Google Hangouts On Air enabled ?

[andrewzarian]

Have any of you had your Google Plus Accounts enabled for Hangout On Air ? I am still waiting for both my accounts to be enabled.

[BradShoemaker]

My Accounts haven't seen the upgrade yet either.

[andrewzarian]

Im curious about their rollout plan. WHEN WILL I GET MINE!!! :)

[BradShoemaker]

Exactly... Google rules my life already, I often find myself thinking I should be part of their fast track plan.

[Spencer Kobren]

I’m actually really interested to see how people are going to use Google Hangouts.

[cseeman]

I did some testing today with GooglePlus Hangout OnAir.
A friend of mine had enabled her account. After doing a couple tests on her account I enabled my account and tested there as well.

Personally I think the problem is somewhat awkward but it does work.

There is a live comments area and one person immediately posted in one of our tests asking how we were able to activate our accounts.

I noticed that one of my two tests didn't record.

The link is "dynamic" in that it's created when you go live. This means one can't promote the link in advance.

You can promote your YouTube channel though but it may not be intuitive for those visiting it, to click on the link name to view the live stream.

Overall it works but it's not the most user friendly as of yet.

Of course one could use a screengrabber and send it to your preferred streaming service.

Adding that I didn't see any obvious view counter while streaming.

[andrewzarian]

Still dont have it enabled....

[cseeman]

Still dont have it enabled....

I had to enable it from Google Hangouts. When I created an Hangout it asked to enable for YouTube. I'll see if I can post a screenshot.

[cseeman]

Here's what I see in Google Hangout. When I enable OnAir a popup tells me it will activate on YouTube. After I do this and go to me YouTube channel I can see a Live link which brings up my channel live.

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[cseeman]

In my YouTube channel Feed. You can see I did some tests and the top one has Red Dot and says LIVE. If I click on the link name (see next post).

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[cseeman]

And my late night face is LIVE on YouTube. You can see there's a live chat feature on the right.
The YouTube link (not show) looks like any other. It's only created when you go live so you can't know or distribute in advance. You have to send people to your channel and look for the live link as per above.

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[BradShoemaker]

Present was delivered today when I checked my Google+account. Hangouts On Air is now enabled... unfortunately, I have no time today to play around with this new development. I will report back when I get a chance to try it.

[andrewzarian]

Still got nothing here..... :(

[cseeman]

Hmm, I guess my circumstances was a series of dumb luck coincidences. I have a friend who, although not tech savvy, is tech curious, and was trying this out (stumbled upon it). After participating in her hangout to OnAir, I started a hangout and she joined mine. The very same steps worked for me and I was OnAir with YouTube as well.

Interesting that this whole thing came about, much related to the discussion you had on Broadcast Now, as we were exploring alternatives to Skype. The streams I produced almost always involve Skype and guests calling in . . . sometimes multiple . . . sometimes with people who are not tech savvy and often any number of locations are bandwidth challenged and with very low budgets.

I had only used GoogleHangouts once before (someone else's Hangout) and I was OnAir to YouTube on this, my first attempt. I certainly wasn't targeted as a heavy user, that's for sure.

BTW I do find it's a bit buggy when it comes to enabling OnAir to YouTube. Sometimes I have to refresh the browser to get the option.

[cseeman]

Google Hangouts OnAir is truly a Beta.
Did a live stream today.

I noted that while the Hangout was changing as different speakers talked, the YouTube channel stayed on one speaker.

Also several times the person who initiated the hangout and the stream invited someone and my entire browser refreshed and I had to reconnect to the hangout. That was with Mac OS 10.6.8 and Safari. I'll have to try with FireFox next time.

The quality, given the sources were webcams, looked pretty good on YouTube but I have no idea what the data rate was. I may have to download a recording and analyze to see what it was.