Comments on Top Live Video Streaming Tools of 2023

Hi, I loved your amazing post, keep posting these types of articles. It helps a lot of people.

Hello Ian. Since today morning, I have not been able to cross post my Premiere videos successfully to other pages.

We uploaded a Premiere video, which we cross-posted to other pages; the admins for the other pages then got into Creator studio to publish it on their pages, but when the Premiere LIVE started, they were not able to see the premiering Live video on their pages.

Could you please help me with this? This never happened before. We’ve been crossposting premiere videos just fine until now.

Thank you for the wonderful comprehensive analysis.  I've been streaming with OBS on a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014) but it's a resource hog and the fans kick on full blast. It seems like offloading the processing to an online service is the way to go. I don't need a lot of features at present (just doing FB Live mini-concerts for my friends/family online community; maybe expand more in the future) so just one camera for now and a good quality stereo stream (at least 128kpbs). I've got a 1GB fiber connection. Which of the tools do you think I should look at: free or low-cost, ease-of-use, low resource usage? Other features that I might want in the future are HQ recording and multistreaming.

Do you have any recommendations for platforms that can stream globally including China? Or one platform that works for China and one for the rest of the world?

Have you looked at Happs.tv ? I'd like to know your opinion on it.

Brilliant article Ian, you left no stones unturned! We're in the learning process of using vMix so I appreciate your insights.
If we had MACs I'd definitely go with Ecamm.

Hello Ian. Sadly Twitter are closing Periscope for good in couple months time (March 2021).

Love the insights you have Ian!! Thanks for sharing

Incredible info but I believe you left out Yellowfins Duck.

Fantastic info. You can always trust Ian’s blogs because he knows what he’s talking about as he has been a go-to expert in this field for a while and always researches in depth for his blogs. It is also easy to read and understand for newbies and non-techies.

Hello there, very interesting and infromative article!!

Dear Ian

thank you very much for this interesting and more than detailed article.

I saw in one comment that you did not tested livestudio 6 from vimeo. Had you the chance to test it in the meantime?
We would like to use it as we have a regualr vimeo plan for the streaming we did so far. But now we want to go the next step and add graphics etc. and a more professional streaming and therefore would studio 6 the logical step as it is included in the plan.

What really scares me that I cant find a single review from studio 6. Just a couple of comments on pinterest - which say they lost connection during streaming, which would be probably the worst scenario. You didnt test studio 6 - is there a reason for?

It really freaks me out that there are basically no reviews to studio 6. Would be great to hear from you.

Thank you very much for your time in advance.

Best Regards
Patrick

Great Article! Your content is very helpful and very well written.

Have you had any experience with Prism Live Studio (prismlive.com)?

SUGGESTION FOR A NEW PRODUCT: Long before Covid-19 I have sought a tool which would allow remote musicians to collaborate on live improvisation jams. Given the latency between contributors, no ideal solution could theoretically exist.
However a combination of cascading-preview-staging-layering from musician to musician along with beat/bar phase offsets could make the chore less aggravating.
If you have ever tried talking while hearing your own delayed echo, you know how frustratingly distracting latency can be.

As an example, at it's simplest, imagine someone creates a bass track. Half a second later at some other geographic location someone adds a guitar melody track, and half a second later yet someone adds vocals. The guitar is playing in synch with the bass 'when they hear it'. This composite stream is then sent to the vocalist who is in synch with the bass and guitar 'when they hear it'. This final synched composite stream is then sent out for public broadcast.
(Note that this entire process is simply a near-live mimic of studio layer recording, one musician at a time.)
The composite stream is also then sent back to the original bassist. By this time the composite stream they are hearing, including their own original playing, has a latency of 1.5 sec. They will of course need to listen to this through headphones and not allow this delayed stream to merge with the outgoing audio. Without some additional phase offset tool, they will be hearing the composite recording one beat late at 40bpm, or three beats late at 120bpm. By adding an additional .5 sec latency, at least they could be listening with a synched four beat delay, which is a bit less confusing.

A tool for such purposes should be able to detect the bpm and allow for input of a time signature, as well as the desired number of bars to recycle at. The nature of this tool would still make it most conducive to Frippertronics and classical sitar raga morphing of cycling elements.

