Before diving into how SparqFest supports live streaming for your festival, it's useful to know some basic information about live streaming. If you are an experienced live streamer, you can skip this article.
Running a live stream works almost exactly the same as broadcasting a live television show. The key difference is that the “program” feed goes out to a live stream platform instead of a broadcast tower.
SparqFest Hosted Live Streams No Longer Supported
Because no one was using SparqFest-hosted live streams, we are discontinuing support for them as of January 1, 2024. We will continue to support the live streaming you have always used, our third-party hosted live streams with SparqFest providing the launch page and ticketing gateway.
If you are an old SparqFest customer, nothing really changes as you weren't using the feature anyways!
If you are new to SparqFest, don't panic! We support live streams run on all of your favorite live stream platforms like Twitch, Facebook, and YouTube. We just don't act as a platform ourself (a functionality we once had, but no one ever used).
In addition to your typical studio setup of cameras, audio, and other input elements, are live stream requires the following components:
- A live streaming tool
- A live streaming platform
- A promotional page for each live stream
- A viewing page for each live stream
The Streaming Tool
A streaming tool accepts one or more inputs from sources like cameras, Zoom, pre-recorded videos, etc and enables you to switch among the various sources to a “program” feed. It then sends the program feed to a streaming platform.
The streaming tool is thus a piece of hardware with physical inputs. It can be dedicated hardware like the Blackmagic ATEM Mini Pro or it can be your laptop or desktop computer running live streaming software like OBS.
Dedicated hardware is overall the best quality option, but it can be more complex to learn and is definitely more expensive. Software solutions on your computer, on the other hand, tend to range from free to inexpensive, but they operate at the mercy of your computer's CPU and RAM and other software running at the same time
The Streaming Platform
The streaming platform is server on the internet where the streaming tool sends your live stream. You configure the streaming tool with a URL (called an RTMP URL) and other parameters and, when you go live, it sends the stream to this platform.
Common streaming platforms include Twitch, Facebook, and YouTube. There are also specialized streaming platforms that will accept a stream and split it across multiple platforms.
In some cases, you may send your stream to a streaming platform that re-sends the stream to multiple platforms. While not common with a film festival, some events want to be seen on all possible platforms and these solutions will take a feed from your streaming tool and send it to YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, etc so you can be available on all platforms. Though SparqFest once had the functionality to act as a streaming platform, it no longer handles this function.
The Promotional Page
The promotional page is where you send your audience. They may visit this page long before the live stream starts to learn about the live stream, purchase tickets, and add it to their calendar. With SparqFest, they also come to the promotional page to gain access to the viewing page.
The Viewing Page
The viewing page is where the audience watches the actual live stream. It has a video player embedded in it capable of taking an HLS stream from the streaming platform and displaying it to a viewer. It may have additional features like chat windows as well.