Livestreaming video from your mobile phone

This video is a quick-and-dirty test of Qik live video-streaming tools using my Android phone.

The concept is simple: You're out in the field, you want to document something with live video and all you have is your mobile device. Here's the good news, the process is just as simple:

1) Set up an Qik account.

2) Download the Qik app to your phone. The list of supported devices is impressive.

3) Start playing around. Once you get comfortable with the tools, it's easy to grab the code and embed it onto your site, and start livestreaming your own video.

This particular video I recorded and posted miles from my home using my Android phone (this is the archived version of what aired live). I was standing alongside Highway 43, so you can hear traffic behind me. And it was a foogy day, so the visuals are muted. But the quality is pretty good considering it's a phone and I uploaded wirelessly in seconds. With a bit of thought and some scenery and some humans in the scene, you can see how useful this can be in newsgathering.

Qik livestreams video so someone who was expecting this video could have seen it live on the Qik site. But I also uploaded the video to my Qik account, which then linked the video to the Qik player I had previously embedded on my site.

You can see how there are a variety of opportunities to use tools like Qik for news-gathering from the field. I've seen other media outlets use Qik as well as Livestream in covering live events, particularly press conferences. And Qik has some nice social-media integration so you can alert interested people that you're streaming live.

Qik is a good tool to test because 1) all you need is a suitable smart phone and 2) it's super easy to use. Set-up to livestreaming takes 5 minutes if you know what you're doing, 10 minutes if you don't. Qik has good FAQs if you get stuck.

Give it a spin and lemme know what you think.

Comments

[JJ in south county]

Thanks for headsup, will try it.

[Logan Molen]

JJ,

I was at a media conference Monday and one of the speakers used Qik to livestream his presentation from his iPhone 3Gs. Because of the long distance from camera to the speaker, the video doesn't make for great viewing. But the audio is crisp and I was impressed that he was able to stream 1 hour, 8 minutes before his battery died. Pretty good test of what to expect for a long shoot.