Yes, I know. By now most of us had at least once watched a live video stream of friend’s or colleague’s or relative’s marriage. unless you are very closely related to the couple, for the most part of the video you will be staring at a bunch of strangers. Not exactly exciting isn’t. So how can we make wedding video live streaming more interesting. Let me list down some interesting hacks we did to improve the experience.

Virtual presence:

A couple was getting engaged in Chennai but groom was unable to make to the event. We got a call from the parent, asking whether we can make him participate virtually. No big deal. We set up a rear projected screen as the background behind the stage. Live streamed the groom’s video from the USA and projected it on the screen. The whole setup was arranged in such a way that audience get the feel that the bride and groom are seated next to each other. Something is better than nothing. Of course, We did a trial with the groom before the event to verify the lighting, seating etc and setup all the software for streaming from his side, remotely. This whole setup was live streaming again online to the rest of the guests who was not  able to attend the event. Groom later shared with us that it was funny to see himself sitting in the engagement when he was actually not there. But every else found it interesting. Glad we could spice up the experience.

User selected feeds:

We were live streaming a Music show. The event management firm wanted to do something different online. No big deal. Three independent cameras set at different locations. Instead of mixing the feed from the cameras locally and live streaming the output, we live streamed all the feeds and let the audience choose the camera angle while viewing. Now audience got the choice of three different angles for the same bandwidth. No need to say this increased the user engagement level while watching the video.

Video message:

Another interesting challenge is how to bring interaction between the audience and the broadcaster. We experimented a new feature called video message in one of our wedding live video streaming. The viewers were prompted to leave a 10-second video message blessing the couple. The link to the video messages were immediately SMS to the couple’s number. Of course, they can choose to watch it immediately or later. We observed around 40% of viewers left a video message. Now we are planning to rule out this as a standard feature in our wedding live streaming package.

Well, thats all for now. But this is not the end of our experiments. Will blog on our next set of experiments soon. If you have something to say about our experiments please leave it as a comment.