In our new BigMarker Studio, you can create professional-quality live streams and broadcasts — without needing to download additional software. Below are some of the ways that hosts can create and customize their broadcasts in the Studio:
- Add Lower Thirds and other Captions to the stream,
- Add a custom background to the webcast,
- Adjust the position of presenter camera feeds (both overlay and separate options available),
- Add padding between speaker feeds,
- Preload full screen overlays for quick communication with attendees and/or presenters during breakout sessions,
And more!
-
- Before You Enter the Studio…
- Inside the Studio
A. Overview of the User Interface
B. Settings
C. The Top Control Bar: Livestream, Record, and More!
D. The Control Panel: Overview
E. The Control Panel: Settings
F. The Control Panel: Audience Settings and List
G. The Control Panel: Automated Timeline
H. The Main Content Panel
I. Content Sharing Buttons
J. The Interactive Panel
3. After the Event: Managing Your Defaults Coming Soon...
1. Before Entering the Studio
Before entering the studio, we recommend taking the following steps..
Preloading Content
We highly recommend preloading all video, slides, handouts, polls, and offers before the session opens for presenters. While it’s possible to load content into the Studio while the room is open, which we will outline later in this article, best practice is to preload and test your content well in advance of the session.
Previewing Your Session
The ‘preview webinar’ functionality will not direct you to the Studio at this time. However, hosts can preview the attendee feed within the studio. Preview Webinar redirecting to Studio coming soon…
Entering the Studio
A. Hosts can enter the Studio view via the Enter Studio button, located in the blue banner along the top of the webinar dashboard. Presenters and admins cannot access this button before the session opens for them.
For this reason, we highly recommend opening the session for presenters up to 3 hours in advance (enterprise clients can open the session up to 6 hours in advance), so your team has enough time to enter the webinar and preload assets to the room and complete a dry run before the live production. You can also utilize the Practice Sessions with Presenters to create and save assets as "Default" in your additional practice sessions to reduce the need to create assets the day of.
These assets include: lower thirds, logos, full screen overlays, and customized backgrounds. Ability to pre-load the assets before the studio opens coming soon...
Note: If you plan to use these assets in the future sessions, select Save as Default. This saves those assets to your BigMarker channel, so you can easily use them in future sessions.
We’ll cover exactly where to find the Save as Default settings later in this article. Managing your defaults coming soon...
B. To route all presenters (and attendees) into the Studio, and remove the option to enter the Classic room view, enable the Use New Interactive Experience option located on your Manage Webinar Page’s Dashboard.
To find this setting, we recommend using Cmd/Ctrl + F and entering the phrase “New Interactive Experience” while on the Manage Webinar page’s Dashboard.
You can also scroll to the Audience Engagement settings located under the Live Webinar Settings section
Once New Interactive Experience is active, the Second “Enter Studio” button will be removed from the webinar dashboard — and everyone will be routed into the Studio when they press the “Enter Webinar” button.
The button view with "Use New Interactive Experience" Disabled
The button view with "Use New Interactive Experience" Enabled.
Please note that attendees (in Interactive mode only) and Presenters inside of the Classic room will not see the graphics that you add into your presentation using our new Control Panel features exclusive to the Studio if the "Use New Interactive Experience" has been disabled.
2. Inside The Studio
Overview of the User Interface
As you enter the Studio before your event is scheduled to begin, note that the room views will be slightly different based on whether or not you have Admin permissions or have access to the Control Panel as a presenter.
Above: Admins or Presenters with Control Panel rights will see the left hand Control Panel.
Above: Presenters without admin or Control Panel permissions will not see the left hand panel at all inside the session
If you do not have access to the control panel in the Studio, you will not be able to create or display any graphic overlays. However, you will still be able to access the bottom content navigation, the top bar, and the interactive panel.
Presenter Permissions Overview Coming soon...
The Top Control Bar: Livestream, Record, Dark and Light Mode, and More!
On the top right corner of your session is the BigMarker Studio icon, along with the name of your webinar.
Further to the right, you’ll notice the Facebook and YouTube icons that say OFF by default.
This is how you will begin to livestream your webinar to either Facebook or YouTube.
In the Reactions menu, you can toggle the reactions functionality on and off, toggle the display for the percentage of reactions vs. the whole number count, and select the emojis to assign for reactions.
You can also access the ability to enable/disable Reactions on the Dashboard on your Manage Webinar page in within the Audience Engagement section. Reactions can be enabled/disabled by toggling the Audience Reactions Input on or off.
To the right of the Reactions menu, you will find the Start/End Recording button. Here, you will also see a running clock denoting how long the recording has been active.
Caution: Recordings cannot be restarted once they are stopped, so only press Stop Recording once you’re sure you want to finish recording your session.
Dark mode is located to the right of the recording options. Use the moon icon, located on the top bar of the session, to toggle between light and dark mode.
Presenter view without the control panel in Dark Mode
Presenter view without the control panel out of Dark Mode.
The Ellipsis icon on the far right hand side of the top bar will allow you to invite attendees, exit the session, or end the session (Note: Presenters who do not have Control Panel access rights will need to use this ellipsis menu to end the webinar)
Waiting room count, countdown, and preview attendee feed coming soon to the top control bar...
The Control Panel: Overview
Our Control Panel options can be found on the left hand side of your screen. The Control Panel is divided into three sections: Settings, Attendee lists & permissions, and the Automation timeline.
