How to Choose and Implement a Webcasting Solution

Producing a live event? Do you need a webcasting system like On24, a live streaming service provider like Livestream, or a conferencing solution like GoToMeeting or Google Hangouts? Not sure?

Find out in my article, How to Choose and Implement a Webcasting Solution, from the fabulous 2014 Streaming Media Sourcebook. Here’s the brief intro which details what’s covered in the article. 

So you want to produce a webcast, perhaps for training, marketing, or sales. You envision a presentation involving a talking head video and PowerPoint, and maybe some extras such as chat and Q&A. Price is definitely a consideration, but you also want to know the trade-offs involved with choosing a lower-cost solution and when a higher-cost solution makes the most sense.

At a high level, you have three types of platforms to choose from. The most obvious choices are webcast platforms such as those provided by On24, MediaPlatform, and OnStream Media, but these are usually the most costly. The least-expensive option will usually be a live streaming service provider (LSSP) such as Livestream, Ustream, or YouTube Live. Yet another option is conferencing solutions such as Google Hangouts on Air, Adobe Connect, and GoToMeeting.com, which started as purely collaborative tools but have evolved their toolsets to incorporate learning and webcast modules.

In this article, I’ll review the factors to consider when choosing between these three categories. Since each category contains many products and services, there will be few absolutes in the analysis, but you’ll learn the major strengths and weaknesses of each class of platform so you can make a more informed selection.

Click here to navigate to the article. 

 

About Jan Ozer

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I help companies train new technical hires in streaming media-related positions; I also help companies optimize their codec selections and encoding stacks and evaluate new encoders and codecs. I am a contributing editor to Streaming Media Magazine, writing about codecs and encoding tools. I have written multiple authoritative books on video encoding, including Video Encoding by the Numbers: Eliminate the Guesswork from your Streaming Video (https://amzn.to/3kV6R1j) and Learn to Produce Video with FFmpeg: In Thirty Minutes or Less (https://amzn.to/3ZJih7e). I have multiple courses relating to streaming media production, all available at https://bit.ly/slc_courses. I currently work as www.netint.com as a Senior Director in Marketing.

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