Looking for the best livestreaming software solution for your needs? I compare Restream and Streamyard for the ultimate battle off. LOLs. I take you under the hood of both software options, look at the similarities and differences so you can decide which stream reigns supreme for your needs.
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🕒Timestamps🕒
2:06 Restream vs Streamyard Similarities
9:16 Similarities summary
9:52 Restream differences
14:32 Restream differences summary
15:20 Streamyard differences
18:56 Streamyard differences summary
19:24 Compare the pair
Restream vs StreamYard (Which stream reigns supreme?) – Video Transcript
Hello, and welcome to the live stream, whether you are joining me live now, or if you’re catching us on the replay. In today’s video, I’m going to be looking at StreamYard versus Restream or Restream versus StreamYard.
And I’m going to be answering a big question. And the question I’m going to be looking at today is which stream reigns supreme? I’m really going to be drilling down on in terms of StreamYard, and in terms of Restream.
What are the different features, so that you can help decide if you’re looking at both of these as options for live streaming software? Which one to choose? Let’s get right into it.
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Sara Nguyen, and I help coaches, consultants and creative pros build their business using video with ease, and I live stream a lot about live streaming to help you live stream better.
There’s a bit of live stream inception that happens. Make sure that you check out the links in the description because I’ll go back and I’ll put all of the timestamps in case you’ve missed something. Then you can go back to those sections.
And I’ve also got links to all of the resources, everything that I mentioned in this video there as well. Let’s talk a little bit about Restream and StreamYard. I’ve been using both of these live streaming software providers for the good part of coming up to a year now, solidly a year with both of them.
And I wanted to look at now that Restream has a browser-based option where you can live stream using your browser. Now it really is a comparable apples with apples on which one should you choose. Let’s go through some of the features of Restream and StreamYard.
I’m going to break it up into three sections. I’m going to look at the similarities because there are a lot of similarities. I’m going to look at the differences between the two and then I’ll help you decide, show you the features so that you can decide for yourself, which stream reign supreme.
Let’s have a look at some of the features. Now, both Restream and StreamYard offer multi-streaming. Let’s have a look at what that looks like on both of the platforms. Multi-streaming, they both allow you to broadcast to multiple destinations Restream currently lets you multi-stream to 30 destinations, StreamYard depends on which plan that you are on.
It’s between eight-ish, but they both definitely allow you to multi-stream. And the option to add multi-streaming is really easily. Once you’ve set up this StreamYard here, once you’ve set up your account, all you have to do when you go to create a new live stream is select all of the platforms that you’ve already connected.
It’s super easy. And the same deal happens in Restream, right? Here we’ve got the destinations to add a channel. You simply select all of the channels there. And once you’ve done that, when you want to go live you can see the destinations all here.
These are only two that I’ve added, but they both allow restreaming and they make it really, really easy. The second thing that they both do is they allow for scheduling of events.
This is a new thing that Restream added recently, but it allows you to set up your live stream in advance. In Restream, which we’re on at the moment, you can go to events on the left-hand side here, and this will open up, Oh, what are you doing here?
And this will open up the functionality for you to create an event. You would go to create an event, you would put in a title, you would put in a description and then you can literally set the date of when you want the live stream to happen.
Let’s say I wanted to do it in advanced. I’d set the date and I would upload the thumbnail image as well. I’m just going to put one there. And once you’ve done that, Restream will create this event for you so that you can live stream via this event.
And also it will create that event page on your Facebook page and your YouTube account as well. That’s how you do it in Restream. Now in StreamYard, to create the event, it’s in create a broadcast. You would choose the accounts and then you would select this schedule for later option.
And once again, you could upload your thumbnail image that you want to choose, and it will put that thumbnail on the actual event, and video, and then you select the date. And so that both of them make it really, really easy to schedule events in advance and they also create that little event for you.
That’s pretty cool. I really liked that feature of both of them. Now, both of them also are now browser-based in terms of they have the ability for you to go live using your browser. We’re in StreamYard at the moment. This is what it looks like in a StreamYard.
