Hello, and welcome to the live stream.
Whether you are watching live with me now,
or if you are catching the replay, I'm really excited that you're here.
So in this live stream, I'm going to be reviewing and looking at Ecamm Live.
So I've got a couple of videos now where I've had a look at different
software options for live streaming.
So we're trying to find the best software for live streaming.
And I've looked at Be.Live,
I've looked at StreamYard, and now we are checking out Ecamm Live.
So I've got a couple of videos for you there so that if you're looking for
software so that you can have more functionality, have more customisation,
have more power over your live streams. Then this series is for you.
So we're going to go right into today's video,
which is all about Ecamm Live.
So I'm not only going to talk about Ecamm Live and what I like,
and don't like about it. I'm also going to show you behind the scenes,
the best that I can. So this was a little bit weird,
'cause it's a bit inception.
'Cause I use Ecamm Live then I have to show you Ecamm Live as I'm doing it.
So it's major inception, but we're going to just roll with it.
And I think I've got it down. So just bear with me.
So for those of you who don't know me, my name is Sara Nguyen,
and I help small businesses, coaches, consultants,
and creative professionals build their businesses,
build their brand and impact using video on social media.
Make sure that you check out the links in the description because I'll go back
and I'll add the timestamps to the videos so that you can check out the chapters
that you want to check out.
And I'll also put links to any resources that I mentioned in the video as well.
So let's go over now to my screen and talk
about Ecamm Live. So Ecamm Live,
they offer quite a,
Ecamm offers quite a few different software options.
But the one that we're looking at today is their live streaming options.
So let's go over and have a look at their pricing.
So I'm going to scroll to make this bigger.
In terms of the offering that you get with Ecamm Live,
you've got the option to pay monthly, or if you pay yearly,
you get a bit of a discount. So 20% of which is pretty cool.
And in terms of the paid option,
you get the option to use it for free for 14 days.
So you can try it out and see if you actually like it.
Otherwise, they've got a standard plan and a pro plan.
I personally use the pro plan because I
want to live stream in 4k.
So I really love being able to go high definition.
I don't know why, clearly I've got some issues,
but I have a 4K camera so I want to leverage the ability to stream in 4K.
You don't have to.
It's just something that I personally choose because I just really like it.
So I personally use the pro plan, which can get different options,
obviously, according to the plan that you're on,
but the pro plan lets you live stream in 4K, whereas the standard plan doesn't.
And for the most part,
the rest of them are pretty much the same. So you get to add your own overlays,
your own images and all of the functionality apart from that. Yeah,
so I really love Ecamm Live
the pro plan because you just get a little bit more power and a little bit more
functionality.
So would I recommend people start with the pro
plan? I don't know, because it really depends
on whether or not you have all the equipment to leverage the feature of pro.
I would say to start with the standard. And if you feel that you're,
you're a bit restricted and you want to access the pro options,
then go ahead and switch over to pro.
Now,
let's go and have a look now at the features of
Ecamm Live. Now, you're going to have the bear with me for a minute because
I'm going to go into demo mode
and hope that it all works.
So now this is a look at
Ecamm Live after you have actually
loaded the software.
This is what the software looks like, so that you can see the functionality.
At the moment I, in my feed, I've got the camera feed happening,
but the top section here is where you can choose between showing your
face to camera, or you can also choose to share your screen,
which is a big one that people ask me all the time. They're like,
how do you share your desktop so that you can share a presentation,
you can showcase software or demo an app,
or even just, you know, have another way of engaging with people?
And Ecamm Live makes it really easy.
I'm going to open up a document on another screen so that
you can see
exactly what I'm talking about.
Okay.
So on another screen I have a document and I want to screen
share it.
So what I would do on Ecamm Live is I would select this screen
share button here in the middle.
And then
I get a couple of options. If I go back here,
I get to choose whether I want to show a specific monitor.
If you have multiple monitors,
you can choose one or another or I can choose a particular
application.
So if I just want to show like keynote or
PowerPoint or in this case, a PDF I can show just that.
So I'm going to select that one and it will show just that one.
But I had the option of choosing whether I want to show the screen or whether I
want to show just a browser or just an app. So I really like that.
And the other question I always get asked is how do you have your picture in the
bottom of it? And Ecamm Live lets you do that really easily. So as you can see,
I'm in the bottom corner here,
you can add your camera feed by just selecting on,
let me get rid of this, this section here. So next,
when you hover over the software,
there's this rectangle with the dot thing. And when I select that,
then I can add myself.
And the thing that I really like about Ecamm is that you can change the size.
