This post will outline the key differences between professional streaming platforms like YouTube or Dailymotion and free ones like Vimeo or Dailymotion, such as free offerings like YouTube.
We will explore their respective benefits, such as high-quality streaming, video analytics, monetization options, and privacy and security considerations - nothing all that is offered when using live streaming services. There can be numerous advantages to employing such an option, especially when considering on-demand video streaming app development.
What Is Live Streaming?
Live streaming is an internet-based broadcasting technique that enables mobile users to listen and watch audio and video in real-time, providing greater accessibility to events for more people.
As its popularity among businesses increases, live streaming becomes a lovely method to communicate directly with audiences despite distance. Live streamings rise can also be explained by increased business communication channels that leverage it.
Live streaming can be highly effective in many contexts. This form of media allows businesses to stream live events such as service promotions, classes, online classes, religious services, or wildlife broadcasting live and direct.
Live streaming offers businesses many potential advantages.
Live broadcasts provide businesses with an effective tool for engaging their clients and community partners directly, reaching more individuals around the globe through interactive live-streaming events and communicating directly.
Live streaming allows companies to build an ever-wider global reach. Many broadcasters rely on live streaming software and resources for hosting live events. In contrast, live streaming services for businesses enable you to distribute video content professionally and responsibly.
Even though social media sites like Instagram or Facebook offer livestreaming options, their primary function is connecting with family and friends.
YouTube may provide reasonable mobile live-streaming solutions but does not include basic features for charging viewers for events.
Why Use A Professional Live-Streaming Service?
Video live-streaming services provide an ideal option to broadcast an event online. Ordinary business people need to possess the technical know-how or personalized experience required to set up live streaming.
Even buying your server, such as Wowza Media Systems, might prove too costly or cumbersome a solution.
Live streaming services make broadcasting events simple and affordable; just use one with professional quality video service for ultimate presentation control!
Also Read: Live Video Streaming for E-Learning: Trends and Opportunities
Top Benefits Of Live Streaming With A Professional Service
At our virtual streaming event, we will explore some of the reasons broadcasters utilize professional video, as well as its potential benefits to virtual events via live streaming.
1. High-Quality Streams
A free platform or your own servers dont offer enough infrastructure and content delivery networks to produce high-quality streams; to get great videos, you need a live streaming platform with solid infrastructure and CDN services.
CDN stands for "Content Delivery Network," or a global distribution system that uses CDN servers to share your content globally.
Doing it all yourself could quickly overwhelm a servers storage capabilities; why let CDN take on that burden for you?
As live video streams to CDN servers, small amounts of data are sent by their source to store on these servers before quickly sending it out to viewers around the globe with minimal latency lags.
You can, therefore, deliver high-quality streams worldwide while meeting audience needs without incurring fees for bandwidth costs or time delays. Your live stream should go smoothly without technical glitches or interruptions. Therefore, selecting a reliable video streaming CDN provider is of utmost importance for success.
The top video streaming app developer provides adaptive bitrate streaming technology that enables viewers to watch content directly on their phones without experiencing buffering delays or interruptions.
2. More Potential Audience
Event venues tend to have limited space available. Live streaming allows you to invite as many guests as youd like to "attend" the event via streaming media - especially those unable to attend due to work obligations or increased expenses.
Your event can reach those who would not usually attend by livestreaming it to them - regardless of size, location, or other restrictions.
Live streaming also allows for more accessible communication across countries or continents!
Live streaming services typically limit viewership with server capacity constraints; therefore, it is wise to opt for those offering higher viewership levels as your server of choice.
If your primary use for social media platforms is keeping in touch with family and friends or simply for fun, Instagram and Facebook might be suitable.
3. The Content Is Widely Used
Live broadcasting doesnt only refer to streaming audio and video. Pictures, text, and even live chat can all be utilized when creating multimedia videos for live streaming purposes.
Various platforms enable you to select different presentation methods. Reusing live streaming as on-demand content allows you to maximize viewership while increasing viewer engagement.
Live streaming gives you complete flexibility in terms of using any form of media for reuse - no matter the medium!
4. Easy And Convenience
Live streaming may appear hauntingly complex to ordinary people. Still, in truth, it can be simple with just an HD camera, an encoder, and internet access needed for the live broadcast.
Professional streaming platforms typically provide comprehensive documentation and tutorials to assist broadcasters with using their platform effectively, helping businesses connect more directly to wider audiences through streaming services.