Let’s choose a camera. This is what the web browser looks like in StreamYard. In Restream, this is what it looks like. It’s pretty, they look, you know, pretty similar to be honest, but they both have very highly functional, web-based functionality, which allows you to live stream.
And they both work really well. They also have really similar features in terms of what you can do when you are live streaming using the web browser option. For StreamYard, which we’re in at the moment, it allows you to see all of the comments from all of the social media platforms in one place, in this comment section.
Same with Restream, they also have a chat section which aggregates all of the chat in one place. Both of them also allow you to share your screen. Both of them also allow you to add overlays in terms of banners really easily.
This is one in StreamYard. In restream in terms of banners, they call it captions, but it’s essentially the same concept where you can add your own text and then you can just have it display whenever you are ready for it to display.
Really easy ways to add extra text to your live streams and to, you know, add a bit more communication on your live streams as well. In terms of graphics and overlays, they both have the same functionality.
They both allow you to add overlays to your actual live stream really easily by uploading your own ones. This is where you see it in Restream. In StreamYard, they also have it in the brand section here. You can add your own overlays, simply click on the overlay section and then you can upload an image.
They both allow you to do that really, really easily. They’ve also both got the option for you to not only add overlays in terms of images, but you can also add video clips. That’s whether you want to add an intro video where you have a countdown timer and an outro video, or you actually want to play videos within the live stream as well.
Both of them allow you to do that. This is where you do it here in StreamYard. In Restream, they have it in this video section here. They’re starting to look really similar for the most part, but you know, that’s a good thing, right?
They both have a lot of functionality, which is really similar. Let’s talk about a couple of other things. Both of them also allow you to add guests to your live streams really easily.
We’re in Restream now, and Restream allows you to simply click on this invite guests button down here, and then you have a link that you then send your guests and then they join the actual live stream. Same deal with StreamYard. At the bottom here, you can see invite and that gives you a link as well.
And if you click on that link, you send it to people, then they can also easily join your live stream as well. Both of them have that functionality, which is really important, particularly if you want to have a guest join your live stream, it’s really easy to do so both of them do that really, really well.
Yeah. Both of them also allow you to download a copy of the live stream recording. In Restream, you can go to the download section here in the recording section here on the left-hand side, and this will have a copy once you have them of all of the live streams that you can download an audio version, you can download the video version and that will store it here.
I think it’s 15 or 30 days, depending on which plan that you’re on. With StreamYard, you can also do that as well. I can’t remember how long they leave it up for, but you can also download a copy of the recording from StreamYard as well. That’s pretty handy that they both do.
In terms of being able to live stream in HD high definition so 920 x 1080, both StreamYard and Restream have this option on their Pro Plan. You are able to use this functionality, but it is on the higher plans, higher-paid plans, but you know, they both have it there.
If we look at the similarities of both of the platforms, which is kind of covering my face, there’s quite a few. Both allow multi-streaming, both allow for events to be scheduled, both have a highly functional browser-based option for you to live stream using your web browser, which allows you to add overlays, add videos, add your guests really easily, screen-share really easily, both allow you to download a copy of your live stream recording and both allow you to do HD live streaming.
Now, now that we know the similarities, how are they actually different? Let’s go in and start with Restream. And how Restream is a little bit different? With Restream, you are able to live stream to more destinations.
You’ve got 30 destinations that they’ve got set up, whereas, with StreamYard, you’ve only got eight from my memory. The other thing that Restream does really, really well is they have live stream analytics. I’m going to bring up a browser so you can see what it looks like.
No, I’m not because I’m actually live right now. With Restream, they give you a snapshot of how your live stream performed. You’re able to see within your account, how many viewers you had on the live stream, when they were engaged, how many chats that you got.
If having these analytics is important to you, Restream has this at the moment and StreamYard doesn’t at the time of this recording. That’s another thing that makes Restream different.
The other thing that Restream does that StreamYard doesn’t currently do is Restream allows for you to stream pre-recorded video. Let’s go over and have a look at this right now.
