From enthusiastic live sports events to awareness-spreading medical webinars to captivating product launches, live video streaming is the key to grabbing viewers’ attention. Interestingly enough, the overall experience of a live video is entirely different from that offered by an on-demand video, just like watching a live tv show differs from watching a recorded documentary. Live stream viewers cannot fast-forward or speed up the live stream, which means all the viewers will always be at the same point in time. The question then is whether to stream real-time or use pre-recorded videos instead?
In this Article:
🎥 When to use Pre-Recorded Videos for Live Streaming?
It might sometimes be useful to create a live video experience out of pre-recorded videos. After all, it takes a lot of hard work, effort, and dedicated resources to produce video content, so why not squeeze the maximum value out of it before shutting it down the closet! That said, to live stream pre-recorded videos might be an optimal decision for a variety of reasons:
Sometimes training and certification courses require the viewers to view the same content multiple times or in various batches. You might have some special seminars or lectures that need to be delivered to every new batch or a specified time to be watched by some targeted viewers. And you want the viewers to watch them as live sessions. In such a situation, it might be reason enough to live stream a playlist of pre-recorded live streams to broadcast as live streams for the desired viewers.
Similarly, when the production teams might need a cut between real-time live streams, pre-recorded live streams can become handy. A standard video can be scheduled (and re-scheduled) to deliver the required content regularly without worrying about going live in real-time. Or you, as a marketer, might want to play brand content again and again to bookend a major live event.
And finally, you just might not have enough content to fill in the gaps between a 24/7 live stream. Hence, to live stream pre-recorded videos can do the magic of delivering a smooth and continuous video experience.
🔀 Why Not Just Stream a Playlist?
A playlist of pre-recorded live streams essentially curates an entirely different user experience and offers several over-arching benefits:
- You escape the live broadcast issues like your camera or encoder getting disconnected, network fluctuations leading to unexpectedly long buffers, messing up of script, etc. You don’t want to lose viewership to such petty issues, do you?
- You can maintain your presence even when you’re not present. Yes, that’s right. Scheduling playlists of pre-recorded videos allows you to configure your live streams well in advance to escape all the hassle of being present in real-time for a live stream. So, you’re essentially live but not live!
- You can enjoy an increased click-through rate for your ads on social media platforms such as Facebook Live and YouTube, whose algorithms promote live streams over videos on demand. Chances are you probably have already viewed several pre-recorded videos posing as live streams without even realizing it.
Good News! With OneStream Live, you can create a playlist of pre-recorded videos and schedule them to go live on your desired date and time and your preferred time zone. You can upload the pre-recorded video to Facebook Live or stream the pre-recorded video live on YouTube with just a few clicks. Gain further comprehensive knowledge about OneStream Live with our detailed Udemy course.
OneStream Live offers two ways of uploading a video file for pre-recorded playlist streaming. One, you can directly upload from your device, be it your mobile phone or computer. In this case, the video size is limited to 5GB. Or, you can use video directly from one of the multiple cloud storage options available such as Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Frame.io, and Box Storage. There is no video size limit for such uploads.
Read More: How to upload and schedule a video for pre-recorded streaming?
And if there are any sudden changes of plans and you want to alter your content any time before going live, you can easily edit and modify your scheduled playlist from your OneStream dashboard.
The playlist can only be modified at least 30 minutes before going live.
▶️ Final Takeaway
People today prefer the excitement and personal involvement of live streams. Live videos fetch as many as 6x more interactions and 10x more comments than traditional videos. Similarly, 80% of the people prefer watching a live video to reading a lengthy blog or a social media post. That said, the world of live streaming offers impeccable opportunities for growth and capitalization. But since you cannot always be live in real-time, scheduling a playlist of pre-recorded videos will significantly facilitate you in building and maintaining the emotional appeal offered by live streams.
Using pre-recorded videos as ‘Live Linear’ streams offers several benefits for use cases. Whether you are an individual streamer, a marketer, a huge brand, an educational institute, or a training and certification providing body, you can offer continuous sequential content to your audience with ease and convenience. You can curate a playlist and live stream pre-recorded videos and schedule them to broadcast as live streams to be simulated for viewers when your real-time live content is unavailable. Multicasting these videos on several platforms at once will add another pinch of authenticity to your content and keep your audience coming back for more.
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OneStream Live is a cloud-based live streaming solution to create, schedule, and multistream professional-looking live streams across 45+ social media platforms and the web simultaneously. For content-related queries and feedback, write to us at [email protected]. You’re also welcome to Write for Us!
