Before we began developing our Virtual Venue solution for virtual and hybrid conferences last year, we had to thoroughly familiarize ourselves with the subject matter. This is likely even more complex for organizers who have rarely used online tools and perhaps haven't dealt with streaming at all yet. The more you read and get lost in the numerous hybrid and virtual settings and their variations, the bigger the question mark becomes when considering what is actually relevant and feasible for your own conference.
First things first: you don't have to handle everything on your own. There are service providers at every level who already offer the right products and services. As part of the organizing team, however, you should have an overview of the common solutions so you can choose the approach that best suits your conference. This article is intended to help you get started by showing you how to transmit audio and video, what preliminary considerations you need to make, and the challenges associated with individual settings.
What should be broadcast?
Virtual conferences can be designed in as many ways as in-person events. The beauty of this is that organizers don't have to stick to one format; they can vary the settings for individual program items as desired. Sometimes the focus is on a single speaker, while discussions involve multiple people, and workshops might include a screen share from the facilitator or even cuts between different camera angles. A mix of simple and slightly more complex setups also prevents participants from seeing the same shot constantly—aside from changing faces—which can lead to monotony and, ultimately, Zoom fatigue.
Depending on the format, it may be enough to have only one person visible and audible—this is the simplest setting and is well-suited for a keynote or opening remarks for the conference. For presentations, you can add presentation slides to the frame—either shown alongside the speakers or taking up the entire screen. Another important question is to what extent you want to use effects. This starts with the question of whether text should be overlaid on the live image. Think, for example, of the names of the people on screen. Especially in panel discussions, it is important for the audience to know who the participants are so they can ask them questions directly or refer to their statements in the ongoing chat. Or would you like to display infographics or show short clips at certain points? If so, the material must be prepared accordingly, because making amateurish printouts held up to the camera look charming is much harder than using professional tools that make such makeshift solutions unnecessary. If you are working with sponsors and want to show their promotional videos before or immediately after a program item, be sure to plan for those as well.
In or out of the studio?
As soon as more than one person is moderating a session, an entire team is presenting joint research, or six people are holding a virtual panel discussion, production becomes a bit more demanding. After all, the participants have to be brought together somehow. This can be done directly in a studio, which has the advantage that everyone is already in the same place and audio and video only need to be transmitted from there. Organizers who want to offer their participants high audio quality combined with perfect lighting are also better off using a studio for their conferences.
Since that isn't always possible, people can alternatively be connected virtually. This saves travel costs and time, and a studio isn't strictly necessary—unless there are moderators guiding the program from a studio. The latter can create a nice connection between otherwise very different settings, as few people have a green screen at home. If you place great importance on a consistent look for your virtual conference, this is the perfect link. For even greater brand recognition, use uniformly designed overlays or a conference platform that can be customized to your conference's design.
Go live or pre-record?
You should also decide at the very beginning of your planning whether the broadcast will be live or if the videos will be pre-produced—which is better depends primarily on the planned formats, though you can always combine both.
Pre-recorded videos can be edited afterward and enhanced with effects, overlays, etc., whereas with streams, the material must be processed live, which requires a great deal of preparation. However, it also creates a genuine live experience, allows you to respond to questions and reactions in real time, and brings you much closer to the audience. If you only need to stream a video signal from a single source, such as meeting software like Zoom or Webex, this can usually be done without a production crew. So, "live" does not automatically mean significantly more technical effort.
On the other hand, production is much more relaxed if the video is just being recorded. If mistakes happen, you can simply start over, and anything unnecessary can be cut out. Once the video is finished, it just needs to be uploaded.
Equally important for both streams and recordings is uninterrupted playback on the participant's end, which is why the conference platform should always offer manual control over playback quality. If there are any dropouts, participants can select a lower resolution to keep things running smoothly. This doesn't always work in every browser or on every device, but that's not a problem because the player we use, for example, automatically reacts to the current connection speed and adjusts the stream quality accordingly.
Because the best streaming ideas can only be implemented if the bandwidth cooperates, you should always test it beforehand (https://www.speedtest.net/). The most important metric is the upload speed (= upstream), because the video material is being streamed from your own device. The higher the upstream, the faster the content reaches the participants and the fewer delays there are along the way. For streams, you should plan for at least 2 Mbit/s upload and 5 Mbit/s download. Ideally, there should always be a little more bandwidth available than is strictly necessary for the stream. This allows for better handling of short-term fluctuations.
Speed is even better if you use a wired connection instead of Wi-Fi. Additionally, no other bandwidth-intensive programs or processes should be running on the same network during the stream.
If you decide on live streaming, you can make the videos available as on-demand recordings after the stream. Our clients like to use this feature because it allows participants to catch up on missed sessions at any time. This is especially recommended for international conferences, where time zone differences sometimes make it difficult to follow all sessions live.
These points should always be clarified before implementation. Only then can you move on to the next step: selecting the tools, which we will introduce in the next article.
