With the upcoming changes coming to Facebook Groups on April 22nd of 2024, users will no longer be able to connect Groups to LIVEpigeon the same way as other destinations. There is a way to still go LIVE to Groups however! We want to show you the easiest method to schedule your videos so that you can easily go schedule to your Groups as often as you need to.
This will also work very similarly to scheduling in Pages and your Profile if you want to use a Stream Key for those as well!
1. To get things prepared for future steps, go to your destinations inside your LIVEpigeon account. This can be found in the tab labeled "Destinations" on the left side. Select "+ Add Destination" and then select "RTMP" from the options. This is also know as a Stream Key and this is what we will be using to go LIVE to your Group.
2. With the Stream Key ready to be used, let's go over to your Group in Facebook. In your Group, go to create a post by clicking on "Write something..." to make a pop-up appear.
3. At the bottom of the post pop-up, there should be an icon of a camera with an eye inside of it. This is the button to create a LIVE event. If the icon isn't there, it will also be under the 3 dots in the bottom right of the pop-up.
4. You should now see two options available to you; "Go live" and "Create live video event". For this article, we are going to select "Go live" to schedule your video without your Group getting a notification before the stream.
If you are wanting to schedule your video with a notification as an event, the link to that article will be here.
5. You'll now be creating your LIVE stream for Facebook. When creating a stream from LIVEpigeon, be sure to switch the video source to "Streaming software". You will also want to put in a title and description before going LIVE.
6. Since this is a scheduled video, you will also want to change the date and time of your scheduled stream. To do this, find where it says "When are you going live?" This will be on the left side. Click on "Later" and then be sure to change the date and time to when you are wanting the stream to go LIVE.
7. Go to where it says "Streaming software setup" in the middle of the page. Before copying the Stream Key, click on "Advanced settings". Turn on "Persistent Stream Key" so that way you don't have to set up a different Stream Key in LIVEpigeon each time. This will save you a bit of time before going LIVE each time.
IMPORTANT: If you are wanting to go LIVE to multiple groups at the same time, you will not be able to use persistent stream key. You will have to use a new stream key for each group every time you go LIVE. Keep this in mind as if you try to schedule to multiple groups using persistent stream key, it will only go LIVE to the most recent group you set up.
If you are going live to multiple groups at different times, persistent stream key will still work for you in that case! The persistent stream key is shared between all your groups, so you will only need the one stream key set-up for all your groups.
8. Go ahead and copy the Stream Key now and past it over in LIVEpigeon. Do the same with the stream URL labeled as "Server URL" from Facebook and paste it in the slot labeled "Stream URL" in your LIVEpigeon destination. Make sure to create a name that you will recognize for the Group and then create your destination.
If you are wanting to go LIVE to multiple Groups, they will all share the same Persistent Stream Key and Stream URl. So you will only need to set up one Stream Key for all your Groups in your Destinations!
9. With your Facebook Group RTMP Stream Key created, you can now schedule your LIVE streams! Go through the normal process of scheduling through the incubator. Make sure that the time in LIVEpigeon matches the time you selected on Facebook. Once you've scheduled your stream in LIVEpigeon, your video is all set to go! Now we just wait for the scheduled time and...
10. You've officially gone LIVE with your video to a Facebook Group! Since we set it up with a persistent Stream Key, you also don't have to add a new Stream Key to your destinations each time. Just set up the stream the same way on Facebooks end, go to LIVEpigeon and schedule through the incubator and wait for your video to go LIVE.
Your LIVE stream will start a few seconds late when scheduling to Facebook due to the delay from using a Stream Key to connect. You can film a few extra seconds in the beginning before you start delivering your message or you can edit in a brief countdown, such as 5 or 10 seconds, to your video in the beginning. Feel free to play around with it and do what works best for you!
If you have any more questions please do not hesitate to reach out to our support team!
(208) 400-6999 • support@livepigeon.com