This post addresses features like Captions, Graphic Overlays, Video Indexing, and Document Uploads that take your live stream viewer experience from good to great. It's part of our series on BoxCast Features.
Your live stream lives and dies by how your viewers experience it. If you don't create a great experience for your audience, they won't come back to watch it again.
Notable factors that are fundamental to creating a watchable live stream include video resolution, video frame rate, transcoding, audio quality, and proactive monitoring. These are the basics. If you successfully consistently deliver on these, you are delivering a good viewer experience.
The type of viewer experience that truly replicates attending the event in-person, requires more. This post tackles the little things that take your live stream viewer experience from good to great.
Captions
TL;DR: Your hearing-impaired audience needs to be supported.
Captioning your video content is an important step in making your video content more accessible to everyone. It also may be important to meet compliance standards for your organization.
More than 30 million Americans live with a form of hearing loss. Millions of others are illiterate, learning to read, or use English as a second language. It's more likely than not, that some of these people are your viewers.
Learn more about how to add Captions to your live stream.
Graphic Overlays
TL;DR: Give context to what's happening on screen and create a more engaging broadcast.
Graphic Overlays allows you to add a logo or watermark to the corner of your broadcast or put up the name of a speaker with a lower thirds graphic. Graphics give context to your video. They help the viewer understand what's happening onscreen.
Overlays can also be a great way to recognize sponsors, promote upcoming activities, or feature basic advertisements.
Learn more about how to add Graphic Overlays to your live stream.
Video Indexing
TL;DR: Help your viewers find specific moments in a long recorded broadcast.
When events run long, the videos of those events can quickly turn into a hassle to navigate. Many of the viewers who go back to watch archived videos of events that they missed are looking for specific portions.
If it's a graduation, they may be looking for when their loved one gave a speech or walked across the stage. If it's a church service, they may be looking for the sermon. Without a video index, these points can be difficult for your viewer to find.
Whether it is tagging the topics of a city council meeting agenda, marking the moment of a goal in a soccer game, or breaking apart a five hour business presentation, Video Indexing will help your viewers to quickly find exactly what they are looking for.
Learn more about how to add Video Indexing to your live stream.
Document Uploads
TL;DR: Provide the same materials to online viewers that you give to in-person attendees.
In-person attendees of events often receive documents to help them follow along as the event progresses. Meetings have agendas, athletic events have game programs and schedules, and presentations have slide decks (just to name a few).
If your live stream viewer does not have access to helpful documents like these, they may have trouble following along. These documents are essential to the experience of those watching.
Learn more about how to add Document Uploads to your live stream.
Final Thoughts + Further Reading
As a broadcaster, BoxCast empowers you to take your live stream from good to great with Graphic Overlays, Captions, Video Indexing, and Documents.
Happy streaming 😃!
