New Brightcove Alliance partner, Livestream, today announced the availability of their new API and a Brightcove player plug-in that they developed with it. At its simplest, the new plug-in allows joint Brightcove and Livestream customers to broadcast live web shows within their Brightcove players.
Setup is fairly simple, especially since Livestream put together some straightforward instructions here. For the technically-oriented, the process involves creating a custom player template using BEML; creating a player that uses that template; and then specifying which Livestream "channel" should be loaded into the player. Easy.
Livestream offers some great tools for live broadcasting, making the process dead simple. You can use their downloadable Procaster application for single-source broadcasts, or their more fully featured Studio, which allows you to choose from and switch between multiple sources (live or VOD), add graphics, and perform other control room-like functions.
The entire system is turnkey, too. No need to figure out solutions for uploading, encoding, hosting, distributing, etc. It all just works. And as of today, it works with Brightcove!
Learn more about Livestream here, or just sign up for an account and try it out.