How to Stream to Facebook

Streaming your content to social media destinations like Facebook can be an excellent way to make your videos more accessible and shareable. With Studio, you can stream to one or more Facebook timelines, pages, or groups.

If you would like to learn about how to broaden your audience further, you can check out our guide on How to Stream to YouTube.

Before You Begin

If you are already signed into a Facebook account on your browser, that account will be automatically selected. To use a different account, either log out prior to clicking Grant Access or click Sign in to another account.

Make sure that the Facebook account you link to Resi has admin privileges for any group(s) that you would like to stream to. For more information, see Facebook’s documentation.

After connecting your account, you will be able to broadcast to timelines and pages. To broadcast to Facebook groups, you will need to add the Resi app in each individual group. 

Connect to Your Facebook Account

1. Navigate to the Social Media Page in Studio

1. Log into Studio.
2. Navigate to the Settings tab.
3. In the Web Settings dropdown, click Social Media.

2. Link Your Facebook Account

1. Click the Link Account button.
2. On the following page, select Facebook as the account type.
3. Write a helpful description for the account. You cannot change this except by removing and re-enabling the account.

3. Grant Access

1. Click Grant Access to open Facebook’s sign-in utility.
2. Once you are signed into Facebook, give Resi permission to access your timeline, groups, and/or pages. Resi requires permission to stream to your timeline, page, or group. If you do not select "Choose What You Allow", all pages and groups the account is a part of will appear when adding social media destinations to web events or destination groups. Otherwise, click Choose What You Allow to remove specific permissions.
3. Click Continue to return to Studio.
4. Click Save.

How to stream to Facebook groups

If you want to stream to a Facebook group, add the Resi app in the group's settings.

1. In Facebook, navigate to Manage Group on the left side of the page
2. Navigate to Admin Tools Group Settings.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the edit icon to the right of Apps.
4. Click Add apps.
5. Search for Resi.
6. Click Resi > Add.   

The app is now added to the group.

4. Manage Your Account

You can now find your Facebook account listed under the Social Media tab. Once you find your account, you can monitor and manage your social media accounts in the following ways:

• Grant Access - If your account status is labeled as No Access, you can click the Grant Access button to be taken to a page where you can do so.
• Details - View the details associated with your social media account that are not visible from the Social Media page such as Access Expiration and a link to the social media page associated with this destination.
• Edit - Change the description of your account as it appears in Studio.
• Delete - Remove this account from your Studio environment.

5. Renew Access

Facebook requires that you renew Resi’s access to your account every 90 days. You can renew access anytime within this 90-day window, which will be reflected in the “Status” column on your social media page. You can renew access by doing the following:

1. Navigating to your Social Media page.
2. Find the Facebook account you would like to renew access to.
3. Click the Actions button.
4. Click Renew Access.
5. In the confirmation window, click the Renew Access button.
6. Follow the same steps as in the Grant Access portion of connecting your account.

Learn more by reading our article on Renewing Access to Facebook.

Remove a Facebook Account

In some cases, you may need to remove outdated or unused Facebook accounts from Studio. In order to do this:

1. Navigating to your Social Media page.
2. Find the Facebook account you would like to remove.
3. Click the Actions button.
4. Click Remove.
5. In the confirmation window, click Remove again.
6. If you would like to add a new account to replace the one that was removed, go through the steps described above in Connect Your Facebook Account.

Update Your Password

If you update the password on your Facebook account after it has been added to Studio, you will need to go through the steps described in the Renew Access portion of this article.

Account Status

Your Social Media page in Studio displays the status of each of your connected social media accounts. Your Facebook account will show one of the following statuses:

• No Access - Resi cannot access this social media account, which may happen when the Resi application permissions have yet to be verified, have been revoked, or access has expired. (You can re-authenticate to regain access to the social media site by clicking the menu icon beside that social media account, then selecting Grant Access.)
• Access Expires [date] - Displays the date Resi’s access to that Facebook account expires.

