YouTube just announced a handful of updates to their Premiere feature. Premieres are a great feature that live between regular uploaded video and a live broadcast. It’s a pre-recorded video that’s uploaded to YouTube just like any other video, but when scheduling ahead you can set it as a premiere. This creates a live URL with a countdown clock, and once the time hits your video will play in sync for everyone watching and turn on a live chat so you can create an engaging, communal viewing experience without the technical hassle of a full live broadcast.
Features were pretty basic with what you could do with a Premiere – and YouTube just announced a few new updates coming soon.
Live Redirects
The most exciting one are live redirects. Now you can send a live stream to a premiere or a premiere to a live stream. This creates an even bigger bridge in blending hybrid events that have both live and pre-recorded elements.
I always advocate for pre-recording as much content as possible as it eliminates extra risk in a technical issue crashing your show.
So some ideas with pairing a live stream and a Premiere include have a live pre-show leading to the premiere or having a live interview or Q&A after the premiere, like you’d experience at a film festival.
This feature is a great way to build excitement for your premiere and engaging your community and followers.
Premiere Trailers
Currently with premieres you just get a thumbnail image in little countdown clock. With the announcement of trailers you can now upload a 15 second to 3 minute long hype video to promote your premiere. This will play anytime someone lands on your premiere page and encourage them to opt in to get notified when the premiere starts.
Expanded countdown theme
Right before the premiere begins, YouTube will play a countdown video. While handy, there was only one countdown video option. Now there’s going to be over 10, to better pick a style that fits with your video. You can also set the length of the countdown from one to ten minutes.
Scheduling on the YouTube App
The smallest of the updates was the ability to schedule premieres directly from the iPhone app.
Notes on Eligibility for Premiere Features
A few things to note about these features. Your channel has to have at least 1000 subscribers to use the live redirect and trailer features.
You can also only redirect within your channel. For example you can’t redirect your live stream to another channel’s premiere, and vice versa.
If your channel qualifies, keep an eye out. These updates are coming in December 2020.