5. Analytics Tracking
Track the viewership and behavior of any live-streamed event you stream online as part of monitoring services analytics dashboards or tracking tools to evaluate an event live.
Most professional streaming providers include analytics dashboards or tracking tools specifically for this purpose, providing valuable insight.
Many video streaming applications platform services provide metrics such as viewer numbers, engagement rates, and behavioral data, which allow you to gain a deeper insight into your target audience.
This data allows for greater audience intelligence. Your viewers immediate interaction with your live stream allows for immediate feedback that will enable you to tailor content experiences accordingly.
6. Customer Support
Troubleshooting technical issues with live streaming services can take time and effort. By employing one, however, you will gain 24/7 access to an experienced customer support team.
If you opt to stream content independently, your only support may come from Google and what information is already known to you about live streaming.
In contrast, reliable services that specialize in live streaming offer ongoing customer support that is designed to assist any problems that might arise when streaming live content - something Google simply cannot. When streaming live content, live support becomes essential.
Reliable streaming services with adequate support should be paramount when streaming significant events like concerts.
Disruptions to streaming can be expensive and damage brand reputation - relying on such support providers is your solution to keep things flowing smoothly.
7. Mobile Streaming
Mobiles and smart devices will likely be your viewers preferred platforms of choice for video content viewing since 45% of video consumption occurs via mobile streaming devices.
Be informed on the most up-to-date trends and statistics surrounding live streaming to ensure that your target audience can easily watch your stream on smartphones.
8. Distraction-Free Streaming
YouTube mobile is an ad-laden streaming service with plenty of distractions that may obstruct viewing experiences; unrelated ads from third parties block screen space while diverting focus away from live events being streamed live.
Professional services often provide ad-free streams so as not to overwhelm viewers with advertisements unrelated to your content.
9. Video Monetization
Are You Wondering: "How Can I Earn Money Through Live Events"? Many professional streaming services provide tools that allow them to monetize video.
Pay-per-view or monthly subscription options may also be offered as payment for viewing.
Video paywalls are essential in monetizing streaming video on demand (SVOD and TVOD), restricting free access to digital content by compelling viewers to buy or subscribe in order to gain entry.
Choose the plan that meets your video live streaming goals best and needs.
Your live-streaming platform may also benefit from sponsored advertisements that you control to help generate additional income.
For free platforms, this might even increase viewers, and viewers can control which ads appear when browsing them online.
Live streaming offers businesses innovative new opportunities to increase revenue. If you are organizing an event that only exists once, TVOD could help monetize it by charging an attendance fee similar to what would have been set at a live event.
10. Customizable Video Player
Professional streaming platforms often allow for a distraction-free viewing experience without third-party logos or advertisements being shown while you stream.
A paid solution even offers a customizable HTML5 player for an enhanced streaming experience.
Brand and functional elements can both be tailored to meet the requirements of any player you deploy, with buttons and controls you want available, responsive essential features as desired, size adjustments to meet where it will be embedded, and more.
Customizing your video player allows it to seamlessly blend in with the website or app where it will reside, giving a professional appearance. Working with a provider of video hosting is one great way of creating custom-built players.
11. Cost-Effectiveness
Professional live streaming services may be more cost-effective when it comes to bandwidth and content delivery issues than self-hosting your videos online.
This is particularly true compared to self-hosted options, which often incur more setup and hosting fees.
Buying CDN outside a professional service can be very pricey; its costs depend on your bandwidth usage and can quickly add up.
No programmer is needed to set up your streaming service for business; most come equipped with straightforward tools.
While professional services might cost more, most pre-built software solutions tend to be much cheaper; working with professional streaming providers can save both money and time resources that would otherwise go unused.
12. Integration With External Tools
Professional streaming solutions typically feature various tools; however, more is often required.
The best streaming services offer API access that enables you to customize the video hosting experience by incorporating external programs and apps - such as encoders or mixers as well as CRMs or CRM-like systems - into the hosting experience.
This lets you achieve greater personalization for video hosting services with customized integration of external encoders or mixers as well as CRMs or similar programs into their platform.
13. Privacy And Security
Piracy has become an ever-increasing concern. Privacy and security have never been so vital. Illegal streaming services account for an estimated 88% of global online piracy; their video content has been watched over 230 billion times annually!
