Simulive streaming, also known as pseudo-live streaming, makes it easy to stream pre-recorded videos as if they were ‘real’ live streams. Viewers won’t notice any difference. If you have the opportunity to pre-record your event, there are many reasons to opt for a simulive stream. Even if you can also broadcast live, a simulated live stream is often the better option.
Simulive streams allow you to stream multiple simultaneous live sessions in HD with closed captions and audio translations without breaking a sweat.
Clevercast Player can be embedded in your site and in most 3rd-party platforms (e.g. Swapcard, Hubilo, Docebo, Slido …) by simply copying the embed code. But a simulive stream can also be used in our enterprise, webinar and e-learning applications, or as the source of a simulcast to social media channels. The possibilities are endless.
Global CDNs are used to deliver the live streams close to your viewers. The number of viewers is unlimited.
Reliability and quality
Simulive streaming guarantees video streams of the highest quality.
- With recording in advance, you can ensure your video quality is optimal. Even if something goes wrong, you still have plenty of time to fix it.
- By not having to send a live broadcast, you avoid production issues, encoder troubles, quality loss due to a lack of bandwidth, and all kinds of connection problems.
- Your pre-recorded video is transcoded to multiple resolutions for adaptive streaming (optimal viewer experience on all devices). For a ‘real’ live stream, this is done in real time which limits the possibility of video compression. When the video is uploaded in advance, Clevercast uses two-pass encoding with high quality settings for each of the resolutions.
Ease of use
Simulive streaming makes your life as a live stream producer a lot easier. Instead of managing a complex live production, all you have to do is upload a video file and schedule the time of your live stream.
- Just upload your recording when it’s ready. Clevercast does the rest: transcoding it to multiple resolutions and getting it ready for broadcast. If it turns out that the video still needs to be adjusted, you can simply upload a new video.
- Once Clevercast has processed your source file, simply set the time at which the live stream should begin. That’s all. Sit back and watch the live stream run at the scheduled time.
Lower costs
Simulive streaming can save you a lot of money. Not only do you avoid the broadcasting costs, but the data traffic costs will also be a lot lower.
- A live broadcast requires labor and resource costs. At the very least, you need an encoder and someone to monitor it. With a simulive stream, you only have to set the start time in advance. Nothing needs to be done during the live stream.
- When the video is transcoded beforehand (not in real time), each of the streamed resolutions will have a higher degree of compression. This means that your viewers consume less data traffic while watching the stream. On average, data traffic usage is 30 to 70 percent lower (if the video content is static and computer-generated, the percentage will be higher) for simulive streaming. If you have a large audience this will reduce costs substantially.
Simultaneous and multilingual live streams
Simulive streaming makes complex setups possible, such as multiple live stream sessions that need to start simultaneously or live streams in many different languages (audio translation and closed captions / subtitles).
- Simulive streaming lets you start a large number of live streams at exactly the same time. Without stress, since everything is scheduled in advance.
- Simulive streaming is an ideal solution for multilingual live streams. An optimal quality of the translations can be guaranteed since everything is done in advance. This is possible for audio translation as well as for closed captions / subtitles. During the live stream, viewers can select their preferred language via a dropdown menu in Clevercast Player.
- If you use Clevercast to broadcast a ‘real’ multilingual live stream (with or without Translate@Home) you can use the server-side recording to schedule a simulive stream to other time zones.
Platform features
If you use Clevercast player to display the live stream – whether it is as part of a Clevercast application, embedded in your site or in a third-party platform – you also get all Clevercast features. These include:
- Adaptive live streaming: Clevercast player switches dynamically between streams with a different resolution and chooses the most suitable one for the playback device (depending on screen size and bandwidth, memory, available CPU and GPU resources) to avoid the video stuttering or spinning.
- Player branding and API: our player is white-labelled, you can fully customize it in accordance with your brand. Our javascript Player API lets you further control player behaviour.
- Controlling availability: you can whitelist and blacklist domains, IP addresses and countries to limit the availability of the stream.
- Player countdown: the player can be configured to display a countdown timer until your live stream starts.
- Poster images: you can upload images to be shown in the player before and after the live stream starts.
- Interactive messages: during the live stream, you can show messages in a player overlay
Advanced usage
Simulive streaming can be combined with a live broadcast Q&A session afterwards. You can configure Clevercast player to automatically show a paused image when the simulive stream ends. When you start broadcasting your Q&A session, this image will automatically make way for your live stream.
Simulive streaming is also possible without using Clevercast Player. The live stream is sent using the standard HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) protocol and can therefore also be played in most other players. Please note that we don’t provide support for issues with thirdiparty players.
More info
For more information about the use of simulive streaming, see our documentation: