Live stream test

I’m experimenting with options for embedding FB videos in the new WP website.

EXISTING VIDEOS:

The built-in video block, or equivalently the embed or FB block is easy to use because you only have to type the URL:

But annoyingly it switches to German as the FB language! There are many forum threads discussing this online, and it seems to be to do with where the site is hosted. But it’s ok, there is a fix.

An alternative that works is to use an html block and an iframe:

This gives English FB text!

SCHEDULED VIDEOS:

What we’d really like to be able to do is embed a link to a scheduled FB video, which automatically turns into a link to an “existing video” when the scheduled video has ended. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem possible as FB produces a new URL for the saved video. (Before it goes live it’s classed as a “post”, and after it goes live it’s classed as a “video”)

For a scheduled video that hasn’t happened yet, I had to replace “video” in the first line of the iframe code with “post”:

But for a scheduled post that HAS happened (it says 24 Aug but I started it early manually) this “post” URL produces a “This video has ended” message and a dead link. If you click on “Watch now” you are taken to the FB page to watch the video. But that’s not acceptable as it’s no longer embedded:

A solution is to manually replace the “post” link by a “video” link once the live stream has ended. A bit annoying but it would work provided the webpage editor is on hand:

FURTHER TESTING

Trying out Youtube. This is much better than FB as it gives a single URL for the video which is valid before, during and after the broadcast. The trouble with Youtube is that (1) you can’t live stream from a mobile device (unless you have at least 1000 followers), and (2) to leave comments people would have to sign in using a google account, making it separate to the FB site.

link to FB video rather than embedding it