The Hangout on Air feature, which was unleashed last May is swiftly gaining popularity on the Google+ network allowing users to collaborate and share their social media content in real-time in the creative industries, particularly with musicians who want to broadcast live video. However, the video-feed started with an unclean feel that many complained appears ‘amateurish’.
In order to reap benefits from the service, a user can start a Hangout from their profile page and invite up to nine other users to join the gathering. From the Hangout, users can share documents, YouTube videos, screens and chat-IRC (internet relay chat) style.
“Looking for a full screen option to your Hangout On Air broadcast? This long awaited feature is now available by default when only one participant is visible in your broadcast,” Dori Storbeck of Google wrote. “If your HOA has multiple participants, you can still achieve full screen by utilizing the Cameraman app to put everyone but the main speaker ‘backstage.'”
Hangouts On Air now takes the user’s live streaming Hangout and introduces it to an embeddable YouTube player, which also records for later viewing. “If you are a band, a teacher or any type of performer, you will be delighted to know that your one-camera show will now have a gorgeous viewing option,” TechCrunch states.
“It employs extremely complex technology to stitch participants together into one chat, with seamless camera switching. It is still easy to use, though, which is the magic,” said Drew Olanoff of techcrunch.com.
“Incremental changes, small tweaks, and improvements: This is the Google way,” he added.
Moreover, the new view also gets rid of the smaller thumbnail image of the presenter that was previously found directly below the main view. This was totally superfluous when only viewing one broadcaster.
In addition, fullscreen mode will also be available as an option when more than one participant is in the Hangout, but, of course, viewers will be stuck with only one camera view at a time.
“This feature is now the default. It is a pretty important one to have for professional musicians or news organizations, as the original display was kind of, well, amateur. Attracting these types of users would definitely help Google build out a social platform that integrates with all of its products, as Hangouts On Air demonstrates by working quite nicely with YouTube. When you think about it, the service takes a lot of the hard work out of shooting live video, recording it and then sharing it to places like YouTube. It is done seamlessly,” the report adds.