FIVE YEARS AGO, I took a group of students onto a practice pitch for a 360 video live streaming session. I doubt any of them knew the significance of the event because the students were in a sports and business curriculum, not a creative broadcasting curriculum. Today, I'm looking at the working notes from that session, thinking it's time to restart live streaming sessions.
YouTube Live Streaming
I like the ease of setting up and launching a live YouTube stream because once I get subscribers to turn on notifications, they often join right into the sessions. The YouTube Live option on my Samsung Note is stable and effortless. I prefer to go with landscape orientation, using the DJI OM4 gimbal to stabilise everything. I'm trying to determine which Samsung handsets allow for two SIMs because we often stream from rural locations. Most of our live streams are unlisted on YouTube at the moment.
Zoom Live Streaming
I think Zoom's robust recording service and COVID-tested UI offers me the fastest way to connect with people at work. If they join on mobile, they can offer 360 real-time views of their office or studio spaces. Plus, I let the Otter.ai into the Zoom Room and that generates the fastest transcripts I've ever used for live events. It is much easier to teach young people confidence as media producers when they can sit behind a pinhole camera instead of under a boom mic.
Audio Considerations
We need to get high quality audio at source. I've been happy with the SabineTek SmartMic+ but now plan to move up to the Rode Go II because it will allow me to connect a Rode Mic Transmitter to my Zoom H6's headphone jack and then beam it back to the Rode Receiver to be mixed into the live stream. The Zoom H6 field recorder generates no scrubbing sounds or handling noises. I need to field test this set-up and hope to get some hands-on sessions with John Tierney.
Open Source Streaming Protocols
When I bought my first drone, I used RTMP to livestream during flight. Five years later, there are better alternative protocols available to transport streams to my CDN. I'm using HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) and Secure Reliable Transport (SRT), the open source protocol. I hope to devise a low cost solution with my university so we can port our live streams directly through a server for viewing.
Bonus Link Jetson Nano Streaming from RPI Camera to Browser
[Bernie Goldbach teaches creative media for business for the Technological University of the Shannon.]
