Skip to content
evmux Knowledge Base

Media Share

Media Share lets a participant share a video file or an image from their own computer as a live feed during a broadcast. Unlike uploaded media assets, a media share plays in real time from the participant’s device.

Overview

  • Play a local video file into the show
  • Show a still image as a feed
  • Playback controls and a progress bar
  • Spotlight the share to fill the frame

Supported files

  • Video: MP4 and MKV
  • Images: any common image format, when image sharing is available in your studio

If the browser cannot play the chosen file, evmux shows an error: “Files of type ‘video/…’ is not supported by the browser”. See the troubleshooting section below.

Images are shown as a still video feed. Very large images are scaled down to a maximum of 1920 pixels.

Starting and stopping a share

  1. Start a media share. A file picker opens.
  2. Choose a video or image file.
  3. The share starts streaming and appears in the Dynamic Scene as a layer.
  4. Use the same control again to stop the share.

Volume

Each participant’s media share has its own volume, controlled from that participant’s audio controls. The master volume applies on top of it.

Progress bar

A playback progress bar is shown on a media share in the studio when:

  • the share is in spotlight mode and you hover over it, or
  • Pin timers is enabled in the preview.

Speakers see the progress bar only for their own share.

Spotlight

Spotlight makes the media share fill the whole frame. Double-click the spotlighted layer to leave spotlight.

Offline cover

If the share is not available, for example when the participant is offline or has stopped sharing, the layer shows the participant’s avatar instead.

Editors and speakers

  • Editors can share their own media and can remove other participants’ media shares from the Dynamic Scene.
  • Speakers can share their own media.

Best practices

  1. Use MP4. It works most reliably.
  2. Test the file first. Some codecs will not play in the browser.
  3. Mind the file size. Large files take longer to load.
  4. Use spotlight for presentations. It keeps the audience focused on the video.
  5. Watch your bandwidth. Streaming a video file uses a lot of data.

When a shared video plays badly

Media Share plays the participant’s own local file, so a difficult file shows up immediately: black picture, stuttering, no sound, or audio out of sync. This is nearly always the file rather than the connection. Typical causes are an extreme bitrate, header data written at the end of the file, or an unusual codec.

The fix is to re-encode the file and share the converted copy. evmux publishes its own converter for exactly this: https://publicfiles.evmux.com/static/videoConverter/download.html, the evmux Video Converter, a simple program for Windows and macOS with an easy interface. Encoding takes some time depending on the machine’s graphics performance. Full details in Re-encode a Problem Video.