Using LiveU Encoders for Webinars

Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and more has become essential in the workplace when hosting virtual webinars or meetings. The workforce has become so use to these virtual events some don't even realize the ways you can improve them. LiveU encoders can make all the differences in your virtual webinars. LiveU can provide a way to get high-quality and reliable video and audio from anywhere in the world. 

Dan Pisarski, VP Engineering at LiveU wrote a great article on streaming into your virtual webinar or online meeting using LiveU. Check out some highlights. 

Pisarski says using a portable encoder like the LiveU Solo to stream live video into your meeting or webinar can be the perfect solution for many scenarios like if your CEO needs to hold a meeting from a remote location or when you need to host a large meeting with a large audience but only have a single or few presenters. LiveU can help solve these.

Pisarski goes over the what you should consider and the setup options for using LiveU.

"First step is to see if your meeting/webinar type can really match the use of a portable encoder such as LiveU. Think about who will present, and if they need to see or hear the audience they are presenting to. While it’s possible to setup a two-way connection to a meeting or webinar using LiveU, it does require a few more setup steps and special features / hardware. In this blog, we will explore only the basic use case of one-side video/audio where a single/few presenters are presenting to any sized group of viewers. Those viewers will interact with the presenter only via chat/built in Q&A that doesn’t require two-way audio and video.

Now let’s take a look at your platform of choice. If your platform has a webinar mode that accepts external encoder input, this setup is likely to be quite simple. However, in some cases, such as Zoom, your setup may require a few more steps to convert your LiveU feed into something that appears to Zoom as a webcam."
 Dan Pisarski

Many platforms have webinar mode or options for RTMP inputs. The LiveU Solo lets you directly stream to the destination. The steps to stream if you are using this type of platform would be to...

1. Setup your webinar
2. Get your RTMP ingress info from the platform
3. Setup a destination with that ingress info on LiveU Solo Portal or LiveU Central

Platforms without webinar mode will not accept input from an outside encoder. There are options to get the video output of your LiveU system into the platform as if it was a feed from any webcam. See what Pisarski's suggests. 

Baseband to Webcam
"If you are a LiveU broadcast user, and you already have an LU2000 or LU4000 receiving server, you can take the baseband output (SDI) of this server and plug it into a converter (e.g.: Blackmagic Design, AJA, and Magewell) which will make this input appear as a webcam to another computer such as a laptop.
*Note, video over USB is sometimes called UVC, the actual USB protocol used to transport video."
 Dan Pisarski

 

 

Stream to NDI, NDI to Webcam
"When using LiveU Solo, or any LiveU broadcast unit, it is possible to receive the LRT stream and convert it to NDI (for the LiveU broadcast units), or receive the RTMP push stream and convert it to NDI (using the Garanin RTMP Mini Server). Once you have the LiveU stream as NDI, you can use the NDI to webcam driver to input the NDI feed to Zoom (or other programs that accept NDI) as if it was the computer’s local webcam."
 Dan Pisarski

 Check out the full article here!

Learn more about LiveU here!