How long does it take to set up for a live stream?

Live streams are one of the biggest video trends of the last few years and something that we have seen organisations take up more and more since the beginning of the dreaded C word (no, not that one). With travel restrictions, social distancing and office closures to consider, the ingenuity of humans prevailed and the Live Stream Boom™ (STM trademark, patented while writing this introduction) began. 

WHAT IS A LIVE STREAM?

There’s a lot of things that fall under the umbrella of being a live stream. It’s used quite liberally by the gaming sector, where people may stream themselves playing whatever video game for people to watch. 

Technically another type is a Zoom or Teams meeting. 

Zoom and Teams are also live streaming platforms for the type of live stream that we’ll be talking about; corporate ones.

A corporate live stream refers to one where a business or organisation wants to host an event virtually, maybe they want to hold a conference or an important message needs to be broadcasted. 

This can take many forms. Let’s take the example of a Premier League football club. An event they may live stream is one of their pre-season friendlies that will be streamed on their club channel, or the end of season awards. Since the beginning of the pandemic, press conferences in which the manager speaks to the press are live streamed and are available for everyone to watch. 

WHY LIVE STREAMS?

Even since people have been able to attend in person events and the restrictions have eased, live streaming has remained a prominent method of hosting corporate events and talks. 

Why? Well, there’s a number of reasons. 

  1. Cost – In most cases, take away venue hire cost. Take away travel and expenses of all attending employees and it all starts to add up quite significantly. 
  2. Accessibility – Live streaming means events can be accessed from all over the world, more specifically from the comfort of peoples’ desks.
  3. Control – All elements of the event are under the organisers control and there’s less scope for things like travel disruptions to take hold. 

SO HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?

The answer isn’t a straightforward one and is similar in nature to your dad’s favourite question; how long is a piece of string?

Each live stream will differ on a case by case basis, with a huge number of affecting factors. These include the venue, the type of live stream, internet connection and others.

For example, if we were to arrive at a location, we would need to have a look around, position cameras, find the best routes for the cables and set up the work area as a starting point. 

Typically, this would take around four to five hours until we’re ready to start testing. We start to add more time on top of that when we’re involving set pieces, which is furniture, backdrops, backgrounds and including multiple live areas. 

So to conclude, we absolutely recommend putting a day aside before your live stream to make sure everything is in place and ready to go for the next day. 

So if you’re looking to do a livestream and you’re still unsure of how much time to set aside or what you need to do prior, talk to us about your requirements, and we can give you an approximation of how long it should take.


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