With the summer already kicking into full gear, more people will be staying inside to try to beat the heat 
. With that brings more time for your viewers to view your content! This week, we wanted to share some tips on how to keep your Video Minutes (bandwidth) full.
General Info:
The Video Minutes accounting is time-based. It starts whenever someone views your content - whether on your TV Apps, with the embedded players on your website, on your mobile apps, web app or any other outlet you publish to. This means that your Video Minutes will only be deducted when someone views your content.
Read more about why we account in Video Minutes instead of bits and bytes.
Additional Video Minutes:
If you have any concerns about running out of your included Video Minutes, Lightcast offers various options on how to add more Videos Minutes to your account:
👉 Overdraft Protection: It allows you to automatically refill your Video Minutes Balance in increments selected by you, whenever your Video Minute Balance reaches a certain level, that you can specify. Video Minutes purchased via the Overdraft Protection feature are “eternal” minutes - they never “flush out”, they never expire - and serve as a safety net for any unexpected overage (through the spiking of viewership during a certain live event, or the viral distribution of an on-demand video for instance). Watch how to turn on Overdraft Protection!
👉 Manually Refill Your Video Minutes Balance: If you expect to run out of your included Video Minutes or you would like to add a buffer for your upcoming live event, you can always add Video Minutes in increments of 10,000, 100,000 and 1,000,000 to your account. Those minutes are also “eternal” minutes and are only used when your included package minutes are being consumed. Watch how to refill your Video Minutes balance!
👉 Upgrading to a Larger Lightcast Plan: If you outgrow your included Video Minutes several months in a row, upgrading to a larger Lightcast plan with more Video Minutes included might be recommended compared to purchasing eternal minutes. See a comparison of packages at https://www.lightcast.com/packages.
Conserving Video Minutes:
Bandwidth consumption for linear streams can be greater than for on-demand content. We recommend to enable the “Time-Out Notification” feature for you linear streams which asks your viewers after a specific period of time if they are still watching. It pauses your stream until the viewer confirms via their remote control that they are still watching. See how you can turn on the Time-Out Notification feature!
Your Lightcast Success Team