FAQ: broadcasting to Clevercast
Are there any broadcast guidelines or requirements?
See our broadcast guidelines. If you are unable to comply, make sure to test in advance.
Note that for multilingual live streams we strongly recommend to broadcast with a framerate of 25 fps and keyframe interval of 2 seconds (if possible). Clevercast will apply this regardless of your broadcast specifications.
Which broadcast protocol should I use (RTMP or SRT)?
Our ingest servers are located in Europe. If you are broadcasting from a (virtual) location in Europe, RTMP should be fine.
If you are broadcasting from outside of Europe, we recommend using the SRT protocol. It is perfectly possible to send a reliable full HD SRT broadcast to Clevercast from anywhere in the world.
An RTMP broadcast or relay (eg Zoom, Streamyard) from the North America is also possible. If you need to use RTMP from a continent other than Europe and North America, ask for a custom RTMP ingest hub.
Which bitrate should I use?
See also our broadcast guidelines. The bitrate of your broadcast also depends on the type of content (e.g. dynamic or static). Since Clevercast does cloud transcoding for adaptive bitrate streaming, it doesn’t make sense to broadcast huge bitrates.
Why should I stop my broadcast after the event has ended?
When there is an incoming broadcast, Clevercast does cloud transcoding for adaptive bitrate streaming. This may also happen if there is no live stream (event status is Inactive or Ended). So you will use up unnecessary live processing hours (part of your plan) if you don’t turn off your encoder after an event.
Why should I observe a grace period of 2 minutes before and after the actual event?
The live stream is delivered with some latency to your viewers. Typically, the latency for HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) is approximately 16 to 30 seconds (depending on device, connection, player configuration in Clevercast). However, iOS devices allow latency to grow up to a maximum of 2 minutes. For more info, see our guide on managing live events.
Is it possible to live stream pre-recorded videos without sending a broadcast?
Yes, this is also possible for multilingual live streams with closed captions and audio translations. See our simulive streaming overview for more info.
Which encoder can I use?
See How to configure your encoder?.
Can I use relay from third party platforms?
If the third-party platform allows relaying an RTMP or SRT stream it can be used as input for Translate@Home. Examples of such solutions are Zoom, WebEx, Lightstream, StreamYard …
Currently, Microsoft Teams doesn’t support this. It does support NDI output to your Teams client, which you could use to broadcast to Clevercast via an encoder within your LAN (e.g. Teams to OBS to Clevercast). This requires technical knowledge.
Wirecast supports SRT, but currently doesn’t support sending multiple audio tracks or channels. So it can’t be used to send more than 2 embedded languages to Clevercast.
Can I use vMix to broadcast a multilingual live stream?
Yes. vMix only supports a single SRT audio track, but does allow you to add up to 8 audio channels to this single audio track. Clevercast allows you to use this feature to broadcast a multilingual live stream of up to 8 languages using vMix.
Can I use Dante to broadcast a multilingual live stream?
Sending a multilingual broadcast through Dante isn’t possible. But you can use Dante locally, to send the audio tracks (SRT) or channels (RTMP) to your encoder (e.g. OBS, vMix).
Can I send a separate RTMP broadcast per language?
If you only need a couple of languages and have sufficient outgoing bandwidth, it is possible to send a separate RTMP broadcast (video+audio) for each language. In that case, you are responsible for starting the different language broadcast at the same time (so they are in-sync).
Note: this is currently not part of our default plans. Ask for a custom plan, if you need this.