Livestreaming has the ability to slash travel budgets, motivate remote staff and allow your business to benefit from real-time interaction regardless of the viewer’s location.
We have been involved in web casting and livecasting events for many years, and have seen dramatic improvements in both the capability and affordability of live casting due to recent advancements in technology.
The challenges in capturing an audience remotely and keeping them engaged however haven’t changed and have more to do with the planning and execution of your cast to deliver a show that maintains interest.
Below are the 5 most common issues with a Livestream that result in an audience “switching off” (and some great advice on how to avoid them!)
- Out of Sync
The worst thing that can happen in a livestream is for the audio to go out of sync with the video – imagine watching a foreign movie without subtitles! There are many things that can cause this, but the most common are poor internet bandwidth for the transmission and poor quality hardware or management of the hardware by the operators. Basically, you need people supporting you that KNOW what they are doing!
- Poor Angle Choice – Number 1: Too Wide!
Trying to take in both the screen and the presenter at the same time means the camera is trying to balance a super-bright screen with a presenter that is not as brightly lit. The problem? Either the screen gets ‘blown out’ and content can’t be read or the presenter is shown in darkness. The smart solution is for your Livecast operator to have a devoted feed direct from the presentation computer and pair this with a camera that focuses only on the presenter. Then the operator cuts between the two feeds to give the remote audience the best result – which is a high-quality stream of the presentation content interspersed with live footage of the presenter.
- Poor Angle Choice – Number 2:From the Side!
Often people will try and use a low quality ‘web-cam’ or even a phone to shoot their livecast. These types of cameras have limited to no ability to zoom or pan the shot, so people just stick it on the side of the room. The presenter in the livecast ends up looking away from the camera – thereby disengaging with the remote audience. Also, having a single, fixed camera creates a show that is, basically, boring – nothing changes, nothing moves!Instead use a professional camera with the ability to zoom in and out from a distance and place it square to the stage, directly in front of the presenter, preferably with a trained camera operator that ensures you get the best result.
- Poor quality lighting
Livecast streams can come from a devoted conference environment but in many cases they may be used for in house training, at a shareholders meeting in a boardroom or from one of many other scenarios where lighting has not been planned for the space. Poor lighting with digital cameras can result in a washed out, grainy feed, making it painful for the viewer to both see and understand the content and ultimately disengaging them from the event.
- Out of Shot
If you don’t have a skilled camera operator and just leave the camera pointed towards the stage, the presenter can sometimes simply walk out of frame! An operator will anticipate their movement and pan / zoom the camera to make sure they stay in frame, in focus and never let the remote audience feel that they have been left out of the show.
We have put together a professional yet affordable package to assist businesses of all sizes with the livecast and webcast needs. Contact us today to start planning how to deliver your livefeed to an audience ready to participate!