Hangouts On Air
& YouTube – User Guide
Distribute your video message across the StratosMedia Network
Google Hangouts On Air
To create a hangout on air you first need a verified YouTube channel as well as a Google+ profile connected to this YouTube channel. For more details see: https://support.google.com/plus/answer/2553119?hl=en
Once you have your YouTube channel set up navigate to https://plus.google.com/hangouts/onair and click on the “Create a Hangout On Air” button.
User Guide – Google Hangouts On Air
Enter a name, description and start time for your hangout on air.
If you don’t want your hangout on air to be publically listed remove “Public” from the audience. If you leave public in the audience the hangout will be publically posted to your Google+ profile, in addition it will be available for anyone to view when they browse public hangouts.
Even if you have removed public from the audience, the Hangout is still accessible by anyone who has the link. You cannot prevent anyone you share the link with from from sharing it further or posting it publically.
There needs to be at least one person in the audience field in order to create the Hangout on Air, enter your own email address here and click share.
User Guide – Google Hangouts On Air
Once you create the Hangout you will be taken to its event page on Google+. You can easily return to the event page using the link emailed to you when you entered your email address in the audience box when creating the event.
On the event page click on Links
This will give you three different links, copy the YouTube page URL to your clipboard.
User Guide – Google Hangouts On Air
Go to the StratosMedia head end and open or create a scene. Drag the “Hangouts on Air” component into the edit area
In the right panel paste the YouTube URL you copied earlier into the URL field under the Component heading
The quality setting can be used to limit playback quality to reduce bandwidth usage by playback devices.
User Guide – Google Hangouts On Air
To start the Hangout on Air open the event page and click the Start button.
This will open a new window with the hangouts on air controls. Once you are ready to begin your broadcast click the “Start Broadcast” button.
If a player plays this scene before the hangout starts, a timer will be displayed counting down to the scheduled start time. Once you start the hangout on air the players will automatically play the hangout.
User Guide – Google Hangouts On Air
Some Notes about ‘Hangouts On Air’ [HoA]: . HoA are one-time events. They are not repeated or stopped/paused and resumed, and have an 8 hour limit for runtime. . HoA cannot be set as recurring events. . They can be scheduled for a future date/time. This date doesn’t restrict anything - you can start the hangout at any time. This only affects the countdown timer before the hangout is started. . Effectively this means a new HoA will needs to be created for each event/speech to be streamed. Resulting in a new URL for each stream, meaning the scene will need to be updated for each new HoA. . There is a significant delay between host and playback. Approximately 13 seconds. On the same PC, probably longer when there are large distances involved. . These are part of the Google Hangout infrastructure and are not controllable by StratosMedia.
User case scenarios: . Prepare Scenes in advance, eg. Schedule a HoA for each morning and create a scene scheduled for each day with the relevant HoA URL. . Alternatively reuse the same scene and “save and publish” with a new URL each morning. . Create a ‘pause’ period in the Hangout by disabling camera and microphone; in this case it will drop to the Host’s G+ profile pic. Example: Useful to take a 5 minute break during the presentation.
YouTube on StratosMedia
Displaying YouTube content via StratosMedia is as easy as 1 – 2 - 3 1. Open a new scene in Scene Editor. 2. Drag the YouTube Component into the edit area. 3. Enter the YouTube URL, select the Quality and Loop option.
YouTube video content is not cached, it is streamed every time it is played. This can easily consume large amounts of data if not monitored.
User Guide – Google Hangouts On Air