Live Video Tools: The Best Apps for Going Live

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Live Video Tools: The Best Apps for Going Live

The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.To get more news about moonlive, you can visit official website.

In this episode, I interview Ian Anderson Gray, the founder of Seriously Social, a blog focused on social media tools. Ian is also a live video tools expert. His courses include Seriously Social OBS Studio and Seriously Social Wirecast.
When Facebook Live started rolling out, Ian felt like everyone had access before he did, because he was an Android user (at the time) living in the United Kingdom.

In his search for a workaround, Ian discovered OBS Studio, a free tool for Macs and PCs. With OBS Studio, Ian found a way to broadcast from his computer to his Facebook page, profile, and groups. That was his entry into Facebook Live and live video.

Ian wrote a blog post on how to broadcast from your computer with OBS Studio and went out of his way to make the process as easy as possible for people to understand. He even included a tool that allows people to get the magic stream key necessary to broadcast with OBS Studio.
BeLive, probably the best-known app, has an advantage because has a free trial. You can broadcast up to two 20-minute broadcasts per week, bring in guests, and have up to three people on-screen at a time within the broadcast. However, the free version works only for Facebook Live and adds BeLive branding to your broadcast.

For more flexibility and options, you can upgrade to a paid subscription. With the BeLive Lite subscription (currently $15 per month), you can add a custom logo, which is important for branding your live video show. You can also share your screen, which is great for how-to videos.

With BeLive, you can highlight comments by displaying them on-screen. You also have a green room where up to 10 guests can wait to appear on your live show. BeLive is easy to use and the platform is getting better all the time. Because BeLive is a web-based app, it works on Macs and PCs. The downside of a web-based app is that more glitches can occur than with one that’s installed on your computer.The next tool, Ecamm Live, is available only for Mac. It’s basic, user-friendly, and inexpensive. (You pay a one-time fee of $29.95.) Ecamm Live is so easy to use, you can get your live show up and running in about five minutes.

Ecamm connects directly with Facebook. You can broadcast via your profile, a page, or a group. During your broadcast, you can share your screen and drag images and video onto the screen. (The video will play automatically.) Ecamm also has a feature that helps you follow viewers’ comments without having to look at a secondary monitor or your phone during the broadcast. Another advantage is that Ecamm broadcasts a high-quality video stream.

The downside of Ecamm (in addition to being Mac-only) is that adding guests is difficult. You can bring in a guest from Skype or Zoom, but then you need to use another tool, such as Loopback, for the audio.

The disadvantage of both of these basic tools compared to more advanced tools is you have only one scene setup. So while you show your webcam, you can’t also set up a scene where you share your screen and set up a split screen. You have to set up the different scenes on the fly.