Streaming video - Online classes Help Please

[Nish]

I have a small Tae Kwon Do school. Covid numbers are going up quickly locally. We used Zoom before with some success but without paying you can't go over 40 minutes and our classes are longer than that and this school is not in a position to take on any more expenses unless there are no other options.

I'm interested in trying different platforms to see if something else works better for us and wondering what people here might suggest or have experience with.

So far thoughts that I have had, or suggestions that have made that I need to look into are Google meetings, Skype, Discord, Jitsi, Streamyard,

Facebook is a no go as a couple of the families that I have don't participate in social media at all.

So anyone with any experience with any of these that want to share their feedback, or offer up other ideas, that would really be appreciated.
In a perfect world it would be something that was free, did video and audio, and maybe even record at least the host.

[NONOBLITUS]

My Wife uses Webex. I honestly have no idea because I’ve never used it but I see her on there for work and personal conference calls that go over 40 minutes. Not sure if what I’m telling you is a direction you can take but maybe.

[Nish]

Thank you for the suggestion. With that option I would need to sign up for one of the subscriptions. With the free membership you can only host 1 meeting a month. It's not too pricy but, can't be my first option right now. It's definitely a better option than Gotomeeting or Zoom for us if we do have to go the paid rout.

[mtaylor]

My university is using google meets mostly with a tad of zoom, it works fine usually.

[ChoSanJuan]

My university is using google meets mostly with a tad of zoom, it works fine usually.

Google Meet is cinching in their time limits soon. That may not be a viable option in the near future.

[ChoSanJuan]

I do lots of sessions with Discord. I stream some shows with close friends, I do some Maker-y tutorials, meet with family, etc... I'd suggest using Discord for what you are trying to accomplish. You could couple this with OBS if you want to have some sort of spit and polish to it. If you don't care about raw footage then just use Discord. Hit me up if you want more info.

[shadow191]

Have you tried freeconferencecall.com? I've used them for smallish meetings for a nonprofit I run. They have a "pay what you can" model.

[Cdn_Cuda]

I do audio streaming for work with the odd video. Your challenge is you'll hit a paywall pretty quick. What you'll have to figure out is whether you just want to send video/audio out to other parties and not have a way for them to interact with you, or whether you want true back and forth video. You can try something like a live web broadcast (done through your website if you have one, or Youtube, etc) and then make individual 1 on 1 calls to participants. A little painful, yes, but free. With the service we use we pay for the backend hosting of streaming which is costly and not something I would recommend.

[chrislognshot]

zoom

[Seajay]

You want a service that allows anyone to connect, and not be tied to a tool. Webex is one. There are different price tiers and they aren't bad.

[Nish]

Currently working with Jitsi for the live classes and it is going well so far. I'm testing some of the other ideas as I get a chance but we are from the looks of things going full speed into shutdown 2.0 and honestly with Jitsi working well enough testing other platforms is taking a back seat to more pressing matters.