If you’re asking yourself the question, “What in the world do I need to actually start live streaming on the internet?” you’re in good company. Though some have been broadcasting online for a while, there are still a ton of people in the same boat that you’re currently in.
At this stage, what you aren’t looking for and you don’t need is an ultra long and highly technical piece of content that confuses you and leaves you with more questions than you started with.
Quick sidenote: if you’re looking for a more technical breakdown of every step in the process of streaming, then check out this recent post instead.
So we’ll keep things straightforward in this post. In fact, we’ll only present 4 sections that each pertain to something that you’ll either have to practically “do” or “acquire” to stream.
And in the spirit of this simplicity, let’s get right into it.
See It
Hear It
Share It
Flair It
Final Thoughts
Your online audience isn’t living in the 1930s or 1940s. They’re not content to lounge on furniture in a living room while listening to the radio together. It’s a different time, of course, and most people in our culture have come to subconsciously expect professional looking HD video content on their larger devices they have at home or on the smaller ones that they carry in their pockets at any time they want.
So, your first priority is to find a way of capturing video in a high quality manner that will meet their subconsciously high expectations.
You have 3 primary choices to choose from. You can (a) use the camera on your phone, (b) use the camera on your laptop, or (c) purchase a camera that outputs a common format, like HDMI or SDI.
The great news is that two of these options are free to you, in that you probably already have them available. And depending on the type of content you’re planning on streaming, these video sources can totally do the trick. For instance, a streamer who walks around popular destinations while live, or one who posts up in little coffee house nooks to stream a close up of themselves talking in portrait mode can definitely stream through their phone. If the context of the stream is more of a “talking heads” webinar group discussion, then a native webcam on your laptop will probably do the trick just fine, as well.
However, if you’re looking to stream an event in a large space, and especially if you’re going to want to capture something with a lot of movement, like an athletic event, you’ll want to actually spend some money on a decent camera for streaming, if you don’t already have one available. Now, before I recommend which camera to use based on your price range, I’m going to first share an analogy that might help you in your decision:
Imagine if you asked a handful of culinary experts to tell you which widely available restaurant hamburger was the best in the entire U.S. Even if some people answer with a specific location, most experts would probably say, “How could I pick one? There are great hamburgers all over the place in this massive country!” The same is true when trying to identify the “best” live streaming camera in 2027. There are so many out there, and chances are, if you don’t overthink it, you’ll probably be able to find one that streams in a nice resolution, has features that you think you’d actually use, and comes at a decent price, especially if you can find it on sale online.
And remember, especially if you’re just starting out, the goal is to grab a device that can capture and send solid HD video to your viewers. If you’re able to make that happen, then you’ve checked the first box on what’s required to live stream. Would it be cool if I could afford the same custom golf clubs as Bryon DeChambeau? Yeah, but there are plenty of club sets that will do the trick for me as a bogey golfer just fine. The most important thing is getting something in my hands so I can actually start playing, and the same goes for you and your camera.
Can you imagine watching a live stream for an hour with no audio? This simple question obviously illustrates that though audio alone isn’t sufficient for a live streamed event, video that leaves out audio entirely, or that doesn’t invest in making it good, is sabotaging itself right from the start.
And the wild thing about stream audio is that though audio data is much smaller than video data, it’s actually much harder to get right in streaming than video is. This is true because so many cameras these days come with “set it and forget it” configurations. Audio, on the other hand, is much more of an art that needs to be configured to the room’s natural ambience for in person viewers and can be separately mixed so that the online audience can have a pleasant experience, as well.
So though you could just use the audio that comes directly into your camera, we really don’t recommend it in most situations. That little microphone that lives on the top of your capture device was never intended to mix and perfect a full band, or all of the sound of a high school athletic event.
For this reason, we recommend you pick up a digital mixer from any of the following brands (organized alphabetically, not from best to worst): Allen & Heath, Behringer, Mackie, Midas, PreSonus, Soundcraft, or Yamaha. Depending on your context, you may already have one of these boards, and if you’re looking to just start out, don’t worry, many of these brands make smaller units targeted to serve beginners, so it should be friendly for your budget and your learning curve. And again, just to be ultra clear, even though a few of these brands make boards that cost more than your car, that doesn’t mean that you need to take out a loan to pick up a quality console for your stream.
Overall, whichever way you choose to go, you’ll now have the ability to send audio to your online audience. Way to go, you’re already halfway towards live streaming your content online.
Here’s where things can get a bit more nuanced, but we’ll try to continue to keep things simple and straightforward for you.
Capturing video and audio isn’t the end of the road, you still need to find a way to send it to your online audience for viewing. To do this, you can take one of two primary routes.
