How To Schedule a Resi Sim-Live Event

Written by Terry Doner. Jan 5, 2021. Updated Jan 10, 2021.

A Resi Sim-Live event is a handy feature which I use to upload a prerecorded video and have it broadcast to my destinations on a schedule. There are a few steps to the process that I'll walk you through here.

(The video upload feature is still in Beta, so please refer to the official Resi documentation for the latest details).

Preparing Your Video

Create your video using your favourite video editor. There are some very specific requirements for the resulting video, and it is best if you read the documentation. Resi recommends encoding the final video with handbrake, I however, have had success with a direct render from Davinci Resolve. I have created a "Deliver Preset" within Resolve explicitly for Resi upload. This are what my setting look like:

I strongly recommend that you use some sort of versioning scheme with your video projects and rendered files. Here is my practice:

• I add a version suffix to every video project and corresponding exported (rendered) video files. For example: "Sunday_Promo_v1"

• Everytime I deliver a video file version to somebody, or for upload, I increment that version number.

This way I can keep straight all versions of video files. You will see where this comes into play in the next section.

Web Event Profiles

I think of these as the events I intend for my audience (church services). I have a regularly scheduled Sunday Morning event, which normally comes live direct from the hardware encoder. And I have other special events, which are normally pre-recorded.

You don't want to use your Sunday Morning profile for anything that isn't Sunday morning. So you might need to create a new web event profile for a different kind of event.

One key thing about everyone of these, is that they have their own embed codes.

This is what my list looks like right now.

The "Sunday Morning" profile is what I use for my Sunday morning recurring schedule.

One Christmas Eve I had two special events and I wanted to upload a different video for each of them and scheduled them days in advance. For this I needed to different profiles. I named for the date and time of each planned event.

You could reuse the profiles over time, if you wished, you can only play out one future video per profile. If I had created only one Christmas eve profile and then upload two videos tied to that one profile. The second video would have played for BOTH scheduled events.

Uploading Your Video

Once your video file is ready then you can upload it via the events tab, "Upload Video".

You will then see this dialogue.

Most of us will only have one "Encoder Event Profile" to use. For the event name, I recommend you use the file name ... which has the version number in it. If you have to do this more than once, You will appreciate this. The Resi site doesn't expose to you the file name that was uploaded.

Resi recommends that you select the 'Create Web Event on Upload'. You will need to specify the Web Event Profile discussed above.

If you are setting this up for a scheduled event, select the "Use for next scheduled sim-live" option.

Once you choose your file for upload, it will analyze your file and tell you if it finds any problems. It will then upload it. Upload speed is not particularly quick, so make sure you give yourself time.

After the upload is complete, it will go through some processing steps and eventually show up on the list of "Web Events" one the "Events" tab.

If you didn't create your web event on upload, do this now from the actions menu on the encoder event item.

Note: for a scheduled Social Media Event, do not add the schedule at this point - do it later.

This will create a "Web Event" in the Web Event List below the Encoder Events. It also tells you the name of the web event profile (in the example below it is "Test Profile").

Scheduling

Finally we need to schedule the event. We do this from the schedule tab. You probably want to do it for a particular day; hover over the desired day, click on the "Schedule" pop-up, and then "Sim-Live" Schedule.

You will then see this dialogue where you can fill in your details and add you social media details. One key detail to get correct is the "Web Event Profile to Replay". This is the link back to the file you uploaded, via the Web Event Profile.

I have run into a problem where I scheduled the social media event to soon to the actual broadcast time. Perhaps Resi can give a better explanation, but my guidance is that you should complete all of these activities well before your intended broadcast time. At least the length of the video before the scheduled time.

One you hit "Create Schedule" it will be ready to go. Sit back and relax.