Sometimes the most deeply felt presence at a wedding is felt for someone who isn’t in the pictures. It’s a rare wedding that everyone invited makes it, and even the most important guests can be kept from attending by illnesses or travel snafus. Fortunately for couples these days, it’s easier than ever to livestream the festivities to far-flung friends and family. And many couples are looking to professionals to handle the technicalities and ensure that remote guests get a clear, uninterrupted view.

Washington, D.C., wedding filmmaker Chip Dizárd began livestreaming weddings in 2010 when he was asked to broadcast elaborate church nuptials that included a concert and over 1,000 guests. The couple wanted the event to be viewable to the public. More often, Dizárd’s clients request a private livestream so that family members who are ill or too far away to attend can watch the festivities unfold. Some couples make their weddings semi-public by allowing social media friends and followers who they may not know in person to watch from home.

Wedding shooters who want to add livestreaming to their repertoire need to invest in some new gear and tend to technical issues that go beyond what’s required for standard filmmaking. Livestreamed footage has to be encoded as it comes out of the camera and pushed over an Internet connection to a livestreaming distribution platform.

One of the simplest and most affordable approaches to getting live video online is using a dedicated livestreaming camera like Livestream’s Mevo. It captures and encodes video, and it connects directly to the Internet to stream over Facebook Live or the platform Livestream.com.

Dizárd uses a one-camera setup and connects his streaming camcorder to a Mac with a Blackmagic capture card. With Telestream’s Wirecast software running on the Mac, he’s able to stream to his client’s preferred distribution platform. “I like Wirecast because I can connect with YouTube, Facebook Live or any other service,” he says. “I can go to all of them at the same time if I want.”

The fact that many houses of worship have installed their own video, sound and Internet systems can help the technical side of livestreaming work run smoothly. When Dizárd works in venues that already have a robotic video system, he will often use their cameras, which are usually well-positioned to capture the ceremony. “I’ll just put my existing streaming things in, the church will operate the cameras, and I’ll manage the stream,” he explains.

One of the most important elements of the livestreaming workflow is the technical check done beforehand. “Pre-production is key,” says Dizárd, who conducts location checks a week or two in advance. He investigates the Internet connection and outlets, and does a test run to make sure everything will operate seamlessly.

Dizárd prefers a wired Ethernet connection to ensure enough bandwidth, but he finds Wi-Fi usable in some cases. “We have a backup with a mobile hotspot,” he says. “If all else fails, we can run stuff through there. But we make sure we have a signal first, and then after that we do a livestream just to test the camera settings and make sure everything is okay.” Having backups for power, connectivity and hardware is an essential element of livestreaming. An outage for even a few minutes could mean remote guests missing the most important moments.

An audio technician is always around for pre-production, handling sound quality while Dizárd tends to video. The sound for his livestreams is usually captured through the camera or by connecting to the venue’s soundboard. Sometimes he’ll put a lavalier mic on the officiant or groom as well.

Dizárd also has a dedicated operator monitoring the livestreaming camera while he captures video for the cinematic pieces he’ll edit later. When he livestreamed a wedding in Maryland to family members in Guatemala last September, he had someone standing by to resolve any issues that arose with the remote viewers.

OUTSOURCE IT

Wedding shooters can minimize the technical burden of livestreaming by working with a livestreaming platform that specializes in weddings. Unlike generalists such as Livestream and Ustream, wedding-oriented services usually stream on wedding-themed web pages and offer technical support for both the videographer and remote guests. Some provide or recommend the gear required to stream footage and refer clients.

Mark Nasser, a Los Angeles broadcast pro who works part time as a wedding videographer, has found that working with I Do Stream gave him an easy way to add livestreaming to the services he offers without having to spend a lot of extra time and money on assistants and technical troubleshooting. “They’ve got live tech support not only for me but for anybody that is watching,” he explains.

Philip Ly, founder and president of I Do Stream, says that the service constantly monitors each livestream and provides support to viewers as soon as they experience a problem. That keeps them from contacting videographers about problems and also alerts them to any streaming issues immediately. “A livestream is only as good as its weakest link, which is usually on-site,” Ly notes, such as when “somebody walks by and kicks a cable, or the Wi-Fi cuts off momentarily. As soon as it goes down, we let the videographer know so they can restart the stream.”

I Do Stream also helps videographers with pre-production, sets up wedding-themed streaming pages with guest books and chat tools for viewers, and can tailor its services to different wedding settings and camera setups. “They’re able to do it really customized,” Nasser says, “whatever you want to do.”

A similar service, My Streaming Wedding, works with a national network of experienced video pros and equips them with a battery-powered LiveU “backpack” that provides a professional-grade wireless phone connection to the Internet. That allows videographers to shoot in any location with network coverage and cuts down on the pre-production checks. “You just never know what you’re going to run into,” says the service’s founder, Joel Rienstra, “so we like to provide our own Internet connection. For a livestream, that’s really the single biggest potential fail point—having a slow network.”

Whether you work with a service or on your own, getting up to speed on how to handle livestreaming can make you even more valuable to clients who find out late in the game that someone at the top of their guest list just can’t make it. As Chip Dizárd points out, “a lot of times livestreaming is a last-minute request.” Today, videographers can be ready.

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