Liven is an events management company with a mission to facilitate stress-free hybrid event experiences. Their product combines online presentations and meetings with conference broadcasts and in-person events.

An early stage start-up with an all IP live event system

“We are a pretty early stage start-up. We’re building an all IP live event system for venues and organizers. Our whole philosophy is that there’s no reason that slides, content, the sound, the lighting, the live stream and videos or anything can’t just be controlled over the internet. The technology is there,” Brett Fischl, co-founder of Liven said.

Another goal of building all the tools in-house was to cut down on time consuming errors that can occur when people need to navigate across multiple platforms. As part of their vision, Liven wanted to be able to offer high quality live streams of events and feature multiple camera angles.

“An iPhone has a better camera than most professional grade cameras. Just buy five iPhones instead of having just one camera and then you have 5 video feeds of the whole venue,” said Brett.

They needed a way to broadcast content

While building their application, they realized they would need a way to broadcast content. They wanted something high quality, cost-effective, and easy to implement. After some online googling and research, the answer was clear - api.video. With its straightforward API, robust client and SDK offerings, and detailed documentation, it seemed like the perfect fit.

“We actually ended up building the whole integration in about a week,” Brett told us. “We had an event coming up and we needed that high quality video. … We made the decision that you guys are probably the easiest looking to integrate with. … It was super easy.”

Liven chose api.video

So far Liven has featured api.video live streams at weddings. Particularly due to Covid, virtual attendees enjoyed the multiple camera angles of the event even though they couldn’t be there in person. Using Liven, they could choose different live streams to follow and watch. And, if the director of the show decided the virtual audience should direct their attention to a particular feed, they were able to do so to keep everyone engaged on the most important parts of the event.

“We really lean into the RTMP video feed there because we want to have a very high quality video broadcast coming out of these types of events. Right now we use api.video for weddings...at the end of a wedding we just use all the video feeds and we cut together a nice short that’s a 5-10 minute highlight reel of the event.”

Liven uses api.video for live and online events

Liven also does pop up shop promotion. Brett described one venue that regularly live streams pop up shopping events with multiple camera angles. The live streams are provided through api.video. As for the future, Fischl says they’re hoping to add webRTC capabilities to allow for certain events like panels or meetings to happen. They plan to continue using api.video for beautiful, high quality live streams they can broadcast to online audiences.