We’re on Restream. And if I go to scheduler, what I’ve got is the ability to upload a video that I’ve recorded and then schedule that to then live stream to stream.
And why would you do that? I really love live streaming and being live and I’m definitely live now, but I also understand that there are times that you want to live stream, but you can’t. Right?
This allows you to continue to push videos out and have the beautiful organic juices of live streaming without actually being live. You can do that within Restream. You would upload a video to the video section here, and then in your queue, you would schedule the video to actually play at the time, the date and time.
Let’s go and schedule this to go ahead. That’s the video. And once you’ve done this, you’ll see in your queue here that you can like stack up the videos that you can actually, you know, schedule out in advance. That’s a really cool feature that they have that StreamYard doesn’t currently have the ability for you to stream pre-recorded videos.
The other thing that you can do, or that you have with Restream that you don’t have with StreamYard, I’m going to go back into the live studio so I can show you now, and this really is for people who are like my friend, Pete Johns, you know, in the music kind of saying, if you go to this cog option, the settings option, and you go to the advanced settings, you’ll see that they have, Oh, where is it?
Where is it? It was here a minute ago. I have, well, they had– Oh, here it is. You will see that they have stereo audio input. This maybe important to you.
Particularly, I find that a lot of musicians find this really, really important, and this is a win over StreamYard if they’re looking at the nitty-gritty details that Restream allows you to have stereo audio input. Whereas StreamYard, at this moment, doesn’t allow you to do that from the web-based browser option easily.
That’s a definitely another feature that Restream has over their StreamYard friends. The other thing that you have with, oh, I’m losing my transitions here, with Restream is you have live health monitoring, right?
What does that actually mean? When you are actually live using Restream, you can actually see graphs and like, you know, those live live monitoring of your actual live stream.
Is this useful? It could be. I personally haven’t really used this function because I’m already trying to pay attention to all of the content I’m trying to put out, let alone trying to monitor an additional feat.
I personally don’t use that, but if it’s important to you to have a feed that has the monitoring of the live stream so you can see frames are being dropped that is available in Restream. At the moment, it’s not available in StreamYard.
All in all these other differences that Restream has over StreamYard. You can go to more destinations than StreamYard does. You’ve got live stream analytics after the broadcast, you’re able to get a summary of how you performed, how many chatters there where. You’re able to stream pre-recorded videos, so upload your videos and then schedule them to stream at a certain time.
You also have stereo audio input, which is if this is important to you, I hear from musicians all the time that they want stereo audio input. This is what you get with StreamYard at the moment, sorry, this is what you get with Restream at the moment that you don’t get with StreamYard.
And you also have live stream health monitoring as well. Now that we have gone through the Restream differences, let’s have a look at what we get with our friends in StreamYard. Okay.
We are back over, let’s go back. We are back over to StreamYard now. And one of the features of StreamYard is if you go to the right-hand side here, you’ll see that there is private chat to guests. Now, this is really handy.
If you’ve ever had a collaboration where you’ve had a guest on, this allows you to type messages just between you and your guests, so that all of the viewers can’t see it. You could be saying, Hey, drop this link or, Hey, your audio is a bit loud.
You can just have a chat between the two of you. This is available at the moment in StreamYard and not in Restream. And it’s a really handy feature, particularly if you have multiple guests as well on your live stream.
The other thing that you can do in StreamYard is you can kind of arrange the guest’s layout. I don’t have a guest here at the moment, but you have a bit more flexibility on being able to play with the guest’s layout in terms of moving them to the left, moving them to the right of the screen than you do with Restream.
I find this is a really micro difference that there is, but it’s a difference anyway. The other thing, Oh, the other thing that I really liked with StreamYard that Restream doesn’t have is yes, you can add your overlays and yes, you can change the colour of, you know, some of your banners, but with StreamYard, you can actually set up different colour scheme.
This one, as you can see is a bit of a moodier, darker blue colour that I have with these banners. If I go to brand one, I’ve got this yellow colour scheme, right? You can have different colour schemes already pre-setup, right?
