Cliqer Live: sub-second streaming with captions and translation

Most live streams run late. You press Go Live, the applause happens in the room, and the people watching online see it ten or thirty seconds later, if the stream has not stalled by then. Questions arrive after the moment has gone. A translator is chasing a speaker who has already moved on. Everyone online is watching a different show from the one in the room.

Cliqer Live is our answer. It sends the Program from Cliqer Studio to your own stream on cliqer.io, and video reaches viewers in under 220 ms. This post walks through how it works, what it does besides being fast (captions, translation, a spoken voice-over, recording, statistics), where other tools do something better, and what the plan limits mean for you.

What Cliqer Live is

Cliqer Live is the streaming part of Cliqer 3. You run the show on a Mac or Windows computer in the Cliqer desktop app, where Studio mixes cameras, slides, video and callers into one Program picture. Cliqer Live then delivers that picture to everyone who opens your link. The computer hosts; the viewers only watch, in a browser or in Cliqer Remote, with nothing to install.

The Cliqer Live player: live badge, viewer count, the delay and captions in the viewer's language.

How fast: under 220 ms

Latency is the time a frame takes from the stage to a viewer's screen. For a talk or a service, it decides whether online viewers react with the room or after it. On the Cliqer Live page we state the figure plainly: video reaches viewers in under 220 ms.

Vendors measure latency differently, so we show other figures exactly as each vendor publishes them, with the date.

LiveKit is not on the chart. Its own site now quotes under 100 ms for its global network, a figure that measures a different path from ours, and it is a toolkit for developers rather than a ready stream. Speed also needs a stream that adapts. Studio sends Program plus up to two smaller copies, so a viewer on a weak connection gets a picture that plays smoothly.

The presenter side has its own numbers in how we made screen sharing four times faster and why milliseconds matter for a clicker.

Encoded in Studio for real time

Speed starts at the encoder. Studio encodes every stream for real time: there is no frame reordering and there are no B-frames, so a viewer's decoder never holds a frame back to wait for a later one, and viewers add no decode delay of their own.

The work runs on the computer's hardware encoder. On a Mac, H.264 runs at up to 2160p and HEVC at the full Program size, with 8K HEVC at up to 30 frames a second. On a Mac the video path is also zero copy: camera frames, sources and Program stay in GPU memory, and the hardware encoder reads Program straight from the GPU surface. On Windows, camera decoding and colour conversion run on the GPU. For recordings and destinations set to HEVC, a 10-bit or HDR Studio Format gives a real 10-bit picture (Main10), on Studio 8K and Enterprise. Studio's status line shows the Program frame rate with the GPU and CPU load beside it, so you can watch the machine while you stream.

The player: every frame drawn as soon as it is ready

A fast network is wasted if the player makes frames wait. The Cliqer Live player is a WebAssembly player: frames arrive over the low delay path, are decoded in a worker so the page thread stays free, and are drawn with WebGL2 the moment they are ready.

These are measured figures, with the conditions on the Cliqer Live page.

Going live from Studio, with no stream key

Most streaming tools make you copy a server address and a secret key into your encoder. Cliqer Live skips that. In Studio, Cliqer Live is a destination like any other, but it needs no key: you sign in with your Cliqer account, and Studio gets the server and a fresh permission each time it connects. A licence key alone is not enough, because the stream belongs to an account.

The Stream popover on macOS. Cliqer Live sits in the same list as RTMP and SRT destinations.

A few details from the Studio outputs documentation that are worth knowing before show day:

• Your qualities. Cliqer Live sends Program and smaller copies at 1080p and 720p, so each viewer gets the one their connection plays smoothly. Layers chooses how many: Program only, Program plus one smaller, or Program plus two smaller (the default). When the connection falls behind, the smaller copies drop first and the sound never does.
• One Studio per stream. If a second Studio starts on the same stream, the first stops and says so, so two computers never fight over the same stream.
• If the server cannot be reached, Studio says so and keeps trying. The stream starts once the server answers.

Studio also streams over RTMP, RTMPS, SRT and WHIP to other platforms, with a delay of up to 120 seconds if you want one, and the stream destinations your plan allows run side by side. Cliqer Live counts as one of them.

Studio on macOS. Whatever you take to Program is what Cliqer Live sends.

Captions in about half a second

Captions change who can watch: people in a noisy room, people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and people watching in a second language. On Cliqer Live they appear word by word: speech to caption takes about 520 ms in Europe and the US, and about 530 to 650 ms at the 90th percentile. Each word appears about 120 ms after the recogniser finalises it.

Live captions: the words appear as they are recognised, in the language each viewer picks.

You set the caption language that viewers start in from the player settings, and each viewer can then choose their own. If you also broadcast to YouTube from Studio, the Captions button can send the same captions into that broadcast. YouTube only accepts captions on a broadcast that had them switched on before it was created, so switch them on before you press Go Live. The full rules are in the Studio documentation. For a wider look at making presentations usable for everyone, see accessible presentations.

Translation and a voice-over in the viewer's language

Captions can be translated into the languages you choose for the stream: up to 8 translations per stream from 60 languages, 3 by default, as your plan allows. Each viewer picks the caption language they want to read, so a single broadcast serves a mixed audience without you running a second event.

You can go one step further. Each viewer has a switch, Hear the translation spoken, and only the viewers who turn it on hear the voice-over. Everyone else hears the stage as it is. That keeps a translated broadcast from turning into a shouting match between two audio tracks.

