On May 21, 2020, Artsman released a beta of Live Events for Pre-Recorded and Live Streaming of events as part of our COVID-19 response. A few of our early adopter clients soon ran into complications with Vimeo sales representatives who were more than confused by the use case, insisting clients opt for the Enterprise License as opposed to the Premium Package - quite the difference!
@dmckeone went to bat and was able to get in writing from Vimeo that Artsman clients are indeed able to use the Premium Package to deliver Live Streaming with Domain Privacy AND be able to charge a ticket price.
Below is a link that documents the history as well as an overall summary of the feature and what we’re working on next for Live Events.
Thanks again to all our users who are working hard to reach your audiences and new and creative ways. If anyone has any questions about moving forward with Live Events in your organization, don’t hesitate to contact us at support@artsman.com to help get up and running.
What’s Next for Live Events?
In the next version of Theatre Manager there will be two new video providers, in addition to Vimeo and YouTube:
To review, our current video providers are:
YouTube
YouTube is a great free video provider, but it’s not ideal for use with any kind of gate control. It’s main use is for events that would be free, and are looking to solicit donations or to market your venue.
Vimeo
As of the recent email with Vimeo, Artsman clients are now officially supported with Domain Privacy. The downside with Vimeo, besides the corporate indecision on the use case, is that it requires a year long subscription and you may get a phone call from them one day saying that you’ve exceeded the bandwidth requirements.
DaCast
DaCast is currently the safest bet as a way to stream video with some gate control. At DaCast we have a representative that you can call directly and discuss your live streaming or pre-recorded video needs, and they can help find the right pricing package for you.
They also have some nice “per event” pricing, in case you don’t want to jump in to a subscription or a long term commitment to streaming. DaCast’s online tooling is pretty easy to use and they support both live streaming via RTMP as well as pre-recorded video, just like Vimeo. However, DaCast is a little more expensive than Vimeo.
Open source video player
The open source video player will play a wide variety of formats from almost any web server for a much lower cost of operation. Using the open source video player requires a lot more knowledge about the technology behind video streaming, but it also enables you to host content on a server you own, and if you have a good enough internet connection you could also potentially self-host the video content. Self-hosting the video content would require at least a Gigabit upload (1 Gbps), which is well beyond most home/office internet connections.
Research is still being conducted to find cloud hosting services that might make this a very cost-effective option in the future. The open source video player might also suit your needs if you’ve found a video hosting service that can serve .mp4 , .webm or .m3u8 files.
Summary
So that’s where we stand today.
Vimeo and DaCast are the best turn-key options and the open source video player is likely to start cutting the operational costs in the future. YouTube can be used for free events where you want to raise recognition with the YouTube site, but also want an embedded video on your own site, for your own customers.one)