Hablo Support | User Guide

Webinars: For Hosts & Participants

Running your first Webinar on Hablo? Or participating as a Host or Guest Speaker for the first time?  Follow this handy guide and watch our tutorial video below, then you’ll be ready to go in no time. If you’re just watching a webinar, then read our guide for Attendees instead.

Do:

✅  Use a recent version of Google Chrome – Hablo’s webinar system is optimised for Chrome. Other browsers may work, but are not fully supported and may have performance issues.

✅  Use a Laptop or Desktop computer.

✅  Get to the Broadcast Studio early – so you can meet other participants & check your video & audio settings.

✅  Ensure you’re on a strong & stable internet connection – WiFi can be unreliable at times; attendees will have a better experience if you’re not too far away from your WiFi router, but best if you plug in an ethernet cable. You can check your connection speed here. It will need to be least 10Mbps down & 2Mbps up with a ping of less than 100ms for a good experience.

✅  If possible, wear earbuds or headphones – this will help prevent audio echoes and allow for your voice to be clearest. 

✅  Mute your microphone when someone else is presenting or when a video is playing – this will help prevent unwanted noises or distracting audio feedback.  

Don’t:

⛔️  Use an iPad or Phone – Tablets are not optimized for many of the Webinar features such as sharing your screen, and often do not have good enough performance for live broadcasts, so we do not recommend using these types of devices.

⛔️  Leave Zoom, Skype, Teams or any video conferencing open in the background – Your web browser may not be able to access your video/audio devices if other applications are using them.

⛔️  Play embedded videos from Powerpoint presentations – The audio will not work due to a limitation of all web browsers. Instead, use our built in web video presenter to broadcast a reliable HD video stream to all viewers with high quality sound.

 

Troubleshooting:

⁉️  Audio or Video not working? Here’s some things to try:

  • Make sure no other programs are open that could be using your media devices in the background.
  • Try closing/re-opening the Broadcast Studio. Or just refresh the page by pressing F5 on Windows or cmd+R on a mac.
  • Completely close Chrome & then re-open it. Occassionally, it can lose access to your devices.
  • Ensure your Chrome browser is up to date. Safari & more niche browsers are not supported. Firefox will work but can often result in lower quality broadcasts.
  • Make sure you have allowed access to your devices, and that your browser settings are not blocking this.
  • If an issue doesn’t go away, just use the green ‘FEEDBACK’ button on the right side of the page to let us know so that we can help you get it resolved quickly.

⁉️  Is your computer struggling to keep up in the Broadcast Studio?

Hablo’s Broadcast Studio can handle more than 10-15 simultaneous participants’ video streams. However, less powerful individual computers or those with average internet connections can start to struggle with receiving more than 4-6 video streams at once. This will not impact the overall stream for viewers, but a less powerful computer may struggle to send a quality video stream if it is overloaded by decoding many other people’s video streams at the same time. Audio streams are much less hard work for your device, so if you have more participants than this, it can be advisable for participants to turn off their video when not needed – for example whilst someone else is presenting – to give your device the best chance of sending high quality video. This is different to the attendee’s public watch page which can handle unlimited viewers, as viewers only receive one combined video stream for the best viewing experience.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

What’s the best way to share my presentation?

If you’re presenting from Powerpoint, it is easiest if you prevent the presentation from going full screen. To do this, go to ‘Set Up Slide Show’ and select ‘Browsed by an individual (window)’. Follow this detailed guide if you need more help. Then, you’ll easily be able to get back to the Broadcast Studio to start the Screen Sharing.

For Google Slides, click the drop down arrow next to ‘Present’, and choose ‘Presenter View’. This will keep the presentation contained to a browser tab. You can then use screen sharing to Share A Chrome Tab.

⚠️ Make sure you’ve tested your setup in advance of going live. If it’s your first time screensharing, your browser may require a restart to enable all system permissions, which would not be possible mid-broadcast!

 

Who can start and stop the webinar broadcast?

The one and only designated Host Admin will be able to start and stop the broadcast with just a few clicks. The scheduled start time is only there as a guide, so it will only begin when everyone’s ready. Please note that once a broadcast has been stopped it cannot be restarted.

Hosts and Speakers of the webinar will be able to meet at any point before the webinar begins in the Broadcast Studio, which can only be accessed by Participants that are listed on the event. It could be a good opportunity to meet before the broadcast, or even do a dry run of any presentations.

 

How many viewers can Hablo’s Webinars support?

Thousands, or Millions, or basically, unlimited! We scale up as you do. The Webinar is sent out as a video stream, which gives everyone watching the best experience that their connection can handle, without affecting anyone else. Just like with other live streaming services such as YouTube, we achieve this by introducing a small latency in the video stream.

 

How much latency or ‘lag’ is there?:

Once the Host Admin has started the broadcast, attendees will receive the video stream after a short delay of around 10 seconds. This not only enables a seamless viewing experience on even weaker internet connections, but also provides viewers with the ability to pause and rewind the webinar at any point.

This does mean that if running any time-based quizzes such as Kahoot or Crowdpurr with your audience, you should ensure the questions appear on viewer’s devices so that everyone gets the question at the same time.  Alternatively, if reading questions out loud, you should remove the time restrictions that viewers have to answer the questions.

 

Useful links: 

Still need help?

You can contact the Hablo support team directly by clicking here, or filling out the form below:

 

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