Live Streams are a complex beast. A lot of services have become available that make it seem really easy to broadcast live video. Doing it well, however, is a major challenge.

It was decided that Pendulum’s concert at Wembley Arena would be made available to the world through a live stream. With only a few days notice I had to configure all the players and embed codes to display the stream.

Myspace came on board as official partners and New Stream Media provided the stream to be displayed in a Brightcove player. On a very swift learning curve, I had our Brightcove account configured to accept live streams and went about creating the embed codes.

The stream was hosted on the Myspace Music home page as well as Pendulum’s myspace profile and members’ area on their website.

I was also tasked with including a chat functionality and found that a simple Meebo Room made light work of a typically difficult addition.

There were also concerns about mobile visitors. Brightcove’s html5 player will work on iPhones but myspace’s restrictions block javascript so a traditional html flash embed code was the only solution. To get around the challenge I linked to an html5 player, allowing iPhone or iPad users to view the live show.

The combination of live video, customised brightcove players, chat functionality, mobile support and restrictive code within myspace made a number of separate tasks a lot more challenging. Despite all of that, the stream was a major success with fans tuning in around the world.