You can live stream on Facebook to people who use Facebook who are in your network. Similarly, you can live stream on YouTube to people who are subscribed to your channel, or who search for the topics that you create content for. There are, however, a number of downsides to these free streaming tools.
First of all, they have limited reach, and really only specialize in reaching people who actively use one platform. Next, there’s a lot of competing content on these platforms, which is why the average view duration of most YouTube videos is around 2 minutes, even if the content is over an hour. Overall, social media is designed to be “scrolled” and thrives at capturing micro interactions from those using it, not in capturing attention and holding for the length of a 90 minute live stream. Additionally, advertisements are often part of longer video content on these platforms. And last in our list, though certainly not the last downside of using these platforms to stream is that you can have your content removed due to incorrectly assumed copyright infringements, or you can have your content quality degraded, and there’s not really a support workflow to have these things remedied.
Overall, free streaming is great if money is tight and your audience is smaller, but if you’re looking to build a professional experience that engages your audience over the long haul and keeps them coming back for more, we’d recommend a professional streaming service, which will probably cost less than you might think
Some services specialize in using webcams to stream webinars and individual hosts sitting at a desk and talking to an audience. As you can imagine, this is a much more simple production and there’s not much on screen action that requires the highest data or advanced functionality, so costs are typically lower in the $20 to $50 / month range.
Pro platforms that allow you to input single or multiple camera video and advanced audio mixes typically start at $100 / month and can cost more for advanced features like 4K resolution and a high frame rate like 60fps. You can encode your video through open source software or use a hardware encoder to convert your raw AV signals into digital versions that are optimized for online transfer. With more advanced features and typically better protocols and compression, streaming multi camera content in a large venue, mixing audio for a full band and various speakers, or capturing fast paced sporting events typically require a more professional service to broadcast reliably online.
Overall, live streaming is really all about sharing, and regardless of which way you choose to go, sending content through any of the above presented strategies can help you accomplish that goal.
Technically, before you get to this final step, you’re already live streaming. However, merely sending content to an online audience can still be a pretty bare bones experience for most of your viewers. Or put differently, “If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right.” With this in mind, here are a few features that you’ll probably want to consider implementing in your stream if you want to take your stream from “meh” to “marvelous!” Oh, and because we like to keep things fun around here, we’re grouping them in the form of popular Pizzas, of course.
This feature set is about pure protein. 4K streaming, 60 frames per second, streaming automation so it stops and starts by itself, and link quality adjustment so that even if the network dips, your stream doesn’t cut out. All of these features grouped together will allow your viewers to feel like they’re actually at your event in person with stunning quality and amazing reliability.
Sometimes a stream doesn’t need extra horsepower to succeed, instead it just needs a few bells and whistles. Viewer chat lets those watching interact in real time, donations make it easy for them to contribute to your cause, graphic overlays make it easy to drop in visuals on top of your video feed, document display puts in person handouts online, video markers tell your viewers where key moments are, and live multilingual captions lets anyone participate, regardless of language or auditory ability. For those with large audiences, it’s always a good idea to eat your veggies.
I went to Bible College in Chicago, so I gotta include this one. While a lot of other streams don’t need to worry about deep security, some contexts call for it. Password protection, geo-blocking, and built-in obfuscation can all protect your video data and ensure that it can only be accessed by the parties you want to see it. Additionally, advanced API access will give you even more control on how your stream is presented, and protected.
Sometimes, you just want the most popular ingredient, and a whole lot of it. This suite of features includes unlimited streaming, unlimited storage, and unlimited simulcasting so that your streams can go to as many viewers as possible, for all time, in as many places as possible. If you’re of the opinion that you need to go big or go home, this feature set is the one for you.
I couldn’t leave off the best pizza around… at least, to a small subset of fans. Here’s a feature set that some people will want nothing to do with, but that some will absolutely consider a grouping of must-have functionality. If you are streaming sports, you’ll want a customizable scoreboard with different sport scoring, as well as ticketing, subscriptions, and maybe even an OTT App as an option to present your suite of sports in a portfolio that rivals apps like Netflix and Disney+.
One Quick Note: You don't have to order just one pizza, of course. The more the merrier, based on what you actually need. A good streaming service should allow you to pick and choose the “toppings” you actually want, so the possibilities are up to you as you identify how exactly you want to “flair it.”
That’s really all that you need to stream. Video, Audio, a way to share it online, and a selection of features to spice things up a little. Anything else is probably not super worth it to look into, especially as you’re just starting out. Oh, and if you want to talk to someone if you still have a handful of questions, our team is always around to have a zero-pressure conversation in order to help you meet your goals.
So thanks for reading, hopefully streaming looks a little more straightforward to you, and we look forward to hopefully tuning into your online broadcasts soon!