The viewer's own switch for the spoken translation, with 60 languages, 8 translations per stream and 3 by default.

Viewing uses viewer credits and captions use caption packs, covered in the cost section below. If you are planning an event with speakers in several languages, our hybrid events guide covers the surrounding setup.

Share it: link, QR code, or your own site

Viewers watch in the browser, or in Cliqer Remote, from any of these:

• One share link. Everyone joins the same stream.
• A branded QR code. Put it on the screen or the programme and download it as a PNG.
• An embedded player. A responsive or fixed size player on your own site, muted and autoplay if you want them.
• Servers in Europe and the US. Streams run in Europe and the US.

Who can watch

In the dashboard, under Live, Player settings, the Access card controls who gets in. A change applies to viewers already watching: their players reconnect and check again.

• Password. From 8 to 128 characters. Viewers see a Password box and a Watch button before the stream plays.
• Allowed sites. Up to 20 sites that may embed your player, such as example.com or *.example.com. With allowed sites set, the player plays only when embedded there; the watch link and QR code stop working.
• Questions. Pick one of your Cliqer Timer rooms and viewers get an Ask a question button that opens that room's ask page. You moderate the questions as usual. Cliqer Live has no viewer chat, so the questions are the way the audience talks back.

Other player settings, such as the title, the offline message, the poster, the viewer count, the accent colour and the caption defaults, change on every open player with no reload.

Studio can also put remote guests on the stream with a video call: see remote guests and live callers.

Counting the audience

Statistics for each broadcast. The figures on the picture are sample data for the design.

A live viewer badge shows the count moving in real time next to the LIVE badge. Afterwards, the Statistics view gives you peak viewers, viewer minutes, average watch time and sessions, broadcast by broadcast. The dashboard also covers viewers per minute while on air, countries on a map, devices, bitrate, caption, translation and voice-over minutes per language, and a CSV export of every broadcast.

Recording

You have three ways to record, and they do different jobs.

1. Cloud recording on Cliqer Live. Turn on Record broadcasts on the Player settings card and every broadcast is saved to the cloud while you stream. It is cut into 5 second parts as it goes, so a broadcast that stops early keeps everything up to that point. Recordings are kept for 90 days. Open Statistics and choose Play recording to watch one back; a broadcast that restarted within ten minutes shows one Play part button per part. The switch applies to the next broadcast.
2. A file on your own computer. Studio's Record output writes Program to one file, MP4 or MOV, H.264 by default, with HEVC and (on a Mac) ProRes 422 and ProRes 422 HQ choices on Studio 8K and Enterprise. With a 10-bit or HDR Studio Format, an HEVC file carries a real 10-bit picture. Files are written in small fragments, so a crash keeps everything up to about the last two seconds.
3. One file per input. MultiCorder records every input you choose to its own file, started on the same instant so the files line up in an editor.

The Record popover on macOS, for the file on your own computer.

Use the cloud recording to play a broadcast back from your dashboard, and the local file as a master for an editor.

Room or Live: which one do you want?

Cliqer has two ways to show a screen to other people, and they are different tools. The room is for your presenters and viewers: they join with a link in the browser or in Cliqer Remote, and the host shares a screen or Program to them. Cliqer Live is for an audience: it is a public or private stream with captions, statistics and a player you can embed.

Choosing what the room sees. The room is separate from Cliqer Live, and you can use both at once.

For a typical hybrid event, the room carries the people on the panel and Cliqer Live carries the show to everyone else. Our hybrid event tech stack post shows where each piece fits, and NDI explained for event teams covers getting cameras into Studio in the first place.

How Cliqer Live compares

Different tools solve different problems. Cliqer Live is a ready stream you operate from Studio. LiveKit, Mux, Amazon IVS, Cloudflare Stream and Wowza are platforms for developers or broadcasters who build their own player and workflow, which is more work and more control. Restream and StreamYard are production tools rather than delivery platforms, and our comparison data lists no live captions in either.

What the table says in words:

• Where Cliqer Live is stronger: a ready stream with no code, captions and translation built in, a player to embed, statistics, and a Studio that goes live in one step.
• Where the others are stronger: a WebRTC or WHIP input from any encoder or app, open source and self-hosting (LiveKit, Wowza), and DRM or encryption options. If you are building a product, or you need your own encoder pointed at your own infrastructure, choose one of them.

On the production side, Cliqer against vMix and Cliqer against Ecamm Live cover the switcher you would run alongside the stream. You can also see our full comparison pages.

What it costs, and the plan limits

Cliqer Live is included from Studio 4K at the time of writing, with a free demo to start and then viewer credit and caption packs when you need more. The pricing page shows each plan and its current price: see Cliqer pricing.

Watching uses viewer credits. One credit is one viewer hour at 1080p; 4K uses about 4 an hour and 8K about 10. There is no cap on how many viewers can watch. Translation languages are limited by plan, from the 8 per stream the product allows down to the default of 3. Stream destinations are limited by plan as well, and Cliqer Live is one of them:

A plan that does not include Cliqer Live shows "Your plan does not include Cliqer Live." with an Upgrade button in Studio, so you learn before the show, not during it. The plans and limits page lists every limit. Presenters and viewers never count against Studio's source limits.

FAQ

Go live

Start with the free download, go live to a private link with a password, and watch the delay yourself.