Full guide to live streaming on Riverside

00:00 Going live is scary. There's no undo button. Any mistake, any technical failure happens while everyone's watching. Okay, that's what Riverside is built to prevent. It's easy to use, even if it's your first time. Everything you need for a professional stream is in one place, so you can broadcast all your channels at once, and your stream stays stable, so you can focus on what you have to say.

00:20 The best part is that your content doesn't get buried when the stream ends. Every stream gets recorded in Riverside Studio Quality and then AI helps turn it into a month of content, episodes, clips, social posts, and more. You go live once and walk away with content for weeks. In this beginner's guide, I'll walk you through the entire process from setting up your stream to repurposing everything afterward.

00:40 Let's get started. From the Riverside dashboard, choose the option to create a live stream. You can go live immediately, but in most cases, you'll probably want to schedule it ahead of time. This gives you time to prepare the stream and share it with your audience before you go live. So, in your content planner, you can schedule the live stream, add a title, choose a date and start time, and upload a thumbnail or cover image so viewers know what the stream is about.

01:03 You can also add a description with any additional information your audience needs. Once the event is created, Riverside gives you a sharable link so you can add it to your social post, newsletter, website, or anywhere else you're promoting the event. Before you go live with your stream, you need to connect the destinations you will be streaming to.

01:21 This can include YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, or any other platform that uses a custom RTMP connection. And you don't have to choose only one. Riverside lets you broadcast to multiple destinations at the same time. You can connect to these platforms in your Riverside Studio settings or when you're in your Riverside Studio. You can also stream in multiple aspect ratios, so your audience sees a horizontal or vertical stream depending on the platform they're watching from.

01:45 Once your destinations are connected, you're ready to prepare the production. This is where you can make your live stream feel like an actual show instead of just another video call. Start by customizing the look of your stream. You can add your logo, choose a background, adjust the colors, and create lower thirds or introduce yourself or anyone joining you. You can also prepare different scenes for the stream.

02:04 For example, you might have one scene for your introduction, another for the main conversation, and another for sharing your screen or playing a video. If you set these up before you go live, you'll be able to switch between them with a click while streaming, which makes it much smoother rather than trying to build everything while your audience is watching. You can also upload any media you know you'll need, including images, videos, and sounds.

02:25 You don't need an overly complicated setup here. A few prepared scenes and some consistent branding can make the entire stream feel much more polished. When everything is ready to go, you can start the broadcast. This is usually the part that makes people nervous because once you're live, there is no redo button. But because everything is already prepared, you can focus more on the conversation and less on managing the production.

02:48 During the stream, you can switch between your scenes with a click, or you can use keyboard shortcuts to make those changes even faster. If you're working from a script or following specific talking points, Riverside also has a built-in teleprompter, so your notes stay close to the camera, making it easier to stay on track without constantly looking away from your audience. And you don't have to run all of this yourself.

03:07 You can give someone else producer access so they manage the scenes, media, and guests while you focus on hosting. The best part about live streaming is engaging with your audience in real time through comments and call-ins. Riverside brings together comments from different platforms into one place called omnichat, so you can follow along and respond without jumping between tabs.

03:27 You can also bring viewers into the stream directly via live call-in. That's what makes live special. Your audience isn't just watching, they're part of it with you. Once you're broadcasting to multiple platforms, you need to know that everything is working properly. The live stream panel gives you a realtime view of the health of your connected channels. That means you can quickly confirm that each destination is receiving the stream and spot a problem if something changes.

03:50 You also don't have to be at your computer to go live. Riverside lets you live stream through its mobile app, which is useful when your content needs to happen outside of a traditional studio. You could stream from an event, capture something while traveling, or host a more casual broadcast directly from your phone. You still get a native live streaming experience without needing to control everything through a mobile browser.

04:12 Now, hopefully you already know that Riverside is more than just a live streaming platform. While you're live, Riverside records each participant locally on separate tracks in up to 4K. The quality of your finished recording isn't dependent on what your viewers saw during the broadcast. You come away with high-quality individual tracks that give you much more control over the final content, but you also don't have to start from scratch.

04:32 Once the stream is over, Riverside's AI can automatically turn the recording into different types of content. Get an edited version of the full stream, clips for social media, thumbnails, captions, social posts, blog posts, and newsletters, all based off of your session. So, one live stream can become the full episode, several short clips, and the written content you need to promote it.

04:53 This is how a single stream can continue working for you long after the broadcast ends. And if you'd rather stay hands-on, you can. You might already know Riverside's built-in editor. But if this is your first time seeing it, here's the idea. It's text-based, which means you can edit your video like you'd edit a document. Just delete a word and it's gone from the recording.

05:11 You also get powerful editing tools when you want to go deeper. Plus AI suggestions along the way to help you tighten things up. And when everything is ready, you can publish the episode, schedule content for social media, create a newsletter, or add it to your podcast website, all within the same workflow. So instead of your live stream becoming a single video that gets buried once your broadcast ends, it becomes the starting point for everything you publish next.

05:33 Now, that's really the full process. You prepare the stream, broadcast it to your audience, and then turn the best parts into more content afterward. If you want to try live streaming with Riverside, you can use the link in the description to get started. And if you want to learn more about recording, editing, and creating better content with Riverside, I'll link a few more videos for you to watch right up here and in the description down below.

05:54 Be sure to like this video and subscribe for more content just like this. And if you have any questions about live streaming with Riverside, feel free to leave them in the comments. I'll be happy to answer them personally. Thank you so much for watching and we can't wait to see what you create.