Have you been considering using Facebook Live for your organisation? But perhaps you do not want to live stream with the current square ratio of Facebook Live – and perhaps you want to have more than one person on stage at the same time?
That is a topic I have been covering here in articles over the months and some of the options you can use include Huzza.io that allows you through their paid platform to have up to six people on screen at once, Smiletime which is a new free platform where you can have up to four people on screen at once and then you could make use of third party tools such as OBS (free), Wirecast (paid) or you could get a third party to be your producers for your show.
But what if you wanted more people on screen at the same time – say 10, 50 or even 100 people with their own video screen? Well that is where the new integration with Facebook Live by BlueJeans Primetime comes into play. Actually you could have more than 100 people if you had multiple people in front of each camera.
Don’t get me wrong I am not suggesting that you might want 100 people at the same time on a live stream to Facebook but I can certainly think of use cases.
Such as when I was SVP for HR for Diageo and we had global HR leadership group of about 50 people – how great would it have been to have the global HRD or a member of the HR leadership team present and then they could get immediate visual feedback from people with them holding up a card of red, amber or green to vote on a proposition and then you could unmute people to speak about their concerns to the issue.
While I saw the press release for BlueJeans Primetime, the features of the new platform were brought to life for me when I saw long time friend Guy Kawasaki host a demonstration on Facebook Live.
BlueJeans Primetime is a platform for video events and used by large organisations and event management teams. This new development allows those same events to be live streamed via Facebook Live where you can stream to a page or a group. And remember you can have private groups.
As I mentioned earlier, with BlueJeans Primetime for Facebook Live you can have up to 100 people on screen at the same time. The number of people you can have in a BlueJeans event is 5000, but when you stream to Facebook Live there is no limit to the number of people who could watch your live stream other than what you determine the privacy settings of the live event are.
BlueJeans Primetime for Facebook Live also enables you to have the main speaker on stage with other attendees in smaller video windows.
Or with BlueJeans Primetime for Facebook Live enables the main speaker to be the only person on stage.
Live streaming stream to Facebook Live with BlueJeans with the three options for who is on camera can be seen in the image below.
You can also share your screen on Facebook Live broadcasts with the BlueJeans Primetime platform
In an article on Fast Company it references that “the Facebook Live integration free to all current BlueJeans Primetime customers, as well as those who sign up for Primetime in the next 30 days. The company said it is still figuring out how to price the service for those who sign up after two months”.
If your organisation wishes to register for a trial of BlueJeans network you can do so here – applications are subject to approval it seems from the copy on the press release.
A case study on the BlueJeans website (pdf) indicates that the Facebook Live integration has also been used by Facebook’s own people. While Facebook already had a number of video conference rooms at its headquarters and its larger sites, the BlueJeans integration with Facebook Live has meant that employees could meet virtually even if they did not have access to the video conference facilities or tradition online meeting platforms.
Be aware of what you share when live streaming
I have not yet had the opportunity to speak to the team at BlueJeans to understand more about the integration, though it appears from the video they are using the Facebook api and I am anticipating that you will also be able to share video assets as they enable this on the main video conference service.
But beware if you do this – there have been a number of live streams to Facebook closed down even mid stream recently – and some by prominent entrepreneurs both themselves and when working with producers of their shows. All because the content they are sharing in the live streams are subject to copyright.
We have discussed the issue of copyright many many times on Live Stream Insiders including when Facebook introduced their rights manager – in their announcement they stated that they had taken steps to ensure that Rights Manager protects live video streams as well – every Facebook Live video stream is reviewed against files in the Rights Manager reference library, and if a match surfaces, they will interrupt that live video.
Rights management is not a new thing for live video or video communications and YouTube has had systems in place for many years.
So no matter what platform you use to live stream to Facebook or any other platform ensure that you comply with copyright and have the appropriate permissions for the content you share in your live stream. For an introduction to copyright for live streaming you can read this article.
It also should be noted that Facebook does reference copyright guidelines on their introductory page about Facebook Live.
If you are looking to live stream to Facebook Live with multiple participants, especially if you are a larger enterprise I would encourage you to check out BlueJeans network.
And if you are not sure how to get started and what to take into consideration when selecting the right live stream solution for your communications needs, then you can schedule a private conversation with me here.
Update: BlueJeans Primetime for Facebook Live on the Live Stream Insiders Episode
On the 18 September the product manager for BlueJeans Primetime joined us for the Live Stream Insiders show whch we live streamed to Facebook Live.
There have been a lot of incorrect statements about BlueJeans Primetime service pricing and it is one of the questions we covered in the show. You can see in this segment that the pricing has not yet been released and the platform will be aimed at small and medium businesses. I definitely encourage you to register for the free trial of the platform.
Additional resources related to Blue Jeans Primetime for Facebook Live streaming:
- An introduction to BlueJeans Primetime for Facebook Live
- How to join a live stream on BlueJeans Primetime as a guest or attendee on your desktop or mobile
- Learn about BlueJeans Primetime from the product manager Pashmeen Mistry who joined us on the Live Stream Insiders show
- Watch the segment from the live stream where discuss the target market for BlueJeans Primetime
- Learn how to get started as a moderator of a Facebook Live show using BlueJeans Primetime
- Fifteen reasons you should consider using BlueJeans Primetime for Facebook Live
- 30 features that would make BlueJeans Primetime a more powerful platform for live streaming.
