How to use lower thirds during a live session

For your virtual or hybrid live sessions using SpotMe Studio, you can use lower thirds in order to provide more information or context about what your audience is seeing in the live session broadcast.

Lower thirds are used as an overlay for speakers, slides, or any other type of on-screen content, and can also be used to facilitate transitions or introducing the next speaker before they come up on the stage.

Lower thirds are made up of two lines, the larger "Title" text (on top), that can contain up to 30 characters, and the slightly smaller "Subtitle" text that can contain up to 42 characters.

An example of a lower third for a speaker could include their name, role and location, or even their field of expertise or what they are speaking about:

You can create several lower thirds to be used throughout your live session. Only one lower third can be shown at a given time on the broadcast, and you can toggle on/off each lower third based on who/what will be on the stage.

Lower thirds are only supported in live sessions using SpotMe Studio as the provider. RTMS streaming and Embed streams do not support lower thirds.

Remember that lower thirds will be displayed in the bottom left corner of the screen, so avoid adding stream background images that include a logo in the same location as the lower third.

Creating lower thirds

1. Open the live session (using SpotMe Studio) that you wish to add the lower third(s) to, and click on the "Lower third" icon to the left of the preview window. This opens the Lower third panel to the left:
   
   
2. Click on the Create a lower third button to start adding a first lower third:Enter the Name for the lower third. This is only visible in the Lower third list in Studio, and is not visible to attendees. Lower thirds are made up of two lines: the larger title text is on top and can contain up to 30 characters, the subtitle text is below and can contain up to 42 characters. Enter the text for the lower third, and select an Accent color (or enter a HEX code).
   
   
3. Once you have entered the text and selected a color, click on Save:
   
   
   
4. The created lower third is added to the list to the left of the preview window:
   
   
   
5. With the room opened in Studio, you can enable/disable the lower third by clicking on the toggle button. The lower third, when enabled, will appear as an overlay on the screen:
   
   You can also edit the lower third using the EDIT button, or delete it using the TRASH button:
   
   
   
6. To create another lower third, click on the New button in the Lower third panel to the left. Now fill in the Name, Title text and Subtitle text for the new lower third.
   Remember to also select an Accent color for it, and click Save:
   
   
   
7. The second lower third now also appears in the list:
   
   
   
8. Now that the lower thirds are created, you can easily toggle between lower thirds during the live session. For example, while speaker Jamie Knight is on screen, you can enable the lower third for this speaker: Then, while Joan Doe is on screen, you can enable the lower third for that speaker:
   

You can also easily drag and drop your lower thirds in the list to reorder them as needed.

The same approach as described above can be used for creating lower thirds destined to be used when displaying shared content to your audience.