Due to the need for more privacy and security features on free streaming platforms such as DailyMotion or YouTube, restricting access is virtually impossible.
Paid tools come equipped with these additional features, which protect from hackers while permitting control over video player access.
Privacy and security features offered include:
- Password protection
- Tokenized security
- Geographical and IP restrictions
- Domain/Referrer restrictions
With these tools, you can protect your video from those with bad intentions. You will want to protect your content with tools provided by professional video services.
14. Broadcasting Experience Streamlined
Based on these advantages, using a professional video streaming and conferencing mobile app development simplifies broadcasting processes significantly.
All your tools for streamed media production can be conveniently located under one roof for ease of start-up and production.
As most platforms include all the tools necessary for hosting, managing, and monetizing content - this ensures a great streaming experience for viewers as well.
Want More Information About Our Services? Talk to Our Consultants!
Importance Of Live Streaming Quality
Professional broadcasters strive to offer viewers an enjoyable viewing experience, which is directly affected by stream quality.
You want your viewers to experience good streaming quality; therefore, broadcasters need to pay special attention when providing live streams, as it affects viewer satisfaction and retention rates.
Studies indicate that professional broadcasters could lose up to 25 percent of their revenues due to subpar quality streams.
So, it makes perfect sense - whether or not for financial considerations - to produce content your audiences will love and enjoy.
Enhancing streaming quality has never been simpler with modern technology.
Trends And Stats For Live Video Streaming
Live streaming is an exploding industry, illustrating its tremendous growth potential with these statistics and trends.
- From 2021-2028, the value of global online video platforms is expected to increase by 8.4%
- Live streaming is expected to reach $247 billion by 2027.
- In the first six months after the pandemic, live streaming increased by 300%.
- More than three-quarters of Internet user engagement watch video content online every week
- Video content is more likely to be retained by viewers than text.
- Video content marketing increases revenue by 49% faster than any other type of content
- Live streams hold viewers attention 10-20 times longer than recorded content
- In 2022, multistreaming platforms will be popular. Many are already available.
Are You Entering Professional Broadcasting? Your organization or business will require a video platform in order to deliver high-quality streaming video content directly to its viewers.
Also Read: The Future Trends of Video Streaming App Development
Improve Stream Quality In 8 Steps
Professional broadcasting requires high-quality videos. There are various steps you can take to enhance their quality and provide viewers with an exceptional viewing experience, thereby eliminating low-quality streaming.
Follow these eight easy steps to increase your broadcasting success!
1. Invest In High-Quality Live Streaming Equipment
Your streaming equipment plays an integral part in determining the quality of live streams. In order to produce videos of exceptional quality, broadcasters need to utilize professional equipment; to give audiences high-quality streams, video content with outstanding image resolution must also be made at this level of production.
Professional broadcasting requires Full HD or even 4K cameras for optimal streaming experience; consumers and Twitch streamers may use cell phones and consumer cameras with sufficient resolution; however, B2B broadcasters require specialist equipment as B2B live streaming requires professional equipment capable of producing higher quality images than your phone or consumer camera alone can capture.
Full HD or even 4K cameras provide this higher quality experience by capturing images at a higher resolution than cell phone or consumer cameras can capture them.
Poor recording quality cannot be improved upon; instead, an effective camera should capture an optimal image at recording time and increase resolution to achieve stream quality improvement.
To enhance stream quality further, capture original footage at the highest possible resolution to improve stream quality and optimize recording quality.
2. Optimize Your Live Encoder Settings
Video encoders are integral parts of live-streaming video services. Either software or hardware encoders convert live video streams into formats suitable for online distribution and allow their transmission through streaming platforms for on-demand streaming to viewers worldwide.
Quality streaming video depends heavily on which encoder and settings are selected in the video player of your live-streaming website.
3. Professional Online Video Platforms
Select an effective online video platform (OVP) to maximize the success of your streaming setup. OVPs offer solutions for hosting video content while managing and hosting it, as well as tools for monetization and security - essential considerations when setting up video streaming services systems.
4. Select A Powerful Cdn
Your OVP video CDN provider can make a dramatic difference in viewers experiences.
CDN (Content Delivery Network) refers to an interlinked set of proxy servers used for exclusive content distribution.
Theyre commonly found integrated with video hosting platforms. When selecting one with an OVP that features global, reliable CDN capabilities, you ensure viewers will always access high-quality streams no matter their geographic location.
