The internet is a beautiful thing. It brings the world to us, and us to the world. Except when it doesn’t. The Live Stream takes an unaccountable journey before it arrives on screens in living rooms and cafes world-wide. How can a producer make sure the show survives this network — all the towers and transmitters, converters and translators inhabiting the shadowy path from here to YouTube and onward? Well, two words: redundancy and redundancy.  

First, we need to know if all our megabits are healthy. So we monitor our data rate as it enters the network, and also as it arrives at our distributor, ReStream. Then we see our vitals again as the show enters the server at YouTube. 

But here’s a significant improvement we've put in place after much experimenting. The team was able to develop a method of stream delivery that meets our criteria: two concurrent streams, two encoders, connected to two separate networks. Now, when the unpredictable happens along the path of our Primary feed, a backup stream will take over immediately, helping to achieve an unbroken viewer experience. We’re excited about the consistency this is giving us. We are always thinking about how to do this better. Turns out two streams are better than one. Thanks so much for your support. 

Tune in with us for upcoming shows. See the EVENTS page for specifics.