So if you end up being too big, like you're covering all the features,
you can make yourself smaller and or you can make yourself larger by dragging
it, which I really, really like as well. I'm just going to,
I just noticed that I haven't got my pointer on
Okay. That's better.
So I've got my pointer now so that you can see where my mouse actually is.
So the thing that I think is limiting when it comes to other
live stream software providers,
is that they don't allow you to move things around or
size things as freely as Ecamm Live does.
So this is probably one of my favourite things. So I love being able to control,
you know,
the size that the picture and picture shows up in and also to be able to move
it. Because I know particularly for me, a lot of times when I do
demo software or I do tutorials, sometimes it's like, "Oh,
I'm trying to show something in the bottom corner,
and I 'm covering my head and I'm covering the feature".
So this just makes it a really nice thing that I like that they have.
So let's go and have a look at some of the other features on the screen.
So the right-hand side here,
you can see sound levels and this is good to have on your,
while you're live streaming so that you can see one,
if the sound is coming through.
The last live stream I did,
the sound wasn't coming through because I wasn't watching that and that was on
me, but I would have known that the sound wasn't coming through,
because you can see, as I'm talking,
this is green and this tells me sound's coming through. If it hits the yellow,
it also tells me that I'm clipping.
So it seemed to be clipping a little bit because maybe a bit excited and talking
a bit loudly, but this lets you monitor the sound, which is really important.
Particularly if you don't have a,
I don't like to have a feed of my sound coming through.
'Cause I find it really confusing and I can't concentrate,
but you get to monitor the sound levels here, which is great.
You can also open up lots of windows or what did I just do?
I don't have no idea what I just did.
Overlays is a big one.
People always ask me how I add overlays and in Ecamm Live it's really,
really easy.
So all you do is you create an image and then you have it as
a transparent background. I do it all in Canva,
and then you can upload it and then once you've uploaded it,
you can just set it to appear.
You can resize it,
move it around the screen.
This is something that is a really small thing,
but Ecamm Live's the only one that I've seen out of all of this that lets you do
this.
So you can put the element to be whatever size you want and then you can move it
to be wherever you want. So I really love that functionality with it.
And you can upload images that are static images.
You can also upload gifts if you want some animation and that will display as
well.
So I really love this functionality and it's kind of my secret sauce on how I
make my live streams a little bit different. You know,
I create my own images using the colours and the elements that I want and then I
can easily add it to a live stream. And when I want it to stop appearing,
I just click on the eyeballs that you see here
and then it would disappear. So overlays, really love them.
That's probably just like touches,
barely touches the tip of how much you can do with overlays. Not just images.
You can also add text. So is that a text thing here?
So adding some text,
all I did was I selected the T with the plus icon. Then I can add some texts.
I can choose the font family, the size,
write whatever I want the font to be, choose the colour background.
So top pink at the now, at the moment 'cause I like it. And once I add it,
it comes in the overlays. Once again, I can move it around and I can resize it.
So I really liked that ability to, you know, choose how you
add text and move it around to be wherever you want it to be.
And once you're done with that, you can remove it.
So a lot of functionality adding text is really easy.
Sharing a screen is really easy.
Adding your images and animation is really easy.
And I think these are some of the key things that makes Ecamm Live,
stand out for me. The ability to customise it like that.
You can add other things and there's so many other features,
but some nice to haves, which I don't really use is the sound effects.
So they've got a couple of preloaded sound effects so that you could add
like that. So you know, once again, adding a bit of personality
to your live streams and just customising it to something that's appropriate to
you and you can also upload your own sound effects, which, you know,
if that's how you roll and that's a jam, then you've got the options to do that.
You know,
the ability to add different cameras is a great one as well.
If you are, you know, if you are demoing,
whether you're doing art and you're showing the camera from the top and showing
something that you're doing,
you can have multiple cameras and show them as you need them.
So that's a really easy option to do as well.
The thing that you can also do with Ecamm Live is that you can add
comments to the live stream. So if you, in this panel here,
you can add it so that you can see all of the comments that people
are adding to your,
people adding, all the comments that are happening on your live stream.
And if you wanted to, you could add it to the broadcast like that.
So really easy way of also bringing engagement into the
live stream, using their features.
There are so many options and I don't have the bandwidth to show
every single option.
But another thing that I really love is with Ecamm Live,
and I couldn't get it working today because today's being one of those days,
but you can also not only add different cameras, you can also add devices.
So I showed you how to screen share, you know, on this option here.
But if you connect an iPad, you can also,
once you get that to work, share the iPad screen,
and that's a really cool feature as well.
And there's just so many different options.
And I know they're secretly adding more and more all the time,
but these are the key ones that I use. And there are lots more,
but these are the ones that I find I use all the time and that I get
asked a lot about how I actually do it.
