YouTube opens livestreaming for most channels

Add one more Google announcement to the large pile that’s been accumulating all day from the company’s Google I/O conference. Today YouTube announced that it’s rolling out livestreaming to many of its channel partners.

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If you’re thinking that YouTube just became equal to Ustream, then think again. The livestreaming feature is only available for channels that are in good standing and have at least 1,000 subscribers. That seems like a fairly reasonable set of stipulations since the resources for livestreaming a video broadcast is more expensive than uploading them for people to watch at their own convenience. Hopefully, this will also cut down on the amount of needless livestreams that pop up, allowing you to sift through only the good stuff.

Here’s some of the key features of the new livestreaming service from the site’s creator blog:

• You get real-time transcoding in the cloud, so you only need to send us your highest quality stream and we make it instantly available in all resolutions and device formats
• You can show multiple camera angles, add closed captions, and insert ads and slates
• Viewers can watch the live stream from any device, get the best quality constantly adjusting to their Internet connection, and can skip back and forth in the live stream

And of course since the I/O conference is in full swing, YouTube is providing developers with a YouTube Live API, which presumably we’ll hear more about during YouTube’s session tomorrow. Users can check the Account Features page to see if their channel is eligible for livestreaming.

Photo via Korosirego/Flickr