Streaming Learning Center Where Streaming Professionals Learn to Excel
Related Articles
I’ve just completed my first LinkedIn Live experience, and I have to say (in all modesty), that it went pretty well, but only because I tested three trial events before I finally went live (and three after to figure out what happened and why and write this article). In this post, I share some lessons learned, plus a suggested workflow, and correct some common misconceptions about LinkedIn Live and Riverside.fm, the tool I used to access LinkedIn Live. Plus, I added some recommendations that LinkedIn and Riverside can adopt or ignore.
If you make it to the end, you’ll learn why it’s so hard to start your LinkedIn Live event smoothly (it’s not your fault) and some thoughts on how to start like a pro in the future.
You Can Stream to LinkedIn Live from Most Tools and Platforms
First, the misimpressions. Contrary to many YouTube videos, you can stream to LinkedIn Live from any RTMP-supported service or tool. LinkedIn doesn’t make it easy or clear, but it’s simple once you know what’s going on. I detail this below.
Riverside.fm Doesn’t Fully Support LinkedIn Live
Riverside.fm is my go-to tool for recording interviews, but I had never tried producing a live stream through the service. Like many services, it allows you to choose LinkedIn as a destination and log into your LinkedIn account. But, you can’t access previously scheduled LinkedIn events through this connection. So, if you’re trying to figure out how to access a live event you had scheduled previously like I was, you can’t. And, of course, Riverside’s documentation doesn’t tell you that you have to use RTMP, and the existence of the LinkedIn link doesn’t suggest that it’s not wholly functional.
If you use one of the services that LinkedIn supports (Restream, Socialive, StreamYard, Switcher Studio, or Vimeo), you can access events set up on LinkedIn from these services. You can even set up events on LinkedIn from these services (from what I’ve seen in the YouTube demos I’ve seen). You can’t do either with Riverside.fm’s “LinkedIn support” which is what makes it so confusing.
Figure 1. Riverside.fm lets you choose LinkedIn as a destination but falls way short compared to other services.
Note to Riverside.fm: Remove the LinkedIn link until you offer functionality similar to the other services.
There is a workaround; you can use the Custom RTMP connection to access the event. But that’s confusing as well, primarily on the LinkedIn side. Specifically, LinkedIn doesn’t make the stream URL and stream key available until an hour before the event and doesn’t tell you diddlysquat about connecting to LinkedIn Live on the Event page where you set up the stream and where you would expect this information to live.
Even on the Manage Streams page (which you didn’t know existed), it doesn’t tell you that the URL and key won’t be available until an hour (really ten minutes) before the event. So, if it’s your first event, you have no easy way to figure this out until an hour before the event, which is way too late.
OK, rant over. I’ll assume you care more about successfully creating a LinkedIn Live event than what I went through to figure it out. You can use this procedure to connect with any service or product that supports RTMP, not just Riverside.fm.
So here are the steps, first quickly and then with videos and explanations.
- Create the event. Attendees can register and view the event from the LinkedIn-generated Event page
- Go to the Manage Streams page here –https://www.linkedin.com/video/golive/manage/. An hour before your event, you can click the Prepare to go live button to access the Stream URL and key. But, for the reasons explained below, you want to do this as close to the start of the event as possible.
- Clicking Prepare to go live takes you to the Setup Your Stream/Preview page (I’ll call this the Preview page). This page provides the Stream URL and Key and previews the audio and video stream once you’ve started it in your service or product.
- Paste the Stream URL and key into your service or product.
- Click Go live (in Riverside.fm) or the equivalent. This sends the stream to the Preview page, but not to the Event page.
- About ten minutes before your event starts, if your video is being received, the Preview page will enable a Go Live button. Click this button to send the video to your Event page and take the event live.
- During the event, you’ll need four windows open, all on your screen if you’re producing and speaking or spread over multiple streams. Specifically:
- You’ll want the Event page open to respond to comments and ensure the video is playing.
- You’ll want to monitor the encoder, though the other pages can hide this. For me, this meant a page open to Riverside.fm.
- You’ll need your presentation accessible (if applicable) to move through the content and advance those pages. For me, this was PowerPoint.
- You’ll want the Preview page accessible since this is where you stop the stream.
- To end the event, click End stream in the Preview window. If you simply stop transmitting, LinkedIn will display a black screen in the Event page video window.
OK, that’s the pithy TL/DR version. Here’s the chatty, informative version.
Contents
Create the Event
- Click the LinkedIn icon on the upper left of the LinkedIn page to access your Home screen.
- Scroll down to Events, and click the + button, which opens the Create an event dialog.
- Complete the form. Be sure to select LinkedIn Live in the Event format field. If this isn’t an option, you may not have rights to produce a live event; see here.
LinkedIn creates the Events page from which you will market your event, and your viewers will watch the event.
Note to LinkedIn: Consider a button or other link on this page, viewable only by the page owner, which connects to the Manage Streams page and says, “Click here to access stream information and credentials and to go live.”
Go to the Manage Streams Page
- Go to the Manage Streams page here –https://www.linkedin.com/video/golive/manage/. One hour before your event is to go live, the Prepare to go live button will activate and turn blue (it will be grayed out before then). You’ll click this button to open the Preview page to get your stream credentials, preview the live stream, go live to the Event page, and stop the stream.
