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!
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- 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 Main Content Panel
E. Content Sharing Buttons
F. The Interactive Panel
G. The Control Panel: Overview
H. The Control Panel: Settings
I. The Control Panel: Audience Settings and List
J. The Control Panel: Automated Timeline
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 as well as have access to the Presenter View and Audience View on the top control bar.
Presenter Permissions Overview Coming soon...
The Top Control Bar: Livestream, Record, Dark and Light Mode, and More!
The Top Control Bar now offers the ability to navigate between the Studio, Presenter, and Audience views to more easily rotate through the Presenter camera feed layouts and graphics in the Studio view. It also displays the title of your event.
The Presenter view will show you all the camera feeds and content separated from each other. This is also where you will need to navigate to in order to select and display new content.
And the Audience view will open a new tab and display the session as the attendees are meant to see it.
You can also customize the theme of the event in this top bar. Click on the BigMarker icon in the top left hand corner of the webinar room to access customization options.
You can add your own Conference Room Logo by clicking on Change Logo and dragging or dropping or selecting a file already to upload. You can also remove a logo by clicking Remove Logo.
Additionally, you can change the banner color and font color. BigMarker offers a select few colors to choose from, but clicking the + will open up a text box to enter in RGB values for specific colors to fully customize the banner. Below are two font text options: dark or light.
You can save this as a default theme for future events by clicking Save Theme as Default. Click Save to save your selections.
To the right of the Views tabs in the Top Control Bar, you will see a Timer. This timer will only be seen by presenters, hosts, and admins, and you can set it to notify presenters how much longer they have to present. You can set the timer based on minutes, seconds, or both and start it, pause it, reset it, or stop it all together. When the time has been reached, the timer will change to red and go into negative time to notify the presenter they are out of time.
Click on the timer to set the minutes or seconds, and then Save when finished. Click Start to start it, Pause to pause, Continue to resume the timer and Reset to reset the time. Click Edit any time you would need to edit the timer.
Moving to the left of the Top Control Bar, you will see the attendee count in the waiting room (once the waiting room has opened) or the live room. You will also see the countdown for the event to go live next to the attendee count.
The top control bar also allows you to go Live in BigMarker (f.k.a. Start Webinar), and Live stream to Facebook and YouTube. You will see the option to Start and Stop your recording. 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)
The Main Content Panel
You will see the content that you are sharing with attendees in the Center panel.
In the Studio View, you will see the main content feed as you would as an attendee which includes the ability to view the customizable graphics you are enabling in the main content panel.
In the Presenter view, you will see the main content panel with the content and camera feeds separated. In order to share new content, you will need to be in this View.
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.
The Control Panel: Overview
Our Control Panel options can be found on the left hand side of your screen. Please note that you will need to turn on the Automation timeline BEFORE entering the webinar room as you cannot enable the automated timeline inside the Studio at this time. At any time, you can hide the Control Panel by clicking the downward arrow located to the right of the Control Panel title. To show the Control Panel, click the blue sliding bars icon at the bottom of the screen.
In the Studio View: The Control Panel is divided into three sections: Settings, Attendee List & permissions, and the Automation timeline (Detailed below). You will need to utilize the Studio view to create and customize the graphic overlay options (Captions, Logos, Full Screen Overlays, and Backgrounds) as well as navigate through the different layout options we provide.
If you would like to share new content, you will need to navigate to the Presenter view to the right.
In the Presenter View: The control panel is only divided into two sections: the Attendee List & Permissions and the Automation timeline. This is the mode you will need to enter in order to share additional content (screensharing, slides, videos, mp3s, etc.).
We highly recommend adding guest presenters to the studio without control panel access if you do not want all 3 content tabs visible to your presenters. The presenter view and the Audience view will be the only Views accessible to Presenters without control panel access.
In the Audience View: there is no control panel for this view at this time. The audience view will open in a separate tab to allow you to easily navigate between what attendees are seeing and the presentation.
The Control Panel: Settings
Visible in Studio View
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 or video 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. For videos, we recommend limiting them to 200 MB.
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
Visible in Studio View and Presenter View
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.
Enable Lucky Draw: Lucky Draw is a gamification experience in which one participant is selected at random to receive a prize.
You can preload a CSV file of attendees to use or select candidates from the audience. Enable this in the host control panel under Enable Attendance Monitor and an icon located on the far right hand corner of the interactive panel at the bottom of the screen will populate to activate this feature. Click it to activate and select between the preload list or from audience and click Spin. It will resemble a spinner on the middle of the screen and select an attendee at random.
The Control Panel: Automation
Visible in Studio View and Presenter View
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
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