HD Quality
Livestream provides the highest quality viewing experience available today. Our platform lets you broadcast live events in full 720p HD.
To offer viewers a stunning 720p HD stream at 2.5Mbps (2,500Kbps), you will also need to encode at additional qualities for those who do not have the computer power or Internet speed to access your 720p HD stream. Livestream Procaster offers built-in presets with the ability to encode up to four qualities simultaneously, which provides the highest quality video to viewers on high-speed connections all the way down to mobile devices.
You may also stream only HD in one bitrate using a custom setting available in Livestream Procaster. However, we do not recommend this because viewers with slower computers or connections could experience skipping in your feed and complain directly in your chat.
For the standard HD experience on Livestream, multi-bitrate must be sent from our Procaster encoder.
How to Livestream in HD
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Get an HD video feed.
You will need an HD video source. This could be an HD camera, a video source from a video mixer or a third party production partner using HD-SDI, HDMI, and Analog Composite HD (see our Video 101 to learn more about video formats). Livestream supports the following input formats: 720p, 1080i, 1080p. 720p is recommended because it yields the highest quality feed, and there is no need to de-interlace because it is a progressive format.
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Get an appropriate encoder and internet connection.
Using our Livestream Procaster, make sure you have an HD-capable computer and certified video device. Visit our store for more information on how to purchase a turnkey Livestream-certified HD Encoder. You could also build the encoder yourself or buy a card and computer and integrate them yourself. Procaster lets you encode up to 4 bitrates at the same time from a single machine!
You will need a dedicated Internet connection with at least an 8Mbps upload speed to support HD multi-bitrate. Read our Internet 101 to learn how to test your connection.>
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Start streaming and let your viewers experience HD.
On a desktop, viewers can manually choose their bitrates. A drop-down menu appears at the bottom of the player. Users can switch streams with a single click. When joining a stream, viewers will see the 500Kbps “Normal or Medium” quality stream to ensure a smooth playing experience even if they do not have the computer power or connection speed to access the 720p HD signal.
On the iPhone or iPad, viewers automatically see the highest quality stream available on their devices and Internet connections. For 3G, it will be 200Kbps. For WiFi and devices capable of playing 720p HD, the stream will upgrade automatically after a few minutes of viewing.
Please note that your recordings will only be available in a single bitrate, which is automatically set to the “Normal” (500Kbps) or “Medium” (700Kbps) bitrate. Also note that New Livestream offers adaptive bitrates for live and on-demand feeds.
