Two things are required for a successful broadcast on Subsplash Live: a scheduled live stream on your Subsplash Dashboard and an active live feed from your encoder (or a valid source file in the case of a simulated live stream, more on that later). You can send a live feed from your encoder to your Subsplash Live ingest point at any time of the day and any day of the week, but that live feed will only be distributed to your viewers if it happens within the context of a scheduled live stream; therefore, it's very important to make sure a live stream is scheduled before your planned start and that you understand how an active live feed gets linked to a scheduled live stream!
This means you can easily perform test streams whenever you want, without needing to formally schedule them and without worrying about them being visible on your website or app.
When to Schedule
You can schedule whenever you want, so long as it is at least 3 minutes before you intend to go live. However, we recommend scheduling further in advance if you can, ideally more than 7 days in advance. Because the next upcoming live stream will often be advertised on your website or app with a countdown timer, having more than 7 days' worth of streams on your schedule means that even if you only do one stream per week, there will always be something for the countdown timer to display.
We've made this process simple with the release of Repeating Live Streams, for which you can create a template and then our system can schedule all the live streams at the optimal time based on your template!
How to Schedule
Start by navigating to the Live section within your Dashboard and select Create Live Stream in the upper-right corner. Then, proceed through the following steps:
Initial Modal
Here, you may set the following:
Title: enter a title for your stream. This title will be seen in your app and on your website, as well as relayed to any chosen syndication destinations. It will also be made the title of the on-demand recording which will become available in your media library once the stream ends.
Media Series (optional): if you select a media series here, the recording for the scheduled stream will be automatically added to that series once the stream ends and the recording is made available in your media library.
Occurrence Type: choose between creating a one-time stream or a template for repeating streams.
Visibility: In each instance of a live stream, you can set it to be unlisted. This will prevent the stream from being visible in your app/embeds/etc, and will only be visible via the link or embed in the item. Read more about Unlisted Streams here!
Stream Event Details
Here you can set the details of the one-time stream or the repeating live stream template that you're creating. Live streams can have many details, but most are optional.
Schedule
Date/time: enter the start and end times for your live stream. If this stream is a one-time stream, you'll also enter the start and end dates for the stream; if this is a repeating live stream template, you'll choose which days of the week this template will repeat.
Choosing the right start and stop times is critical. See Starting & Stopping Your Encoder below for more info and best practices.
Publish time: this determines how far in advance your scheduled live stream will be displayed on your app and your website in the form of a countdown.
Stream End behavior: this determines if the on-demand recording for the stream will be automatically set visible or left invisible to the public once it is made available in your media library.
Syndication
Facebook: if you have connected your Facebook account, you can enable Facebook syndication for this stream and choose the page where the stream should be displayed. See this article for more info.
YouTube: if you have connected your YouTube account, you can enabled YouTube syndication for this stream and choose the privacy level of the stream on YouTube. See this article for more info.
Chat
If your package includes Live Chat, you can enable Live Chat for this stream.
Designate chat hosts after filling out and saving the rest of the info to avoid losing your progress!
Push Notification
You can enable a convenient reminder notification to be sent to your app users just before the scheduled start of the stream. You can also choose exactly how far in advance the notification should be sent and what the message should say. This notification will be sent to all mobile app users who are opted into the "General" notifications channel. See this article for more info.
Basic Info
The Basic Info section is only available on one-time streams or the individual occurrences of repeating live stream templates. This section is identical to what can be found in any Subsplash on-demand media item, and in fact the info entered here will be carried over to the on-demand item containing your live stream's recording once it is made available in your media library. All the fields in this section are optional. Most fields will only apply to Subsplash, but the description field will be relayed to any chosen syndication destination along with the title.
Artwork & Media Series
On the right side of the page, you can set the artwork and the media series for this live stream. Like the Basic Info section above, these will be carried over to the on-demand media item once the stream ends.
Save
Once you've filled out all the info you want, click the blue Schedule button to commit this stream to your schedule! Alternatively, if you're scheduling a one-time stream and want to return to it later to continue adding info, click Save Draft.
Even if you have already clicked Schedule to commit your live stream to the schedule, you can always go back and make changes later, right up until the stream goes live. Therefore, it is not necessary to click Save Draft if you still want the ability to make changes later. In almost every circumstance, it is recommended to use Schedule over Save Draft.
Starting & Stopping Your Encoder
At the start of this article, I mentioned that a successful broadcast requires both a scheduled live stream and an active live feed. The process of connecting those two things to produce a broadcast is called broadcast matching, and it hinges on comparing scheduled start and end times with actual start and end times. While the broadcast matching process is somewhat flexible, there are a lot of edge cases and ways that a mismatch could occur; with that in mind, use the following guidelines to determine the best time to start and stop your encoder.
Starting a Feed
The best time to start your encoder is immediately at or up to two minutes before the scheduled start time of your stream. On Subsplash Live, scheduled start times are enforced, meaning that your stream will never be visible to your audience until the exact moment of the scheduled start time, even if you started your encoder before that moment. However, there are some exceptions:
We start recording what we receive as soon as your encoder starts, so starting your encoder more than two minutes prior to the scheduled start time will lead to a long preservice portion of your recording.
We can begin syndicating up to two minutes before a scheduled start time, which gives the syndicated stream an opportunity to become established on syndicated destinations before the actual start of the event. This is a good thing as it prevents your audiences on syndicated channels from missing the first few seconds of the event, but note that it may occasionally lead to your syndicated channels starting up to two minutes early.
On TV apps, the live feed will become visible to your audience as soon as it begins rather than as soon as the scheduled start time is reached.
Stopping a Feed
The best time to stop your encoder is when or immediately after your event ends, as that will determine the end of the recording. On Subsplash Live, scheduled stop times are not enforced, meaning that you can continue to stream past your scheduled stop time; as long as your encoder continues to send us a feed, the stream will continue.
Because there isn't a significant consequence for going over your scheduled end time, schedule your end time for when you think your event will actually end, and then don't worry if you have to go a few minutes over. There is no advantage to be gained by scheduling your end time for long after the actual end of your event, and in fact that could cause problems if you are planning to stream two events back-to-back.
Unplanned Disconnection
If your encoder gets disconnected during a scheduled stream (between the scheduled start and end times), you can mitigate the consequences by reconnecting your encoder within two minutes of the disconnect. If you do, the new feed will be treated as a continuation of the old feed and the stream will continue automatically. If you don't, then our system will consider the original disconnection to have been the end of the stream.
In situations where you have a stream that has continued past its scheduled end time and then suffers an unplanned disconnect, the same rules for reconnection apply except that the reconnection window is only 20 seconds instead of two minutes.
Back-to-Back Streams
It is very easy to induce a mismatch during back-to-back streams, so be sure to carefully follow these guidelines.
When planning back-to-back streams, in addition to the starting and stopping guidelines above, it is important to leave a sufficient break between the two streams for our system to detect that they are actually separate. Ensure that your first event's scheduled end time has passed and that your live feed has been disconnected for at least two minutes before starting your encoder for your second stream. Because the consequences of failing to do this are severe (your second stream will not run), we strongly advise a "safe period" of at least 5 minutes between your two streams, during which no live feed is being sent from your encoder, and no stream is scheduled to be active.