Before going live, you'll need to set up your live event and test your live stream. You can set up your event weeks in advance or the same day as your event, depending on if you want customers to preregister for the event in advance.

Your encoding software controls the quality that is sent to us to broadcast. So if you're using, say Zoom, it doesn't let you mess around with quality, so you're at its mercy in terms of quality. A tool like OBS will take the raw video and audio and let you decide what quality to send us.

We recommend recording a copy of your live stream so that you can easily edit it before uploading after the event finishes. We do our best to create a copy of the live event for you, but due to how streams are sent to us, it can sometimes break a live event into multiple files.

Because of this, your computer power is going to be a factor. Some older computers may simply not be powerful enough to encode 1080p video to send to us. If you're experiencing frequent pauses and you know your upload speed is good enough, this could be the culprit.

If you've got preregistration enabled, your event will have a countdown timer on your catalog page. This timer doesn't control when the live event starts—you will need to press the Go Live button on Uscreen. If you're late, the countdown timer will just show 0:00:00 until you start it.

When you test your live event by sending us the RTMP feed, you'll be creating a video in the video section every time you start and stop a stream. They are unpublished, though, so don't worry you can just delete them.

If you want the live event video to upload without the test part of the stream, make sure you stop your stream in your encoding software and start it again when you want to go live.

If you want to make your live events easier to manage, having two monitors will help a lot when you need to make sure everything works well. You can use one monitor to keep an eye on things while the other one is your stream.

Now you have two options when it comes to stream keys. If you have a recurring live event and want to reuse the stream key, you can simply duplicate the event, which can copy the stream key—keep in mind that you should give at least 5 minutes from one event to the event other when using the same key. However, you can also use unique stream keys on each Live Event, so you can actually run as many Live Events at a time as you like.

Navigate to Content, go to Live Events, and click Add New to set up a new live event.

Like a video, give your live stream the following information:

Next, choose an encoder—you can see our suggestions here for various live stream encoders—then start testing your streaming connection. You should always test it before going live. To test it, navigate to Content, go to Live Events, select the Live Event you want to stream, and click Edit. Add the RTMP Input to your encoder, then go to Stream and click Test Player.

After starting the stream in your encoder, wait about 20 seconds before pressing Test Player.

You'll need to ensure you have adequate bandwidth on your network connection to avoid live stream disconnects 3 Mbps for 480p, 6 Mbps for 720p, 10 Mbps for 1080p.

At the top of the details page for your Live Stream click the Test Player button to begin testing your live stream

Now once you've tested, stop the RTMP feed from your encoding software and start it again.

Once you've filled out the details for your event, saved it, and tested it, make sure the visibility is Published. You will not be able to go live if your visibility is set to unpublished:

Once you're ready, click Start Live Stream

After the conclusion of your event, click Finish Event to end the live stream.

In your encoding software, end your stream. Don't forget this part, as users still on the Live Event page will continue seeing the feed until you stop it in your encoding software.

The finished event will still appear on your Live Events page, but you won't be able to make the same event go live again. However, the event is not deleted from the page so you can duplicate it and reuse the information and the stream key. The video itself is moved to your Videos, under the Content tab, so that you can publish it on your catalog.

Be patient, as longer streams may take a while to encode for viewing. If you want to include the VOD with the live event as a bundle, see these instructions.

We highly recommend that you watch this video tutorial before you begin live streaming with Uscreen. This video covers everything from how to set up live streaming, common situations you'll encounter, and our best practices for smooth streaming.

NOTE: Standard glass-to-glass latency for RTMP ingest is around 20-30 seconds. This is the total time it takes for content to travel from the camera's lens to the viewer's screen. While some services may offer reduced latency (such as 5-10 seconds), this comes at a cost to both your live stream and your viewers—as the slightest interruption in the internet connection can cause your live stream to disconnect and weaker internet connections will experience near-constant buffering. For this reason, we keep the latency at around 15-30 seconds. Latency time depends on numerous factors, including but not limited to internet connection strength and proximity to the nearest POP ingest point.

Your event will be recorded and saved as a video that you can publish after your event has concluded.