Note the red message atop Figure 4. It seems that if you connect to the Preview page and preview the stream for longer than ten minutes, LinkedIn will terminate the stream. I think this happened to me on one of my test runs – I know the stream dropped off, but I don’t know the cause. Either way, I didn’t connect and go live for my real production until 5 minutes before the scheduled time to avoid LinkedIn terminating the stream.
3. Click Prepare to go live to enter the Preview Page
- On the bottom right, click the Region drop-down list and choose the appropriate region. I used Northeast.
- Then click Get URL and LinkedIn will supply the Stream URL and Stream Key as shown.
Paste the Stream URL and Stream Key into your encoder
In Riverside.fm, you should ignore the LinkedIn button and use the Custom RTMP button (see Figure 1) to paste in this information, which should look the same in any RTMP-capable product (like WireCast or OBS) or service.
Start Transmitting in Your Product or Service
This will vary by tool or service. With Riverside.fm, click Go Live. Riverside.fm will start streaming to LinkedIn and record it as normal.
Once you go live, this sends the stream to the Preview page but not to the Event page where your viewers are waiting. You see the Preview page below in Figure 7. You can play the audio and watch the video. On the bottom of the window, you see the Stream Health tab which you can use to check the connection.
If you’re within ten minutes of the scheduled event, the Go Live button on the top right becomes active, and you click this to send the video to the Event page. If you’re not within ten minutes, as I’ve mentioned several times now, the stream may terminate unexpectedly – you see the warning in red text above Figure 7. If you lose the connection, the stream URL and key change, so you have to go through that process again. Best to connect to the service and go live very proximate to the scheduled start.
I would run one or two tests before the event in a separate event to check audio/video and connection. Of course, if you run tests, they are all live, so your followers see you after hours in your workout clothing. For some reason, the videos don’t seem to be deleted, so you are in posterity.
Note to LinkedIn
1) Extend this period beyond ten minutes so event coordinators can test and debug the stream they will use.
2) Consider enabling a private test event only the producer can see. YouTube and Facebook both have this. Trust me, none of my followers want to see me fumbling with live-streaming controls in my workout gear.
3) Please let me delete all these practice videos.
Click Go live
See Figure 7, upper right. This will start the stream on the Events page. See Nailing the Start of Your LinkedIn Live Event below to learn how to start streaming smoothly.
Don’t close the Preview window; this is where you stop the stream once you’re done.
During the Event, You’ll Need at Least Four Windows Open
- You’ll want the Event page open to respond to comments and ensure the video is playing.
- You’ll want to monitor the encoder, though the other pages can hide this.
- You’ll need your presentation accessible (if applicable) to move through the content and advance those pages.
- You’ll want the Preview page accessible since this is where you stop the stream.
To stop the event, click End stream in the Preview window.
You see this on the upper right of the Preview window. If you simply stop transmitting from your capture application or service, LinkedIn will continue to broadcast a black screen, which is what happened to me until a helpful watcher prompted me to stop the stream. Fortunately, you can easily edit this out in the video editor after the event.
Boom, you’re done. That was easy.
Nailing the Start of Your LinkedIn Live Event
When you press the Go live button to send the stream from your Preview page to your Event page, there’s an expectation that the show starts right then. “Hi, I’m Jan Ozer, thanks for coming…” should be the first thing the viewer sees, just one or two seconds after the stream starts.
When I went back to my live event, I noticed the first 20 seconds showed me performing an audio check on (what I thought) was the Preview page. It was not the smooth start I had been looking for.
To understand why, I performed another test using the timer on my iPhone to track the latency between when I pressed Go live and when the stream started in the Event page. You see the results in Figure 9, on the left the Event page, on the right a screen grab of when I pressed Go live, which was about when the timer hit 1:00.
It took me about 5 seconds to get to the Event page, at which time the time code on my iPhone was 49:26. For a moment, I thought I was in the Twilight Zone (do-do-do-do); how could LinkedIn Live start the stream before I pressed Go live?
The obvious answer was the stream latency, or the difference between what was happening live and what LinkedIn Live displayed, which was around 30 – 40 seconds. LinkedIn had 30 – 40 seconds worth of video in the system. Rather than cutting over with the video being input when I clicked Go Live (“Hi, I’m Jan Ozer”), it simply cut over immediately and started displaying the video in the internal cache. That’s why viewers of my live event saw me checking sound 30 seconds before I pressed Go live. This leads to my last recommendation to LinkedIn.
Note to LinkedIn: Start the stream on the Event page when I press Go live, not before.
How should I handle this until LinkedIn fixes it? I will wait 15 seconds, staring dumbly at the webcam to make sure nothing is showing in the cache that I don’t want the viewers to see. Then, I’ll cross my fingers like I do before any live event, press Go live, and start talking.
Other than all this, Ms. Lincoln, how was the play? Riverside.fm managed the live stream well, and recorded the event at the normal high quality, making it easy to repurpose if I decide to do so. LinkedIn Live was a fabulous platform for communicating with my audience before, during, and after the event.
Some rough edges all around, but overall, a great result.
