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Streaming Is Easy, Until It’s Not

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Since COVID necessitated a wholesale shift to remote and cloud production, the tools available for livestreaming have become considerably more powerful and capable. Cloud solutions have proliferated, and even business meeting solutions like Zoom have integrated "Direct-To-Streaming" hooks for people to make video delivery easier than ever before. This trend has lowered the perceived difficulty of streaming, and dramatically lowered the quality of what the viewer sees because, very often, the people tasked with making it happen have little to no experience with streaming and the tools they use weren’t designed to deliver high-quality video. 

Recently, a multimillion dollar company consulted with me on an upcoming investors’ meeting. They showed me their last pitch session: a Zoom meeting in a hotel meeting room with a small audience. Most lights were off, and a projector on a screen was set up in the room. To deliver the pitch to the remote audience, they said the presenters used a laptop, turned around on a table in front of the room.

You couldn't see the presenter because the bright screen made them too dark. You couldn't read details on the screen because it was all at the upper limit of brightness. You could barely hear the audio because they just used the laptop's built-in camera and microphone. The big room made it very quiet and echoey. From a streaming producer's point of view, it was horrible. They mentioned the production quality of Apple’s keynotes, and asked me how much it would cost to match it.

I told them Apple’s level was probably a little too high to shoot for, but I recommended a few relatively inexpensive ways to improve their presentation. I suggested adding a couple of lights, 2 cameras, and a video mixer to include readable slides next to a well-lit speaker wearing a wireless microphone—basically, the bare minimum to professionalize their approach. But it all fell apart because they expected me to tell them how to deliver Apple quality for a couple hundred dollars.

The frustrating part is that watching so many bare-bones Zoom and Teams meetings has conditioned audiences to tolerate presentations where they can't see, can't hear, and are unable to interact or ask questions. 

There are many super-integrated, all-in-one tools on the market today that make it easy to connect multiple cameras, a laptop, and a microphone; add graphics; do video playback; record the whole presentation; stream it to YouTube; or connect via USB to Zoom or Teams (see go2sm.com/aio). But these tools don't come with expertise on how to use them, nor do they come with the experience that anticipates viewers’ expectations or switches seamlessly to backup solutions if something doesn't work.

It's like the age-old joke: A chef visits a local art show and remarks about a beautiful photograph and says, “You must have a really good camera.” The photographer later eats at the chef's restaurant, and when the chef visits the table, the photographer remarks, “The meal was delicious. You must have a really good oven.”

Tools alone don’t make your video good; only people with experience and expertise can do that. Just as you'd invest in the talent of a CFO or COO to run your company, place the same trust in creative professionals to capture and stream your message. AI is not going to pick the right shot for you because AI doesn't know what your intent is. AI is not going to emphasize the text in a way that highlights what's important for the viewer.

When it comes to electronics, it's easy to look at advertised features and believe that tech will provide everything you need. But no matter how powerful and integrated it is—perhaps even because of how integrated and powerful it is—you need professionals to run it to ensure you look your best. Streaming may seem easy, but as with any business role, only expertise will make it look easy, even when it's not.

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