Choose a CDN that features an extensive distribution network - ideally one with over 100,000 servers - in order to stream high-quality video across wider regions, and make streaming smoother by taking advantage of such extensive CDN services.
5. It Would Help If You Had A Reliable Internet Connection.
Your internet speed must meet minimum upload bandwidth requirements to stream live video at least double its broadcast bitrate.
Add audio bitrate and video bitrate together for an easy calculation to determine your broadcast bitrate; add all available bitrates if broadcasting multiple-bitrate streams. Search Google for "internet test". They feature a straightforward tool that displays both download and upload speeds; upload speed is more vital to broadcasters than download speed.
When selecting an internet connection, we advise selecting Ethernet over WiFi as it tends to be more reliable and stable.
If WiFi is your only available choice, move closer to your router so as to receive a good signal strength signal.
Here are more tips for making the most of your internet connection:
- Use a wired Ethernet if possible. WiFi can be unreliable.
- If you must use WiFi, make sure you move closer to the router for optimal signal strength. Doing so will guarantee a strong signal connection and prevent dropouts or low signal strength issues from disrupting.
- Close any unneeded applications or browsers on your computer in order to free up more space for video production.
- Remove all other devices from the network; each additional device consumes additional bandwidth and must be carefully considered when expanding a network.
- Purchase a faster Internet plan if necessary.
As broadcasters or producers, its essential to recognize that 5G data will reduce latency buffering times and improve video quality for viewers with 5G technology.
6. Transcoding And Multi Bitrate Streaming
OVP provides another effective means of improving live streaming app quality: transcoding video at different bitrates.
Multi-bitrate streaming involves transmitting live streaming media at various quality levels at the same time.
Modern video players are adaptive when it comes to bit rate; they automatically detect and adapt according to viewers internet speeds, giving each viewer the best experience.
A viewer with slow internet access will get lower quality videos while those on faster connections get better quality ones - all adapted accordingly so your audience has an enjoyable viewing experience.
OVP platforms vary significantly when it comes to video transcoding tools and multi-bitrate streaming capabilities, and make sure that they match those offered by your chosen OVP provider.
Not every platform will support these basic features, so ensure your OVP does offer these.
7. Select The Optimal Resolution
Video resolution and aspect ratio settings, though closely tied with encoder settings, warrant their own section for completeness and consideration.
Perfect resolution is always a compromise: for optimal viewing experience, use the highest resolution video possible; however, with live streaming video services ``highest resolution" may not mean "best resolution".
Choose a resolution which provides a crisp and clear picture without creating lag, such as 1280 x 768 (720p) or 1920 x 1200 (1080p).
Professional broadcasters usually opt for this standard resolution when broadcasting live - however, if your goal is to enhance your stream experience, choosing an ideal resolution can do wonders!
8. Test Thoroughly
If you want to improve the quality of your streaming video, testing should come first. Step one should be knowing exactly what criteria should be looked out for when testing is being carried out.
Use these questions as guides for pre-stream tests:
- Verify the video embeds on your website are working correctly by testing each video embed to see that everything looks uniform and complete.
- Test video quality by switching bitrates if using multi-bitrate streams, with various levels available and visible?
- Test custom video streaming apps over both slow and fast internet connections to assess buffering levels; is buffering minimal?
- Test out how well the video player adapts when transitioning from fast internet to slow internet. Does the player respond accordingly?
- Stress test encoders, cameras and live streaming devices under stress conditions to see whether they will fail when under strain.
- Perform an intensive inspection. Perform tests of your livestream privately before broadcasting it live and ensure everything works seamlessly.
Your software and equipment should pass all these tests for video streaming; additionally, pre-streaming testing can improve streams further.
Want More Information About Our Services? Talk to Our Consultants!
Conclusion
Developing a video streaming app enables businesses to broadcast like experts and create videos which stand out for mobile viewers.
Live streaming allows companies to connect directly with their audience.
These platforms enable you to develop original content that shows off the technological sophistication and forward thinking capabilities of your organization and demonstrate innovative solutions it is capable of offering its target market.
Live streaming services allow you to enhance the viewing experience and access a wider audience.
Not sure which streaming service best meets your needs? Read up on what services offer free trials by reading up on our comparisons of top streaming providers.
Experience for 14 days completely risk-free by signing up today - you dont even require a credit card!