And you can do that with StreamYard and you can’t do that at the moment in Restream. That’s a really, really cool feature that I liked that they had. Oh, so with StreamYard as well, you also have the option to, I’m going to turn off these banners because they’re distracting me, with StreamYard you also have the option to use the green screens.
I have a virtual background. Personally, I don’t use green screen because it’s a lot of work and I just don’t have the emotional energy to commit, to getting a green screen to look amazing. But you have this ability within StreamYard, it’s in the settings option and you can see there’s this green screen option here.
And you can upload your own virtual background or you can use some of their ones here. That is what’s available in StreamYard. Oh, so the other thing that StreamYard has is they have guest authentication.
What does that even mean? With both of StreamYard and Restream, you can add guests and they don’t have to actually log into anything in order to join the broadcast, but you can.
Let’s just say that you’ve got people from the public joining you, you can make it so that in order for them to join the broadcast, they have to log into either Google or they have to log in to either Facebook.
And this then allows you if they are, have been misbehaving to ban them. You can kick them off the stream anyway, but you can have extra power to actually ban them if you force your guests to authenticate before they log in.
And this is another feature that StreamYard has that Restream doesn’t have. That is essentially a wrap of the features that StreamYard has. They have the ability to private chat to guests, to kind of arrange your layout a little bit more, they’ve got multiple brand colours that you can kind of set up.
They’ve also got green screens and they’ve got guests authentication as well. Those are the differences in StreamYard. Now, the big question that I guess you’re asking is which one is better?
Which one should I choose? And my answer is kind of, it really depends. In terms of the differences, I’ve got them on the screen side by side, so you can kind of have a look. It really depends on which features are important to you so that you can, you know, live stream with what you need.
I do find, I do have both, so I don’t actually have to decide. I just use both of them ’cause they suit different things for me. But I, you know, the features on the screen for you to decide, I think they’re both amazing offerings and it really comes down to you, you know, trialling both of them out and then seeing which one suits you better.
If I had to choose one, I would say that– Oh, no, I can’t. I love StreamYard because I feel they’re a little bit more mature in terms of their product development, but that’s probably just a personal thing.
It may not actually be true in my view. But I love Restream in terms of their, you know, so many things! I love them both. I can’t decide. They both are really great.
I think that in terms of choosing a provider, it actually just comes down to what’s important to you. I’m actually not making that call. I’m saying they’re both amazing offerings that are really similar and have these really micro differences.
And it depends on which of those features are actually important to you. That essentially wraps up the live stream. Thanks for joining me. TheaterMakerIE, ” I was looking forward to this”. Hi, thanks for joining me. Emmanuel says, “good morning from the Philippines”.
Hey Emmanuel. Good to see you here”. And Celine said, “I’d like to know more about these platforms”, so hopefully that gives you an overview.
Yeah. Mohamed says, “What about using buffering?” I don’t know. I don’t really kind of deal with that as an issue. I don’t know the answer to that, so oops, sorry. My bad.
Hopefully that covers in-depth StreamYard and Restream. I went through like all of the functions bit by bit, but hopefully, that gives you a really good overview of how they’re different, how they’re similar.
I really feel that particularly with these two and all live streaming software options, they’re starting to all look really similar and have like, you know, you saw the side by side of both inside StreamYard and inside Restream, they’re looking really, really close.
And they’re both offering, you know, pretty much the same thing, but it really comes down to those micro things and which is important to you. That being said, if you found this video useful, give me a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel.
If you haven’t already, I do lots of live stream tutorials, social media tutorials, and I have a lot of fun. And if you really are looking to take your live streams to the next level, make sure you grab a copy of my Facebook Live Cheat Sheets.
It’s a super simple guide to get you up in streaming on Facebook live, even if you’ve never hit record before. I’ll put the link on the screen and I’ve dropped the link in the description.
Thank you so much for joining me today and I will see you on the next live stream. Bye for now.