Please note that you will need to turn on the Automation timeline BEFORE entering the session as you cannot enable the automated timeline inside the Studio at this time.
The Control Panel: Settings
In the Audience View window, you can choose how you monitor the attendee view of your presentation. You can watch the attendee view on your full screen or open the attendee view in a new browser tab. With the provided toggle, choose one of these two options.
(moving to the top bar soon...)
There are two different ways to manage these options.
Presenter Mode: As you create and share content, the attendee view is collapsed into the Control Panel. This way, you don’t need to open a new window just to preview what the audience is seeing.
Producer Mode: This enlarges the view that the audience is seeing a final video stream product using layouts and layers. Toggle back to Presenter Mode to share new content.
Both modes allow you to navigate through the Layout options we offer for the presenter camera feeds, change the size of presenter camera feeds, and change the aspect ratio from 16:9 (recommended for attendees on desktop) to 4:3 (recommended for mobile view optimization)
Once you have selected your layout, you can unlock even more customization options in our More Camera Settings menu, such as:
- Corner Radius: Round off the edges of your presenters’ camera feeds.
- Presenter Names: Toggle presenter names display on and off.
- Presenter Name Size: Adjust the size of your presenters’ name plates on their webcam feed.
Captions are text graphics such as upper or lower thirds that overlay on top of the stream.
- Template options: Select different logo and caption orientations as well as their location on the screen.
- Text lines allow you to edit the text that displays on the captions.
- Theme color: Select 1 solid color or apply a gradient to your captions.
Logos are images that overlay on top of the stream, allowing you to brand your content.
Backgrounds are the image that stays behind the content or cams shared during the event. This can be a gif, or a png and we recommend the dimensions of the content to be 1920 px by 1080 px.
Full Screen Overlays are designed to quickly display a brand friendly message to attendees. We highly recommend using full screen overlays to communicate breaks in the presentation technical difficulties. We recommend the file size to be 1920x1080px — or within the 4:3 ratio if you are sizing for mobile optimization.
At the bottom of the control panel on all tabs, you will find two buttons: Press Get Help to reach our help center. Select End Webinar to complete your event.
The Control Panel: Audience Lists & Permissions
To access your Audience Engagement settings, select the middle icon along the top of the Control Panel.
Below are the settings you can adjust within this tab:
Show Attendee List: The audience can see the list of everyone in the session (This will appear in the Private Chat window.)
Public Chat Menu: Select the arrow icon, located just right of Public Chat, to see all the Public Chat options.
- Enable Chat Panel: When active, this allows attendees to submit chats in the interactive panel. Warning: Disabling the chat panel will also remove the attendee list from the private chat window.
- Enable Public Chat: Enable/disable attendee chat in the interactive panel.
- Private Chat with Presenters: When active, this allows attendees to submit private chat messages to presenters and admins.
- Auto Mute All Public Chats: Mute/unmute all public chats in the interactive panel
Q&A Options: Toggle Q&A on to enable Q&As inside the session. Then select the caret icon to select your preferred Q&A mode — moderated or unmoderated.
- Q&A Moderated: Questions go into a queue. Presenters view submitted questions in their Q&A tab, then choose which questions to publish.
- Q&A Unmoderated: Questions from participants are published to the Chat Panel automatically.
Enable Polls: Enable/Disable Polls in the interactive panel.
Enable Offers: Enable/Disable Offers in the interactive panel.
Attendee Mics & Cams Menu: Select the caret icon to see all the options.
- Enable All Attendee Mics: When active, all attendees can use their microphones. We don’t recommend enabling attendee mics unless you are hosting a small, discussion-based session.
- Enable All Attendee Mics+Cams: When active, all attendees can use their microphones and cameras. Again, we don’t recommend enabling your attendees’ microphones and cameras unless you are hosting a small, breakout-style session.
Enable Attendance Monitor: When active, the Attendance Monitor enables hosts to send pop-ups to attendees, which they must click to indicate that they are engaged and paying attention to the presentation. Learn more about how to use our attendance monitor here.
The Control Panel: Automation
In the third tab of the Control Panel, you will find the Automated timeline that you prepared before entering the session.
Remember that you cannot edit the automation options, nor can you enable or disable the Automated Timeline inside of the Control Panel Automation tab at this time. So if you want to edit your automation timeline before the webinar begins, you will need to return to the Automation tab of the Manage Webinar page.
You can also prevent other admins and presenters with Control Panel permissions from making changes to the automated timeline while the webinar is live. To do this, toggle Lock Presenter Controls on (pictured above).) This prevents other admins and presenters with Control Panel rights from making changes to the automated timeline while the webinar is live
The Main Content Panel
You will see the content that you are sharing with attendees in the Center panel. At the top of the Main Content Panel, you will see tabs, which you can use to switch between the content that you are sharing with attendees.
Please note that if you have not preloaded your content, you will be prompted to load the content via Content Sharing Buttons, located on the bottom of your screen.
Content Sharing Buttons
Using the icons along the bottom of the Main Content panel, you can add and manage the preloaded presentation, turn on microphone and camera feeds, access the audio/video settings page, add audio files, start RTMP streaming into the session, and add offers all within the session.
The Interactive Panel
Your preloaded Chat, Q&A, Polls, and Handouts can be found on the right hand side of this panel.
Comments
0 comments
Article is closed for comments.