So this is Ecamm Live and a breakdown of how I,
you know, use Ecamm Live, and reviewing the features of it. Now,
we're live showing you how to use Ecamm Live,
but you can tell that we're live as well because it's red at the top here and
you've got a timer here,
so I'm not going to finish the broadcast because that would end it and I'm not
ready to finish yet, but going live really is as easy as selecting, you know,
go live, which would be here selecting where you want to go live to,
and then selecting finish. So it's really nice way of having things,
you know, laid out for you and just what you need.
You also have the options at the moment. I've got one, two, three, four, five,
six windows open. You can have more windows.
So if I go to windows, there's a whole bunch of other things I can add scenes.
If I wanted to configure scenes,
I don't because I just don't,
but there's lots more options and you can just open or close them like that,
according to what you need.
And you don't, my point is that if you don't use something,
you don't have to have it on the screen to confuse you because when you're live
streaming, there's a lot going on, you're trying to deliver your content.
You're trying to get things happening. And I find it the less cluttered it is,
the better it is, but that's, that's my view and lots of options,
lots of options. But I think out of all of the providers,
Ecamm Live is my favourite. I use it.
It's the main one that I use.
And I love it because of the flexibility that you have when it comes to
adding your own elements, adding resizing elements, moving elements around,
love that. So what don't I love about Ecamm Live 'cause there's, you know,
there's always two sides of everything.
What I don't like about Ecamm Live is yes, you have so much flexibility.
There's lots of options where I'm a bit like,
how do I do that?
So for example,
the use of scenes, I know using scenes is normal,
but haven't quite figured it out. And I find it a little bit unnecessary.
So I think they've got so many options, but sometimes there's too many options.
So that's why I kind of just cut out all the noise and just use what I feel is
appropriate. But is that really a bad thing,
having too much choice and not having to, you know, use all the options?
I don't know, but I do really, really love Ecamm Live.
And it's the one that I personally use. I think,
I don't know if it's a downside, but it is definitely a limitation.
Ecamm Live is only for Mac. So sorry, PC users.
It's not an option for you guys. According to their website,
they have no plans to ever make it a PC app,
but if you're a Mac user you're in luck because you can download it,
use it and then, you know, join the party, join the party.
So I am going to
hopefully try to stop this
live demo,
get back to here.
Okay. So that I think wraps it up.
So we had a look at pricing for Ecamm Live.
You can try it for free for 14 days.
Then they've got the standard and they've got the pro version. Standard,
which is $15 a month, pro which is $25 a month.
Or you can pay yearly and get a bit of a discount as you do with most software
providers. I looked at some of the features that are my favourite features.
So things like being able to monitor the sound,
things like adding overlays and controlling the size of the overlays and where
they appear on your screen is a really big one.
Being able to add comments from your viewers into the live stream,
to create a bit more engagement, really love that feature, sound effects,
don't really use it, but some people would love it. I, you know,
if you want to use
sound effects, you can. So that's a cool feature that they have as well.
And I just love the, the, I think it's,
they've got the balance for the most part of being easy to use as well
as having lots of features. So I think with live stream software,
it's either one spectrum where it's so complicated and you can't
figure it out like ABS.
And you've got the other spectrum where it's too basic and it doesn't do
anything but lets you live stream and put a camera feed through.
So I think they're in that, that ground of where they're in the middle,
but they're shifting towards a lot of functionality and that is something I
really love about them. Would I recommend them? Yes. I use them all the time.
I'm a pro user, pro level user,
mainly because I want to take advantage of streaming in 4K and I
would definitely recommend that you give them a go. I think that wraps us up.
That is me covering Ecamm Live.
And if you found this video useful,
give me a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe to this channel if you haven't
already.
And if you really want to get started with live streaming on Facebook,
make sure you grab a copy of my Facebook Live Cheat Sheets.
It's a super simple guide to get you up and streaming on Facebook live,
even if you've never hit record before.
So I'm going to put a link to it on the screen and in the description below.
So make sure you grab that if you haven't already got a copy of that.
So that wraps up live streaming for today.
So you will see now in the description that I've got links to the
review for Be.Live, for StreamYard,
and you're obviously watching the Ecamm Live review now.
I'll continue to add to the playlist as I test out more software, but,
hopefully this gives you an indication of what's out there.
I pick the ones that I felt are the easiest to use and deliver,
deliver,
give us the ability to do the things that we want as live streamers in the
easiest way.
So that was my little criteria for testing out and reviewing these,
these live streaming software options for you.
So thank you very much for joining me.
I hope that you found this useful and I'll see you in the next broadcast bye for
now.