Additional useful features would include the ability for any musician to choose any point along the cascade loop as their feed, if not multiple feeds, each with appropriate offsets. For instance the vocalist may wish to feed directly from the bassist, while listening to a more delayed guitarist, or no guitarist at all. Two ornamental players may wish to feed directly off the same melody source, and just hope that each other's third melody line is in harmonious parallel.

It's a far from perfect system, but at least it would allow for some orderly semblance of coordination beyond what we have now, which is everyone doing their own thing, and at best sharing a common beat.

It would be great however for improv theater, in which case, so long as the actors lines were sequential, never in parallel (although additional latency routing features could make that a possibility too), each line would generate a latency as seen by the others, as one sees in scrolling chats, but the broadcast stream would have a seamless flow.

Hi. I would like to seek for help regrading live broadcast software. Can you suggest what live broadcast software has a customizable layout. We have an upcoming broadcast and we have a sign language interpreter just like what we typically see in live broadcast in television or over the net. What we want to be seen by the viewer should be like this (please refer to the attached image). Hope you could help me with this. Thanks!

Fantastic article...very informative. I've been working (novice) with OBS and Wirecast, but thanks to your article, I'm taking a close look at vMix. It looks like a winner! Thanks again for laying out everything in an easy to read and relatively comprehensive fashion.

Thank you so very much for your thorough information, Mr. Gray.
I apologize if my challenge was addressed: is there an Android video streaming interface capable of automatically saving streams directly online even when interrupted?
Social media is not an option; a nonstarter.
When completing Twitch streams, there is a save confirmation step.
If I lose my signal, or my 'phone battery dies or shuts down when Twitch streaming, I suspect that recorded Twitch video is lost.
If that step is a required Twitch element, can you please suggest an alternative?
Having an audience, chat, a link for web viewing or other features is nice but an unnecessary option.
Can you suggest an alternative?
I am grateful for your feedback.
Thanks for all you do!

A big thanks to you! I got many points from your post. I will try to live video streaming.

This was an awesome article, thank you. One issue I am having right now is Facebook Live Studio removed the 360 feature. Am I doomed? Is facebook no longer offering 360 live streams? I can't find any information online anywhere. I can sync my 360 camera to the livestream, that works, but its in 16x9 format. As the audience you get a funky 16x9 video that can see eerything but it's not true 360 video where as the viewer you can look around on your device. Any help or leads in this would be amazing.

On the StreamYard section, the info about StreamYard not being able to capture desktop audio, is incorrect.
“Capturing Desktop Audio: no (but audio can be captured from a Chrome tab).”
StreamYard is fully capable of capturing desktop audio, even outside a Chrome tab.

On the StreamYard session, you need to fix the info about it not being able to capture desktop audio.
"Capturing Desktop Audio: no (but audio can be captured from a Chrome tab)."
StreamYard is fully capable of capturing desktop audio, even outside a Chrome tab.

Has anyone ever heard of StrmR Live ?
It's a french company in its early stages but providing a promising cheap streaming software dedicated to sports with per camera replay, html overlays, dynamic player sheets, a bunch of easy-to-use sport oriented functionalities

Hi Ian,
Thank you for great and in-depth article.
I would like to start go Live (Stream simultaneously to: Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn) through scheduling my pre-recorded videos. And Later on, broadcast Real-time Live Streaming.
I'll be very glad to hear your opinion regarding onestream.live.
thank you for your time!
Aron

Hi Ian,

Thanks for the great article, I love how detailed it is and it has answered many of my questions. If you do an update to this article, can you include Livestream Studio 6 as an option? I would love to read your take on it. I would put it in the same category with OBS Studio, Wirecast, and vMix.

Thanks!!
S.W.

