The evolution of technology and the Internet has led to innovative opportunities for education, including new methods and tools for collaborative teaching and learning. Educators and students can connect live in virtual classrooms, removing the physical, geographical, and economical limitations of the traditional classroom. By broadcasting live lectures, office hours, and events, instructors can provide unlimited distribution of course content to students who use desktop or mobile devices with internet access.

How to Get Started with Live Broadcasting:

• Mac or Windows PC with internet connection
• iSight camera or webcam
• YouTube account
• Wirecast , a software application that encodes your video for streaming. Note that the free version supports a single camera setup and watermarks all media.
  

How to Create a Live Event in YouTube – Basic Settings:

• Log into your YouTube account and click on Creator Studio.
• In the left sidebar, click on Channel > Status and Features and enable Live Streaming.
• Select Live Streaming > Events and then click Schedule a New Event.
• In the Basic Info tab, enter a title, broadcast date and time, description, appropriate tags, and select Public in the privacy options. Note: Only public events will appear on your channel.  For test events, choose unlisted or private.
• For type, choose Custom. An encoder compresses audio and video into a format that can be viewed across multiple platforms, browsers, and devices. Select Wirecast for YouTube as your encoder and click Save Changes.

How to Create a Live Event in YouTube – Advanced Settings:

• Click the Advanced tab and enable Live Chat. To participate in the chat session, viewers must be logged into a YouTube account. Viewers are limited to a maximum of 3 comments every 30 seconds and cannot post special characters, URLs or HTML tags.
• Check on Automatically block spam messages to block identical messages that are repeatedly posted or to block messages formatted in all caps.
• Click Create Event and upload a thumbnail that is representative of your broadcast.
• In the basic ingestion menu, select the quality of video that you want to stream. 720p (1280×720 resolution) is a solid compromise between quality and outbound bandwidth needed to sustain a smooth data transfer throughout an event.
• Click Save Changes.
• Click on Live Control Room. Note that a warning appears, stating that data is not being received from your encoder.

How to Encode Your Video Using Wirecast:

• Launch Wirecast and go to File > Save, type in livebroadcast.wcst and navigate to your Movies (Mac) folder. Click Save. Creating a wirecast template will save your settings for future broadcasts.
• Click on Settings (the small gear icon) and click on Authenticate. Log into your YouTube account and click Allow. Wirecast will detect the live event and encoding settings that you previously set up.
• In the Wirecast Master Layer options, click on the camera settings gear and check Source and Audio settings.
• To begin encoding, click the Stream button.

How to Add Screen Capture to Your Live Broadcast:

• In the Master Layer, click on the + sign and select New Local Desktop Presenter.
• If this is the first time you are enabling screen capture in Wirecast, you will be prompted to download a driver. Click OK.
• Continue through the installation steps and when prompted, click Close.
• In the Presenter Source Settings, for Capture Type choose Window, check on Show Cursor and select Your Window/Monitor. Right-click on the Local Desktop Presenter 0 and choose Rename Source. Title it appropriately and click OK.
• On the Master Layer, click on the + sign and select Add Photoshop Shot.

How to Start Your Live Broadcast:

• Tab over to your YouTube Live Control Room and note that the stream from Wirecast is now recognized and activated.
• Click on the Preview Stream button and wait until YouTube starts receiving the encoded stream from Wirecast.
• Provide viewers access to the YouTube URL link for your live broadcast by clicking on the View on Watch page button.
• To begin your live broadcast, click the Start Streaming button.
• Leave both the YouTube Live Control Room webpage and Wirecast application open during the broadcast.
• In Wirecast, cut between shots by clicking on the appropriate sources in the Master layer.

How to End Your Live Broadcast:

To end your live broadcast, click the Stop Streaming button in YouTube. YouTube will automatically create a video from your live stream and add it to your video feed for future on-demand viewing, editing, and closed captioning.

Written by Kate Lee
Senior Media Producer, Smith College