Green Screens and StreamYard's Year in Review

2019 was a fantastic year for live streaming and StreamYard. Thank YOU for making it awesome!

To celebrate, we wanted to start 2020 off with a bang and release one of our most requested features: Green Screens / Chroma Key!

Green screens allow you to transform your environment. If you are not broadcasting from a fancy studio, they are a great way to make your streams more professional.

But what made 2019 worth celebrating?

Growth… Lots of it!

StreamYard grew 160 times in size over the course of 2019 making it one of the largest, possibly the largest, web-based streaming studio. Users like you telling friends and colleagues about StreamYard made this happen. Thank you – it will allow us to continue improving StreamYard and adding new features.

New Features… Lots of them!

We were incredibly busy in 2019 and shipped a significant number of features. You might not have heard about some of them, so let’s cover the biggest features of 2019.

Simulcasting (multistreaming)

This feature was one of our most ambitious updates. We did a complete overhaul on the StreamYard interface. Not only does the feature allow you to broadcast to multiple platforms simultaneously, it allows you to schedule the broadcasts. Comments from all platforms come into the studio.

Recording

This was another big feature of 2019! We added this feature to

• give people streaming to LinkedIn and Facebook groups an easy way to download their content,
• simplify the process of downloading the audio file for repurposing and podcasting; and
• allow people to create content without always going live

Studio Moderation

At the beginning of 2019, most StreamYard users were only using Facebook and primarily invited prescreened guests. When YouTubers started using StreamYard, they often hosted community shows and publicly shared out the invite link. This created a problem with “trolls.” To support these types of shows, we added the ability to kick people out of the studio, or ban them permanently using social authentication.

Superchat Support

This was a simple but highly requested feature of 2019. We improved the look of super chats and displayed them with prominent colors.

LinkedIn Live Integration and Partnership

StreamYard was one of only a handful of applications to partner with LinkedIn for the LinkedIn Live Beta. We created a direct integration with LinkedIn Live and plan to continue improving it in 2020.

Twitter/Periscope Integration

Periscope has been around for a very long time and many people forget that it is the broadcasting platform of Twitter. Twitter is an important social platform so we decided to add this integration last year.

Twitch Integration

Twitch is owned by Amazon and after seeing some of the exciting changes made to the platform for non-gamers, we decided to add a direct integration with Twitch towards the end of 2019.

Brand and Banner Organization

We wanted to make things easy for you when managing multiple brands and shows. This 2019 feature allows you to easily organize your broadcast assets. It also includes the ability to drag and drop your banners.

Audio Processing Options

Many podcasters started using StreamYard in 2019. For those with advanced audio setups, it is best to disable StreamYard’s audio processing for high quality sound. To support podcasters, we added this ability to StreamYard.

Video Clips

Few things make a broadcast stand out more than a professional intro and outro video, so we added the ability to upload short mp4 clips as overlays.

Door Bell

This was a simple, but welcome feature. We added the option to make a noise play when a guest joins your broadcast. This is great for artists who might not always be paying attention to the studio and want to know when their guests join.

Screen Sharing with Audio

Sometimes it’s nice to quickly share a tab with audio. We added this to help you share longer form video. We plan on adding more options for this in 2020.

Mobile Support for Guests

Can you believe that we didn’t have this at the beginning of 2019? To make it as easy as possible for you to conduct interviews and panels, we added mobile support for guests.

New features are always exciting, but they must always align with StreamYard’s three pillars: ease of use, stability, and professional streams. We worked hard on strengthening these core pillars in 2019 and will continue to do so.

What about 2020?

2019 was a great year, but 2020 will be even bigger – we’re starting off strong with the new Green Screen feature. Thank you for making 2019 an awesome year – we can’t wait to spend 2020 with you!