Hello Ian
A great article that has helped to educate a couple of late starters in the live streaming sphere, so thank you.
We (two of us) are currently providing a live video/ audio feed from a sports venue using Facebook live. One of us has a roving camera (iPhone 11) with an external mic who doubles as roving camera/reporter/interviewer providing a stream over mobile network, and one is “at home” producing, editing, commenting, changing live videos names, responding to comments etc as the FB admin from a laptop.
While the daily schedule is pretty constant for an event (possibly two in-depth  interviews lasting a couple of minutes each, then a preview for  five to seven minutes, then a post event wrap lasting five minutes.) we don’t show the event itself, just the background to it. This happens every forty minutes up to ten or so times in a day, therefore providing 40 live videos each day of an event. The challenge is that the camera person is the one who decides when the live video/ interviews start as they are mostly casual “real-person” approaches. It would be preferred in a solution that any video start could be initiated by the camera and then the producer/editor can catch up as any live posting rolls on.
Until recently we have been providing “Native” (Thanks for the definition, now we know!) Facebook Live streaming, however are looking for a simple production solution that will allow us to self-brand our videos, add associates branding, include titles and call to actions and still respond to FB comments while maintaining that casual feel which is being driven by the in-field camera person. Overall, we are looking at becoming more professional. We are happy to have a delay in some editing and realise that this can be achieved in FB as per usual but would like some assistance on which solution may be best for us.
In most cases of the systems reviewed I believe we would have to have the in-field person as a guest and turn off access to camera and mic at the production end (i.e. laptop). I have liked the look of Switcher (Run off an iPad alongside the laptop) and Streamyard but unsure if they allow “live camera” starts, while I believe that lightstream does if it is set to do so. The ability to save raw footage for future use would be preferred along with having interactive guest interviews or involving more roving cameras at some stage in future would be great. While the laptop we use is OK, it isn’t the most powerful so a web-based solution may be best.
The selection you have reviewed is amazing however would appreciate any additional guidance from someone such as yourself who is more aware of the comparative pros and cons for our requirements. Although we can do most things, we aren’t overly technically minded, so we are looking for a KISS (Keeping Internet Streaming Simple) solution. Any assistance over and above that already provided would be amazing.
Regards
Stephen B

Thank you for an extremely comprehensive review.

In our use case scenario, we need to have upto 8 remote 'call-in' guest panellists who will be in a panel discussion. The discussion will need to be live-streamed to about 500 attendees who should be able to comment or ask questions of any of the guest panellists. Comments and questions should be hidden from the other attendees. Ideally one of the guest panellists or someone designated from the organisers end should have moderation control before they are passed onto the guest panellists. Finally we would want this to be white-label product and one that allows us to use our domain. Other features such as invites via email and SMS, registration, analytics, etc would be welcome but not a deal breaker.

Awesome list of all the video streaming tools. I have used some of them but will also try other for the best video streaming. Thanks for the wonderful list.

Is Wirecast the only one you have covered that has instant replay capability?

Great job Ian! Thank you! I really enjoyed reading but and comparing with what o already know.

Great Article!!!!! Thanks a lot Ian! Do you have suggestion for a webinar/conferencing tool being able to live stream in a web site? I've used https://jitsi.org/ and it streams on youtube that could be embedded in a website video box...or maybe also zoom can be useful. Your site is fantastic, I will definitely bookmark it

Hi Ian,
A great article. Lots of thanks.
I don't think I saw one tool that enables preview and live. Unless I missed it. If so please tell me which one. Thanks

Thanks for the amazing article! I'm working on pulling together the first virtual live event for a small client, who has Vimeo and Streamyard. What's the difference and what's best? For the simulcast event we envision, there will be a host with about 3 - 4 guests (no more than 2 onscreen at a time), four pre-recorded videos of two minutes each, and a musician/DJ. We want to broadcast from FB, YouTube, Twitter, IG and their website.

Hi Ian, Great in depth article! We are trying to develop a setup where we use multiple phones (IOS and Androids) along with other cameras (DSLR and GoPro) and microphones (IOS and USB) to produce instructional live stream Facebook Live and Zoom webinars. I found another product that Sounded hopeful. Have you seen Manycam?
Thanks for all of your information and advice.

Do any of these work with the DJI Osmo Pocket? We've been trying to find a way to use the Pocket with Switcher Studio, but so far we're stumped.

Ian, thank you for taking the time to create and post this informative article. We sincerely appreciate it. I hope you can recommend a solution to my problem. I want to live stream vocal performances. Live singing, using an audio track. I have tested zoom, but results have been awful. I am mixing the vocal and the track in a mixer, and then bringing the mixed audio signal to my computer through the usb port. I am using Audacity to play the audio, and sharing the computer sound on zoom. The audio quality is terrible. If I record the same mix and then share the sound from the mp3 file, audio is great. I have heard that StreamYard will give better results. What are your thoughts - what is the best set up for a simple vocal performance?

Thank you.

Hello Ian,

First of all, congratulations! This article is absolutely fabulous. You have shown immense generosity and for that I thank you.

