Live streaming isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. We’re passionate about providing our users with the best live-streaming experience possible, which is why we’re always hard at work to bring you the latest optimizations to spruce up your next stream. We’re continuing to make big improvements to Vimeo Live, including live automated closed captions, RTMPS, and more.

Here are just a few of the new features at your fingertips.

Automated closed captions

Vimeo is committed to empowering creators to reach and connect with any audience through video. That includes offering a viewing experience that is accessible to and enjoyable for as many people as possible. 

Now, Vimeo Enterprise and Premium customers can enable automated closed captions on their live streams, available in English, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese.* Here’s why that matters:

Improve audience accessibility: Closed captions make it possible for those with diverse levels of aural abilities, language comprehension skills, and learning styles to enjoy your content. Captions also provide additional value for those who prefer to watch with them enabled, or are required to view your stream on mute due to their environment or technological limitations.

Save hassle, time, and cost: Manually adding your own captions or purchasing a third-party service can be time-intensive and costly (and it requires advanced planning). With Vimeo’s automated closed captions, all you need to do is turn it on, and your live event will automatically include captions. Viewers can then opt to view your stream with or without those captions.

Quality-control your event: We know how important accuracy is for delivering a great experience. Vimeo uses Google’s API to deliver high-accuracy transcriptions. For added control, you can specify proper names and technical terms commonly used in your live stream to enable better speech detection and higher accuracy. 

RTMPS

Vimeo now supports secure streaming with RTMPS. This mitigates the risks of cloud-based streaming, and gives your stream’s security a major boost. We’ve made RTMPS the default protocol when streaming from Livestream Studio to Vimeo, and we’ve updated the web interface. That means you can simply copy the RTMPS link to make streaming simpler and safer than ever.

Event-level simulcast

Streaming limitations, begone! For customers simulcasting their live event to multiple destinations, you can now set up different simulcast destinations for separate live events. This optimization makes it easy for broadcasters and event organizers to hold concurrent live events. 

Improvements to Q&A, chat, and polls

We’ve also packaged up a few major improvements to our live chat and Q&A features. 

Presentation mode: By popular demand, we’ve enabled the ability to present your Q&A during a live event! This means your entire audience can now view the Q&A on the presentation screen, making live interaction easier than ever. (This also works for chat and polls.) 

Responsive chat embed: Live chat is now responsive on mobile and tablet devices, so viewers can now watch and engage from anywhere.

Start live streaming now 

* Enterprise customers get 30 hours of closed captions and can upgrade for more hours. Premium customers get 2 hours included on their plan. Captions are currently only available in English.

Originally published in February 2021.