How to add live displays to your hybrid and in-person sessions (streams, QA, polls)

If you are running a hybrid or in-person event, and depending on the various possible scenarios that may exist for hybrid events, you may wish to display your live stream, your live Q&A, and your polls on large screens for your audience to see.

To do this you can use live displays.

There are three main types of events where live displays can be used:

• Option 1: A hybrid event with in-person and remote attendees. For this purpose we recommend that you use SpotMe Studio or RTMPs, and that you do not add a stream to the live display, so that you show only the Q&A and polls on the large screen.

• Option 2: A hybrid event with one or more group(s) of attendees and speakers participating from a separate hub (office or venue), and in different geographical locations. In this case you would want a live display that includes the live stream, and that will show the Q&A and polls only when they are live (visually covering the live stream).
  
  
• Option 3: At a fully in-person event, without a live stream, you will want to use a live display for showing just the live Q&A and polls.

For Options 1 and 2 above, in-person-attendees will input their Q&A questions and answer polls via the mobile app, where the live stream will play but be muted by default.

Multiple live displays can also be associated with your live stream, polls, and Q&A, depending on what you need to accomplish, so you can configure several live displays based on audience's needs, with each having its own URL to access it.

When using live displays, your individual attendees will continue to interact with the live session (send Q&A questions, clap, answer polls) via the app. The live displays will be there to provide visual comfort and drive discussions.

Adding a live display to a stream

When you create your in-person or hybrid live session, you have the option of enabling and configuring live displays. If you choose to proceed this way, read-on below (after the screenshot) to find out how to configure the live displays).

If you have already created the live session, you can access the live session settings in order to add or edit the live display(s). Open the live session, and click on the Settings button in the top left corner, then click on Live displays in the side menu, and click on Add a live display:

Here you can start setting up a live display, starting with the Main display:

Here you can see:

Access link
This is a unique URL that will be used to connect the live display to a screen. Each live display has its own URL that can be copied from here and used to connect the live display to the actual screen or projector via its internet browser.

Name
Add a name to the live display, that will only be visible in Backstage.

Background
This is the background of the live display, visible when Q&A questions or polls will be displayed on the screen. You can choose between using a fill color, or uploading an image.
If you are using a background image, you are Streaming with SpotMe Studio, and showing the live stream in the live display, we recommend that for consistency you use the same image here as the one used for the stream background.
We also recommend that you adapt your background image to the size/resolution of the screen that will be used for the live display (large/high resolution screen = large/high resolution background image). Accepted files types are PNG, JPEG, recommended min. resolution is 1920px.

Please also take into consideration the below safe zones when customizing your background image:

A template file is available to help you with this.

Display settings
Show live stream: Enable this if you want to show the broadcasted live stream on the live display.
Polls and questions that are pushed to screen will replace the live stream on the display while they are live (the live stream will no longer be visible). If you disable this option, the live display will only show the live polls and Q&A questions when they are pushed to screen.
Show claps: Enable this if you want to show the live applause (claps) from attendees on the live display. This can be used with or without the "Show live stream" option enabled.

More information on how this works is available in the How does the live display work section below.

Tip: If you are showing the live stream on the live display, remember that there is a natural delay between the live in-person and event and the stream broadcast (up to 30 seconds) that you will need to take into consideration, especially when running polls (make sure that the polls are open for responses for at least 1 minute).

Once you have finished setting up your live display, click on Save.

You can also click on Add another display if you wish to add a second display, this will save the changes made to the first display and create a second display that you can configure by following the steps above.

The created displays are accessible in the Live displays section, should you wish to modify them:

How does the live display work?

If you enable the "Show live stream" option in the live display, then the display will primarily show the live stream, and when a Q&A question is pushed to screen or a poll is launched, the Q&A question or the poll will be displayed instead of the live stream.

If you disable the "Show live stream" option in the live display, then the display will only show the Q&A questions when they are pushed to screen, and any polls that are launched.
When no Q&A questions or polls are shown on the live display, only the live display background image or fill color will appear there. Q&A questions and polls will disappear from the screen when they are ended/hidden by the Q&A or poll moderator.

Display with live stream, only visible if "Show live stream" is enabled in the live display:

Display with Q&A question pushed to screen:

Display with poll launched:

Display with poll results:

Live display controls

The live display has the following controls that can be used:

• Play/pause button.
• Volume control.
• Go full-screen button.

Connecting a live display to a screen or projector

Live displays are connected to screens or projectors via the access link (URL), as explained above.

Simply copy the access link from the live display in the stream settings, and paste it into the relevant screen's browser to display it there.

Using live displays with stream delays

There is a natural delay (30 seconds) between things occurring at an event in-person, and what is seen/heard by attendees in the broadcasted live stream.

With this in mind, when enabling the live stream in a live display, this delay needs to be accounted for, so that attendees who are watching the live stream via the live display have the best possible viewing experience.

The below table shows exactly what is delayed or not when using the live display, with and without the "show live stream" option enabled:

* When using a live display, poll results are shown onscreen with a 30 seconds delay, so that attendees who are in a remote hub will see the poll results in-sync with the live stream.

** push notifications are sent in real-time, however there may still be an inherent delay in reaching the attendees' mobile devices, which is entirely dependent on the Apple/Google infrastructure.