To stream beautiful live video in up to 1080p HD through Vimeo, all you need is a camera and a Vimeo Premium account. To learn more about Premium and its associated live streaming capabilities, go here.
✦ Setting up your stream on Vimeo
The first step to going live is creating your event on Vimeo. From your browser, go to Vimeo.com and click “Upload.” On the lower left of this page, click the ● Create live event button, and you’ll be prompted to enter the name, date, time, and privacy of your event. Please note that scheduling your live event for a given time still requires you to manually begin streaming at that time.
Hitting the Next button will take you to the live settings page, which is the control center for your live stream.
✦ The Live Settings Page
The live settings page is where you can change your inputs, add a thumbnail, grab the embed code for your stream, your RTMP and Stream Key for connecting an external encoder, and (when you're ready!) go live.
Along the top of the live settings page, you’ll see a pencil icon next to your stream's title, which allows you to edit it, as well as a countdown of how much time you have remaining in your broadcast (individual Vimeo streams cannot exceed 12 hours). Also on this page, you’ll find the option to add a thumbnail (at the top left of the player window), as well as the Onsite, Embed, and Social tabs.
Onsite Tab
This tab contains the shareable link for your stream on Vimeo, the description box for you to edit, and the toggle switch to enable/disable live chat.
Embed Tab
This tab contains more advanced customization options for your live video's embedded player. If you're a Premium member, you'll also have the ability to add email capture before or after someone watches your stream. You can also grab the embed codes for both the live video player and the viewer chat module from the Embed tab.
Social Tab
In this tab, you can access our simulcast settings. This feature allows you to relay your stream to other social platforms, or anywhere with the manual RTMP destination. For more information on simulcasting your stream, please check out our Simulcast Guide.
✦ Going live
When you're done adjusting your settings, click Next on the top right of the live settings page and allow your browser access to your webcam. You will now see the Input Settings window where you can choose both the video and audio inputs for your stream. There are tabs in this window for Camera, External Encoder, and Other Inputs.
Camera
The Camera tab is our Browser-Based Encoder. This allows you to connect your webcam and onboard microphone as inputs and begin streaming directly from your browser. If you have any other connected inputs, such as USB microphones and webcams, these should show up in the dropdown menus as well. Some more advanced inputs may require an external encoder to work on Vimeo.
External Encoder
The External Encoder tab contains your RTMP URL and Stream Key for your event. Once the RTMP URL and Steam Key are copied and pasted into your broadcast software and the stream has been started, you'll be ready to go live! When your event is ready to start, just click the Go Live button on Vimeo, and your stream signal will be broadcast live to your viewers. We recommend starting a record of your stream from within your encoder at this point as well, just in case of any problems with your internet connection.
Other Inputs
This tab contains links to both Livestream Studio 5 and the Mevo website, so you can learn more about using these native integrations to stream to Vimeo as well. These products have been crafted to work perfectly when streaming to Vimeo, and contain many advanced production options not found in any other production software or hardware.
✦ Managing your live stream
After your stream goes live, you’ll see your event title, a countdown of the maximum remaining time of your event, an indicator light that you are currently live, and a button to end your stream.
The stream preview window shows exactly how your stream appears for viewers, with your live stream stats beneath. If you've enabled viewer chat, it'll appear on the right side. The chat menu contains options to minimize and disable/enable the chat, as well as pop it out into its own window.
✦ Live Stats
While your stream is live, you’ll see some helpful metrics right beneath your stream preview to help you track how many people are viewing your stream, and for how long.
- Watching Now: the number of people currently watching your stream
- Pointes d'audimat : le nombre le plus élevé de spectateurs en train de regarder votre stream simultanément
- Nombre total de lectures : le nombre total de chargements de players
- Temps moyen de visionnage : la durée moyenne de chargement de page d'un spectateur
✦ Ending your stream
To end a stream, simply click End event on the top right corner of the Live Settings page on Vimeo. Ending your stream will trigger the final stages of the video archiving process. Thanks to our live transcoding system that runs in the background during your stream, archives of Vimeo Live events are generally ready within minutes even for hours-long events.
When your stream ends, your live settings page also changes to the post-live version. The indicator light on the top right changes to Offline and your video preview will now link to your archived video settings page.
If you separately recorded a higher-resolution version of your broadcast (e.g. 2K or 4K), you can replace the Vimeo archive with your higher-resolution version. You can replace the video at any time, so feel free to edit the video file before replacing it on Vimeo.
Une fois que votre vidéo a fini le processus d'archivage, elle apparaît sur votre page vidéo, comme n'importe quelle autre vidéo.
✦ Support features
While you're setting up your broadcast, there is a support chat icon in the bottom right corner of the broadcast view. Clicking the chat support icon will prompt you to enter your name, account email address, and a short description of your problem.
Si l'un des spécialistes d'assistance de vidéo live est disponible, vous pouvez tenter de résoudre le problème directement depuis votre interface de diffusion. Si aucun des spécialistes d'assistance de vidéo live n'est en ligne, votre message sera transféré à notre équipe d'assistance par e-mail et c'est elle qui vous répondra.