Microsoft Teams & Stream Live Events with External Encoders to Stream

Teams live event offers support for integrating hardware of software-based external encoder to stream video to Microsoft Stream. The use of a media encoder in Microsoft Teams Live Events is tightly integrated with different settings in Microsoft Stream. To allow users to use an external media encoder for their Teams Live Events, users must be configured for the following setting:

• Required users must be licensed for Teams and Stream with a valid license type such as a Microsoft or Office 365 Enterprise E1, E3, or E5 license or an Office 365 Education A3 or A5 license. Live events are not supported for the F3 license type.
• Required users must be allowed to upload content to Microsoft Stream
• Required users must be enabled to set up Live Events setup in Microsoft Stream.
• Live Event policy in Microsoft Teams must be enabled

In many organisations, these features might not be enabled for all users due to security and compliance reasons.

The use of 3rd Party encoders is not supported for Public Live Events, therefore hosted Live events will be limited to an internal (licensed) audience only. While selecting the Live Event for public attendees, the option to select an external app or device for encoding will be disabled. 

Select 'People and groups' or 'Org-wide' and then 'An external app or device' to use an external encoder. 

Once the above pre-requisites are configured, enabled users will be able to use 3rd party encoders for their Live events hosted via Microsoft Teams or Microsoft Stream. In both cases, the recording will be stored in Microsoft Stream. The ingest URL can be used in supported encoders to stream video. 

Similarly, while hosting a Live Event using the Stream portal.

As Microsoft has started the roll-out of the change from using Microsoft Stream to OneDrive for Business and Microsoft SharePoint for meeting recordings, the change can be applied as required. 

The change to store meeting recordings in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online is for the following meetings types (1:1 calls with internal or external parties, group calls, and adhoc/schedule meetings). Therefore, the experience and the licensing requirements for Live vents will remain the same and Live Events recording will be stored in Microsoft Stream.