Create a New Event with a Facebook Stream

1. Provide Your Event Details

1. Go to the Schedule page in Studio.
2. Click Add Event in the top-right corner.
3. Give your event a helpful name and description that will be used for internal purposes.

2. Schedule Your Event

Select a start date, time, duration, and timezone for your event. If you would like to make this a recurring event, select the Repeats toggle to select the frequency and optional end-date for your recurring schedule.

3. Select the Content Source

You have the option of streaming either a live event through creating a new encoder schedule for a live event or a web channel for a replay event.

• If you select New Encoder Schedule, you will need to have an Encoder Preset and Encoder Channel set up.
• For Web Channel (Replay), you will need an existing Web Channel.

4. Add a Facebook Destination

1. Under Content Destinations, click Add Destination.
2. For the destination type, select Facebook. 
3. In the Facebook Account dropdown, select the Facebook account you want to use for your event.
4. In the Facebook Destination dropdown, select the timeline, page, or group you want to stream to.
5. Enter a video title and optional description that will be visible on your post in Facebook.
6. Select a Privacy level for your broadcast:
   • Public - content is viewable by anyone on Facebook.
   • Friends of Friends - people on your friends’ friend list will be able to access your video.
   • All Friends - the video will be accessible by anyone in your friend or group member list.
   • Private - content is only viewable by those who are given access to your private videos.
7. Select a Publish Status for your broadcast:
   • Published - the video stream is immediately available for viewing after the schedule starts.
   • Unpublished - the video is only viewable by the account owner or an administrator.
   • Scheduled Post - the video stream will be available for viewing when the scheduled event starts and a scheduled facebook post is created to show when you intend to go live for non-recurring events.

If you select Scheduled Post, you have the ability to upload a thumbnail for your event. It will appear on Facebook as the thumbnail for your upcoming event. The image should not be larger than 1280x720 or Facebook may cut part of it off.

8. Adjust your broadcast time if necessary. Read our article on how to Schedule an Event if you would like to learn more about these settings.
9. If you would like your audience to see a different title and description than the one written in your event details, you can enter that at the bottom of the page.
10. Click Add.
11. If you have multiple Facebook destinations you would like to post your video to, e.g. multiple groups, you can do so by repeating these steps.
12. Once you have added your destination(s), click Save to schedule your event. 

Your event can be seen in the Schedule tab and the Dashboard in Studio.

Common Behaviors in Facebook

Streaming Resolution Cap

Facebook has a resolution cap at 720p at 30fps for live-streamed content. You may request to stream up to 1080p at 60fps to the Resi Support Team, which Facebook still advises against, due to processing and delivery restrictions.

Audio/Video Sync Issues

Events streamed to Facebook may have a slight offset of audio and video when viewed while live. This is a known issue with any provider streaming to Facebook. Recommended solutions include introducing a slight audio delay (20-40ms) to more closely match A/V sync without impacting your other destinations much. Facebook videos may have larger A/V sync offset after the video is no longer live which is entirely a Facebook processing issue, and should be reported to their team.

Crossposting to Multiple Pages

In order to share an event with multiple Facebook pages while only utilizing one web event, you may use a Facebook feature called crossposting. Crossposting allows you to share a live video stream with up to 10 Facebook pages. 

Sharing from a group to a page, page to a timeline, page to a group, or timeline to a group is not possible with Facebook crossposting. It is recommended that the Facebook account authorized through Resi be given the page role of admin for any and all crossposting destinations.

Within each Crossposting Destination, you can select the settings for when to crosspost or whether or not crossposts require manual approval by a Facebook Page Admin. Set crossposts to automatically post if the Facebook page admin is not an admin of the crossposting destination page. This ensures that if an alternate Facebook Account is used, crossposts should still automatically post. 

If you do not wish to utilize Crossposting within Facebook, you may stream individual Web Events to individual Facebook Pages using any number of Facebook Accounts.

Host Badges

Facebook allows page admins to use a feature called Host Badges in order to tell which comments on your streams are from members of your organization. You can learn more about Host Badges through Facebook’s business help center.