important part of avoiding issues. If you are streaming on your website and not on a social outlet, you should start your stream at least 15 minutes early. On social outlets you have to be careful of copy-written material or still frames that may be flagged, but I still recommend you start at least five minutes early. The reason for starting early is to allow your viewers to get settled and figure out their issues. Viewers experience internet buffering, casting to TV's, re-booting computers, browser updates and many more hurdles that takes time. Plus, if you open the door early, not everyone floods to your site at the same time. If not prepared, having hundreds, sometimes thousands of computers hit your website all at service start time can cause issues. Simply allowing people to come in early will help resolve that. But more importantly, if you do have an issue, you will hear about it before your service starts and have time to correct.
3. Have an alternate stream
I am a big fan of streaming on multiple outlets: YouTube, Facebook, your website and more. Not only does this help to reach different age groups, but it gives you alternate streams. These alternate streams can be used as backup alternatives if your main stream goes down. Let's face it, social outlets crash. They are not always reliable. Your streaming provider may go down. When that happens, have a plan to direct people to the working backup. Marketing your stream is the best way to direct people to the backup. By stating two outlets in your marketing plan, for example, “experience us live on our website or at YouTube,” you are naturally telling people where to go when one stream goes down or they experience an issue on their end.
4. Provide a feedback mechanism
The last item is to provide a feedback mechanism. You need to have an outlet that allows people to contact you when they have an issue, like an email or a phone number. A trouble link that allows them to fill out a form and has a list of your streams with links is another great idea. The reasoning behind this is tracking. If you typically receive one or two trouble calls a weekend and that jumps to fifteen, then it's pretty easy to figure out you had or are having a problem. It helps you figure out if the issue is the end user or in your transmission. Of course, everyone has a chat window, but this goes beyond just having a chat window. It's important that you are proactive in the chat. Have the hosts or someone watching for comments about issues. Pro-Actively let people know of other outlets that may be streaming better while they notate the issue, so it can be tracked.
We live in a whole new world. How people attend church is going more and more digital. I believe through the use of streaming, we can go into the world and preach the Gospel to all nations (Mark 16:15). When we do this with technology, I call it the Digital Great Commission! Let's teach it, live it and go fulfill it!
Article written by David Leuschner