I will soon launch an audio and video podcast. The video version will be streamed/posted on three platforms: LinkedIn Live, Facebook (pages) and YouTube. However, these videos will not allow and display real-time participant comments, due to logistics involved.

We will be two hosts, located in two different cities. I will be the "tech guy". My goal is to use an easy solution, allowing our weekly stream/podcast to avoid been edited (such a pain!) et being quickly posted online.

I hesitate between StreamYard and eCamm Live solutions. What would you do in my place?

Interesting discussion

Hi Ian -
I think your article is great and has opened up a world of possibilities for us. We are "Lucky Star" productions and focus on bringing musicals to the Junior High Schools around Naperville Illinois.

We are trying to put on a virtual musical production of (1) Wizard of Oz and (2) Music man (both Jr. versions). We are holding practices online with Zoom - and it is going ....ok but we are running into limitations that I'm wondering if there is a better tool. The challenging areas are :
(1) Staging - getting the actors in a window size we'd lilke and a location on "everyone's screen" (view) that we want. Seems pretty simple but doesn't seem to be available in our simplistic versions of Zoom.
(2) Audio - especially chorus numbers - syncing
(3) Common - set backgrounds - centrally controlled

I'm wondering if there are any tools and/or approaches that you can recommend for these challenges - and probably the 100 others that I haven't thought of (I'm guessing you have a lot to add here - so feel free).

As you might suspect our budget if very limited - but we're not afraid to do some digging and work. My wife Margie is the Show Director and I take on all production chors - traditionally sound, lighting, video (i.e. projected backgrounds, etc.)

Any suggestions/guidance you can provide on "recommended approach" and/or best tools would be great. (Note : the production doesn't necessarily needs to be live - so prerecorded would be ok - especially in our Covid-19 socially distanced world.)

Thanks,
Steve Novotny

This is very helpful. Do you have a specific suggestion that you think would work best for a live comedic performance in which viewers sort of direct the show with comments and the players are multi-hosting (up to 5)? Also interested in suggestions for theater. As a youth theater owner what is the best platform to showcase musical theater when you have a full ensemble singing in harmony?

Hi, i am using OBS and PromoVgram , as we know, instagram having the feature to invite the guest into the live stream. Can we do that when we live stream using rtmp to instagram via obs? i mean can we invite the guest into our instagram stream using OBS

Hi Ian! Amazing article, thanks for such thorough research. Apparently I want a mix of more than one tool and I hope you can advise on that:

I want to go live with 3 to 5 guests (max. 6 speakers in total including me) And I'd like to multicast to Facebook and YouTube, potentially Twitter/Periscope (I'd love to Instagram but I know it's not possible).

Now, I love Ecamm but I don't want to rely only on Skype. I like StreamYard but I don't like the fact that you need the most expensive plan if you want to multicast to more than 2 platforms. And I'd love the OBS functionality (scenes/images/transitions), but I don't want to rely on Zoom and I'm not sure my MacBook Air has enough processor power for it.

Which would be the best tool or set of tools to pay around $15-20/mo with multicast, not depending on Zoom/Skype and with decent customization (logo, titles, add names to speakers, maybe transitions), and if possible also a feature to consolidate questions coming from different platforms (i.e. YouTube chat + Facebook comments)? Does it make sense to use something like OBS + StreamYard or any other combination?

Thanks again, sorry for the long question.

Hey! great article Ian! ...super-informative, coherent and easy to follow...really appreciate the info!...I am not sure if you could help but I figured I would take a shot because I am having a difficult time streaming my music live on FB. i would like to achieve the most decent quality video and audio and use virtual tools capable of branding and more interactivity etc...I was hoping you could illuminate me a bit more on the subject...I am attempting to FB Live my acoustic sets (just guitar and vocals) using a GoPro to film while monitoring comments on my phone or laptop, as well as being able to use the audio coming out from my board gear so I can dial in some reverb, Eqing etc...I would also like to monetize the FB Live sets more by name-dropping sponsors, branding and merchandising etc... I cant rely on waiting around for businesses to open back up and be able to afford live music for the forseeable future so I wanted to go all in and try and figure this out to supplement my income with doing these FB gigs...Do you have any suggestions or insight on the matter to possibly achieve that??

