. Facebook’s Live Producer provides some great perks for our churches that are livestreaming on Facebook. A couple of features improve accessibility of your services–a toll-free dial-in phone number to hear the stream and the option to provide closed captioning in real-time. Now the people in your church that have no access to Facebook or other webcasts can dial in and listen to your services at no cost to your church. You can also embed the stream on your website or blog by embedding some code that the Producer will give you to copy and paste.

Let’s take a close look at the Live Producer and how to take advantage of all it has to offer.

You can access the Live Producer at www.Facebook.com/live/producer.

 

In order to publish the dial-in phone number ahead of time, you will need to schedule your live video up to seven days ahead. Doing this, you can publish the phone number and access code of the service to your congregation days ahead. NOTE: Some accounts do not yet have the ability to use dial-in numbers. If your church account does not have this option available, check with FB support to see if it can be added. Faith-based and educational organizations are the ones that they have targeted to have this feature. Be sure your page is a business that is properly identified as a faith-based organization.

LEFT COLUMN: Schedule and Announcement Post

Simply go to the top left and click on “Schedule a Live Video.” Note, this is different from a video you premiere. These options in Live Producer only work with LIVE videos.

Choose the date and time of the live video and make sure the correct page to which you will broadcast is selected. Note YOU MUST GO LIVE WITHIN 10 MINUTES OF THE SCHEDULE TIME OR YOUR VIDEO WILL BE CANCELED. It is suggested that you preview the stream 20 minutes before the scheduled start by selecting “Edit Post” before going live.

Also provide a title for the video at this time:

 

If you desire for the feed to go to more than one page you manage, you can click on Crosspost to More Pages and livestream to any or all of those pages simultaneously. You can also choose a thumbnail image (1200×675) to show for your video when not playing.

OPTIONS IN THE MAIN SECTION

Note that at the top of the main section, there is a URL for finding all the live videos on your page. You can link that in the menu on your website for an easy way for people to access your video archives.

Setup Options & Stream Key Setup

If you are using software such as OBS to create your video from various sources, you should enable Use a Persistent Stream Key so that you will not have to change that each week. You can copy the generated Stream Key to place in your streaming software.

Announcement Post Preview

Note that there will be an announcement of your upcoming video posted on your page when you schedule the live video.

You can also enable Show Live Tab on Page so there is always a link for people to click to see your live videos.

SETTINGS

Stream Settings:

  • If you have any issues with your internet connection, disable End live video if stream stops. 
  • You can embed your video on other websites outside Facebook, like your church website or blog, by enabling Embed live video and then getting an embed code by clicking on the button there to paste on your website or blog page.
  • Show Dial-in Number is the place you can generate a number and code to give out to your people at least 7 days ahead of time. Just enable the feature and click on select phone number. Choose your country or countries for the phone number and click save.


    Then there will be a toll-free dial-in number and an access code that you will need to take down and publish to those that you wish to be able to call in for the live broadcast.

 Viewing Settings:

  • Enable Allow viewers to rewind IF you want people to back up in your service while it is playing live or stop and move around in the video. If you want them to watch it live, then do not enable this feature.
  • Enable Turn on auto-generated captions if you want captions to show on your screen. Realize these are generated by a computer and may be wrong or distracting depending upon how easy it is to understand the speaker.

Schedule Live Video

Once you have everything set up as you desire, go to the bottom left and click on Schedule Live Video. An announcement will show up on your page letting people know it is coming. You can also then notify others of the call-in number.

 

Many of these features may assist your church in its online presence and reaching those without internet service. You can learn more about Facebook Live Producer here.