Vimeo now has a 'live' streaming service

[Steven Davis]

Sorry for my limited description. Too much post work today. Brain fried. Vimeo, according to Vimeo, doesn't provide any player that will play multiple videos in one player. Not sure why other than my suspicion that Vimeo is limiting their bandwidth to reduce the load on their servers. But that's just me being a glass half empty guy.

[Andrew Smith]

One video at a time tends to work well.

Andrew

[Ryan Douthit]

We upgraded (downgraded?) our Vimeo Business account to Vimeo Live (turns out we didn't need the Business limits). The reason we went with Vimeo for Live is because our apps for Roku (100,000 subscribers) and Apple TV are both already powered by the Vimeo API. It's more efficient to use Vimeo to stream to our site, then it's immediately available to all our viewers on our branded platforms as well. We plan to incorporate Vimeo Live into our TV apps as well, once they make the API available (which they say is coming.)

We simulcast the stream to both Vimeo Live and YouTube Live. (Screw FB and their TOS.)

I do agree, the Live hours they allocated aren't enough for the money, though for our current-use they are fine. We picked it up specifically for a half-hour talk show format that won't come near the 5 hours they provide.

[Nate Haustein]

I used Vimeo for a stream last week via Wirecast. It was really user friendly and strightforward. A little light on the features but it did everything I needed it to do.

[Chris Harding]

Is Vimeo Live going to give the same ambient music rubbish that FB and YT are giving Nate??

[Ryan Douthit]

FWIW: Our quality control viewer watched both the YouTube and Vimeo streams from within our office and it turns out they both had the same 5-second delay from action to viewing. (Pretty darn good, imho.)

[Jack Zhang]

Originally Posted by Chris Harding

Just for interest, if I upload a wedding ceremony that has copyright music they send me an email and then put an ad on the video.

If you are using You Tube Live do they physically stop the stream if they detect any music or do they do much the same as an uploaded video clip?

Youtube re-encodes as you stream. You'll be instantly hit with a strike and your stream will be geographically restricted instantly. Just don't do it, it's not worth risking your account.

[David Barnett]

I'd checked out Vimeo Live on their site once or twice & am a vimeo member/user of regular hosting. Anyway just got an email from them asking to fill out a survey, I suppose via tracking.

Seems their intentions (reading between the lines) is to ask why ppl maybe aren't signing up for it. I answered as honestly as I could, that it was price, and basically price only. $75/mo is far to much for prosumer users who aren't streaming corporate events imho. Or people looking to test it out and grow with it (weddings, sports etc).

Just figured I'd pass this along if any of you wanna check if you got an email from them & submit a survey expressing your thoughts.

[Chris Harding]

Hi David

We are with Livestream and they have supposedly been bought by Vimeo but we have had nothing at all from either about surveys or the take-over ... I wonder if they are backpedalling now as their initial costings were very expensive and limited compared to what we pay on Livestream ?

[Donald McPherson]

Very quick Google came up with this. Vimeo acquires Livestream. https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/26/vi...video-product/

[David Barnett]

Thanks Chris, yeah I read in this thread the bought out or merged with Livestream a while back, but didn't notice they increased the rates significantly. Wow. In fairness, it could be something like Livestream had a great business model & brand recognition, but wasn't yet profitable. (No idea, just throwing it out there). I recall hearing Youtube was losing something like a million dollars a day when Google still chose to buy them years ago. Just the potential & brand name.

My guess is they do some tracking & probably send an email campagin out months ago, to which I clicked on it, viewed the site & package info, then never signed up. They're likely just sending a followup survey to people who did just that, inquiring why they clicked on it (showed interest), but didn't sign up or even check out the demo.

Being that you're a member you likely won't receive the survey, I would think. Just curious though, do you use it primarily for weddings. I recall you writing in the weddings thread being in Australia you have alot of B&G's from off the island whose families cannot travel to attend, so you have a bigger market for livestreaming, right? How's it work out, pretty seemless or is it alot more to worry about with wifi, internet connections, streaming issues etc.

[Chris Harding]

Hey David

Yeah, after the initial announcement there was a comment from the Live Stream CEO that very little would change and we were safe to continue as normal. I was just surprised at the huge costs offered by Vimeo ...one would have thought they would have been on par with Livestream ...almost double plus severe hour restrictions seemed very impractical ... We currently pay $499 per year with Livestream and that gives us unlimted viewers and unlimited storage.

Yep, we mainly do wedding ceremonies for both local and overseas couples but also funeral streams too! So far we have done around 85 streams with no real issues at all. I'd love a decent upload on our 4G network so we could offer a really high quality stream but for now it's a mere 720P at around 2 - 3 mbps but clients are happy and they also get a copy on USB as we also record the event to SD card. Where we are 4G is the only real option sadly as most places only have ADSL2 so your upload if you are lucky is maybe 1mbps at best!!

We are actually running a funeral right now on 4G live https://livestream.com/videohouse/events/7980296

[Ryan Douthit]

One big benefit of Vimeo live streaming vs. Livestream.com is that Vimeo lets you use Wirecast (or any other encoder, via integration or RTMP) on any plan. This is huge if you want to broadcast on Macs. Livestream.com only allows you to use 3rd party encoders with their most expensive option.

I would like Vimeo to have a player that stays 'open' -- doesn't transcode the footage then revert to being a player only, closing off the stream. That's the biggest downside (outside of encoder options) compared to Livestream.com.

[David Barnett]

Can't you use DaCast with Wirecast? Seems a cheaper method. Also, is Youtube Live a potential avenue for this, or is it too consumer level?


Thanks for the info, I'm looking into livestreaming & actually have the demo version (30day trial) of Wirecast.

[Chris Harding]

Just for interest if you have a Livestream.com account (the cheapest is $499 a year) you also get a full version of Livestream Studio unrestricted which also allows you to stream to your event page as well as Facebook or YT at the same time.

Yes you DO need a dedicated encoder if you dont want to stream from your computer but we find by hooking up the Teradek to your laptop as a 2nd monitor you can let it do all the hard work!

However what we really do like about Livestream (apart from no limits in storage or views) is the fact that each event has it's own event page and you can create it with details and images even a year before the event and send people the link .. AFAIK no other CDN has the event page feature so for us it presents very well to the client!!