Thank you so much for the article! As a performer, I've been using Stage Ten to broadcast performances live to Facebook, but we're trying to figure out a good way to integrate high quality audio into performances that include remote guests? Specifically, we are a group of drag queens who want to he able to lip sync and dance to music without sacrificing too much sound quality. With one performer streaming from their own laptop, it's easy to use Stage Ten to play the audio file and perform from there, but is there another tool that would work so that guests can play and react to their own audio files in real time while listening using headphones? We want to be able to have one live stream running and to take turns performing songs while the other performers go and do costume changes off camera.

Hi Ian,
This article is honestly pure awesomeness!!
I’m a drum teacher, I give group online lessons, and would need to have the possibility to have multiple angles, a decent audio and video quality and the possibility to interact directly with the students.
The online groups are pretty small, no more than 20 people for the time being.

I’ve tried with online meeting solutions such as whereby.com,meet.jitsi but the audio quality is quite poor.
I was considering moving over Streamyard or eCamm (I’m a mac person), what would be from you point of view your recommended setup ?

Awesome article, the most comprehensive one ive seen. A+ for that. I am in the music business and i am trying to figure out the best way to do interview with artist on my live, and also be able to play some of their music or video. I am interviewing up and coming artist and will have signed documents giving me permission to play their music publicly. Sound is a very big deal to me when i play the artist music. I am very intrigued with Streamyard. But im not sure if i can accomplish my goals. When i do a screenshare and lets say i brought up the artist youtube page If i play the video will my viewers be able to see and hear the video at a decent sound quality?

If not do you have recommendations on how i might achieve my goal?
In my head ive been thinking of work arounds, Like the Zoom L8 Can live stream recognize that as my sound card? Im thinking i can use that mixer and use that for my mic and use it to pipe in music?
IM LOST! lol
Thanks

Really great comprehensive article Ian, just what I was looking for. However, while my needs may not be unusual, they are rarely covered in reviews and that is I need software that I can stream a camera in an owl nest box continuously for several months without interruption and restarting a new live stream on YouTube. Right now I'm using OBS freeware and am pretty good at it, but it has the most annoying habit of just freezing at random times and cease sending new video to my feed sometimes after 6 hours sometimes after six days. I'm not in a situation where I can always monitor it or go to where the PC is to stop and restart OBS which temporarily solves the problem until it happens again. If I could check on the process and monitor and interact with it remotely wherever I am that would be great. So in a nutshell my needs are relatively simple - a continuous feed to a youtube live broadcast that viewers get invested in that I don't want broken or not have the inability to restart it - so reliability is probably my most important issue. I've tried to research this issue and have seen that others have similar problems with OBS freezing up while still continuing the stream of a frozen image, but nobody seems to know the answer. If there is a good solution out there that might work I would be interested. The camera feed is a POE cable that goes into my router and then OBS runs on a pretty strong laptop on the network and sends it to YT. Thanks for any ideas.
BB

Hi Ian,
Thanks for your extraordinary post on live streaming! It's the best I've read; complete and very clear.
I'm streaming a Live show every week using my iPhone through Wirecast Pro (with green screen and all the cool features I've learnt so far).

One of my main problems is the HDMI to Usb capture device.
I have two of them (just in case) and once and again in the middle of the show, Wirecast won't recognize the device.

Could you recommend me 'the best ever' hdmi to usb video capture device I could use with wirecast?

Thanks!

Best regards!

Hi Ian,
Great article; very helpful! Would you have thoughts on how I might move a very hands-on traditional music festival online? It would go for 4 or 5 days with at least 100 live-streamed (or perhaps pre-recorded) workshops and jams and concerts per day by instructors. Would want to limit access to people who prepay (a modest amount, but enough so we can pay the instructors), and also keep all the videos available online for a month or more for people to watch. Currently, we're doing some jams using Facebook Live to our Facebook group, which all the instructors seem to be able to manage (usually with their iPhones or Android phones (which can't mirror)), and the videos are saved to the instructors' own Facebook pages. But I'm not sure how that would scale up. We have our own website with the event schedule on it. There seem to be a few heavy duty approaches like Vimeo and BlueJeans Events that are possible but likely expensive.
Thanks in advance!
Dave

Hi - This is a terrific article and extremely helpful. I am interested in producing live content for kids, probably on Facebook Live. Is there a way that one person can be live on video while someone else moderates the comments? It's really important to keep the comments clean and appropriate and I want to find the right tool/service for that. Your suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.