How to Create Professional Live Event Streams for Facebook Live

In this article I’ll cover the what, 为什么, 以及如何为在线视频专业人士提供Facebook Live流媒体服务. 与其他流媒体相比，是什么让Facebook Live特别有趣? 特别是, I’ll look at how to stream to Facebook using the Live API, 在一个快速的视频演示中，使用Telestream Wirecast流媒体到Facebook Live.

A Brief History of Facebook Live

Facebook Live is really only about a year old, which means other platforms have a considerable head start on it, but obviously it has an 800-pound gorilla behind it, so it's come far fast. In August 2015, it was opened up to celebrities. 在这一点上, 只有名人和经过验证的名人账户才能用手机流媒体. 我认为巨石强森(Dwayne " The Rock " Johnson)就算不是第一个，也是第一个在Facebook Live上直播的人。下面的图1).

图1. Key points in Facebook Live’s brief history

2016年1月，Facebook向普通账户持有人敞开了大门. 1月至3月间，他们开始向美国所有Facebook账户推出直播服务.S. 和美国.K. 很快, if you were a user in one of those countries, you would start seeing the ability to stream live using your phone.

然后, 约5月, Facebook联系了Telestream和其他一些合作伙伴，介绍他们的Live API, 这样其他第三方软件供应商、编码员、流媒体和转换者就可以开始向Facebook直播流媒体了. They wanted to launch with some partners, 有些人以流媒体著称，在这个领域有很好的产品. We at Telestream were very pleased to be included at the outset. The API launched in June. It’s been a fun ride ever since, 因为很多人都对Facebook Live这个平台感兴趣. 现在, anyone can stream from any device or any computer or encoder, as long as you tie in with the Facebook API.

Why does this matter? In early 2016 at F8, Facebook’s annual developer’s conference, 该公司估计，所有互联网流量中有一半是基于视频的，尤其是移动流量. As early as 2018, according to the latest estimates, you're going to see 70% of inter网 traffic being video-based.

一项又一项研究表明，视频是最吸引人的内容类型. Worldwide, viewers are watching about 3.4 hours of online video per day (下面的图2, shows the breakdown). 在美国.S., the average is closer to 4 hours a day. That's a lot of time spent watching videos across all devices. That's a sixth of your life.

图2. The average viewer worldwide watches video 3.每天4小时.

Why Facebook Live?

There are a lot of places to stream to (下面的图3). Facebook Live is far from the only game in town. I’m not recommending that you should stream only to Facebook Live, or to any other single platform, 就此而言. A lot of these platforms have their own advantages. Some are running on other companies' systems on this list. 这只是我们的合作伙伴和目的地的列表，你可以把你的视频发送到.

图3. Lots of streaming options

例如, 与其他公司合作有很多好处，如图3所示, 出于某些策略上的原因，你应该考虑一次选择多个. YouTube Live, for example, is a huge destination for video. The most recent figure I’ve seen estimated that every minute, 45 hours of video footage are being uploaded to YouTube. Facebook is hardly going to be the last word in live streaming, 但这绝对是在一个竞争激烈的舞台上竞争.

Why should you choose Facebook? 最明显的原因是，地球上有七分之一的人在使用Facebook, with a billion users logging on every day. 这对任何想要吸引观众的人来说都是很有吸引力的. 它拥有庞大的用户群以及内置的社交、联系和分享工具.

The other reason you might want to choose Facebook Live is because, 有趣, 一些人已经在使用它进行流媒体播放，并发现他们从客户和观众那里获得了比在其他平台上更多的参与度. 他们也尝试过其他平台，目前他们坚持使用Facebook是有原因的.

Why else would you choose it? 分享权力(下面的图4). 现在, Facebook not only gives you access to a large audience, 但据报道，Facebook上的直播在分享算法中占有更大的优先权. No one outside the company knows Facebook’s exact algorithms, 但目前可靠的估计是，直播帖子的权重大约是其6-10倍, 而不是本地上传的视频、图片或YouTube嵌入视频.

图4. Facebook Live sharing power

The other reason to choose Facebook is they're going all in on it. If you watched the World Series in October, 但你可能已经注意到，在两局之间，有几个广告推广流媒体到Facebook直播. 也, 如果你在世界各地的某些城市看到广告牌或公共汽车经过, you will see vehicles like the one shown in 图5 (below) 开车.

图5. Facebook is going all in on promoting Facebook Live.

Facebook正在努力鼓励更多的人将其视为一个视频平台. That can't be said for all other streaming platforms. 他们不一定会得到足够的关注，或者至少没有足够的营销预算. Promotion doesn’t guarantee adoption, 当然, 但Facebook Live在流媒体平台中是独一无二的，因为它背后有一个希望它成功的巨大支持者.