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RIP 2019: Hangouts on Air Streaming
HoA streaming to YouTube live will end sometime this year
I knew I saw this somewhere, yet searching for information the usual ways revealed nothing at all. Some vague conjecture in obscure blogs, but looking via blog.google.com or site:google.com found nothing. Finally, I saw this note in Hangout on Air Help. (Edit: HoA now has a popup when you start one with the same message, telling you about single-camera streaming that doesn’t replace HoA at all.)
The YouTube feature, “YouTube webcam”, can instantly stream one source, which is great if you do single person broadcasting, but what about multipoint guests, as in a live conferences? There’s no way to do this without a semi-pro video setup and probably multiple computers and video capture equipment.
What are the alternatives?
Paid, there are numerous services that can do this, including services like Zoom. There are several software solutions like vMix or Wirecast, both fairly pricey in their upper tier versions needed to stream.
Then there’s GSuite Enterprise that can stream to up top 100,000 people worldwide with one small limitation: the viewers must be in the same domain. Enterprise is currently priced at $25 per seat and does not stream to YouTube Live or Facebook live.
