Get started with Vimeo OTT Live

Vimeo OTT Live overview

With a Vimeo account enabled for live streaming capabilities (Advanced or Premium) or an Enterprise account, you have the ability to add live content to your OTT site. This is ideal for content creators looking to engage their audiences with both live and on-demand content, all within a dedicated home of their website.

This guide walks you through what you need in order to go live on your OTT site.

In this article:

• Prep your Vimeo OTT Account to go live
• Pick & set up your live video encoder
• Other best practices

Things to do before you go live on Vimeo OTT

Prep your Vimeo OTT account

To stream with Vimeo OTT, you need to have a Vimeo account enabled for live streaming capabilities or an Enterprise account set up. Additionally, make sure you have the following:

1. Subscription Product live - Have your subscription product or transactional product all ready to go first.
2. Active Category/Collection - If you have a subscription product create a Collection or Category that this live stream will live in for your customers. We recommend it living in the featured Carousel Category so viewers see it at the top of your Browse page.

Once you have covered the above steps, visit 'Setting up a live stream on Vimeo OTT' for instructions on how to set up a live stream.

Pick & set up your live video encoder

Vimeo OTT uses RTMP, which stands for real-time messaging protocol. It provides for high-performance transmission of audio, video, and data from an encoder to a server, which distributes the signal across the Internet. Many streaming providers and encoder developers support RTMP streaming.

Which encoders support RTMP?

Encoders that can be used to stream to Vimeo OTT via RTMP include, but are not limited to: 

• Livestream Studio
• OBS Studio
• Wirecast
• XSplit Broadcaster
• NewTek TriCaster

Cloud transcoding

This feature also includes cloud transcoding. This means you can stream a single bitrate from your encoder, which we convert into various lower bitrates in the cloud for you. For example, if you send your stream at 1920x1080 at a minimum bitrate of 4Mbps, the possible qualities viewers can watch are:

• 1080p: 1920x1080, 5256kbps
• 720p: 1280x720, 2756kbps
• 540p: 854x480, 1756kbps
• 360p: 640x360, 628kbps

Depending on that person's internet connection speed, the player will automatically adjust which bitrate each viewer sees. This greatly reduces the required bandwidth you need in order to stream in multiple bitrates while also providing the best possible experience for your viewers.

Encoder setup recommendation

Vimeo OTT uses the incoming resolution to determine which qualities the cloud can transcode the video in. Lower incoming bitrates cannot be transcoded to higher qualities in the cloud; in other words, if you stream at a quality less than 720p, then your stream will not be available in 720p or 1080p.

To get the most out of the cloud transcoding feature, we recommend that you configure your encoder as follows:

• Video bitrate: 5000kbps
• Audio bitrate: 256kbps
• Resolution: 1920x1080
• Frame rate: 30 frames per second
• Keyframe interval: 2 seconds

Other best practices

Bandwidth recommendations

The most reliable Internet connection when streaming is connecting directly via Ethernet to a dedicated network. This means that no other computers or devices have access to that network. This connection type is less likely to experience bandwidth fluctuation than shared networks or wireless connections.

A general rule of thumb is having twice as much upload speed available as the bitrate you want to stream. An average bitrate of each preset quality is listed in the quality menu of most encoders: