Ask These 3 Questions During Your Search for a SnappyTV Alternative

SnappyTV is going away December 31, 2019—meaning users have just several weeks left to find an alternative (LiveCut, the tool Twitter is replacing SnappyTV with, has limited functionality). 

You should ask these three questions as you search for your new solution.

What kind of streams does this tool support? 

Depending on your organization’s needs, you might use either RTMP or HLS streams, or both. However, Twitter LiveCut doesn’t support HLS streams—it only supports RTMP streams. 

When doing your research, ask what streams the product you’re considering supports. Having the option to use multiple types of streams gives you and your team flexibility.

Does this tool have broad native support for CDNs and OVPs?

You might also want to be able to natively export the clips you create to a variety of third-party services, such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and YouTube. Twitter LiveCut does not support natively exporting to any third-party platforms. 

If you need to use OVP, CDN, and MAM services, make sure the tool you’re considering natively integrates with them. That way, you won’t have to resort to manually downloading clips and then uploading them to third-party services.

Does this tool record TV in addition to live video? 

Having recordings of broadcast TV in addition to recordings of your own video feeds can give you more content to use. You can bolster your organization’s social media accounts by creating and posting video clips, GIFs, and screenshots from your own feeds as well as from broadcast TV. 

Make sure that the tool you’re evaluating has a built-in Electronic Program Guide (EPG) to easily schedule recordings of different channels. Closed caption-based search is another powerful feature. It can make finding great content easy. 

For example, say a leader at your organization gets invited as a guest on a news program. A tool that enables you to search through the closed captioning data to find that TV appearance, create a clip of it, and share that clip to your organization’s social media accounts can ultimately lead to more engagement from your followers. 

Looking for a SnappyTV alternative?  With SnapStream, you can ingest HLS and RTMP streams, natively export content to a variety of third-party services, record and search TV, and do a lot more. 

SnapStream Product Demo (watch now)

SnapStream makes live video and broadcast TV social. Our technology lets users instantly capture, create, and share video clips, GIFs, and screenshots to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, as well as create square and vertical clips for Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. SnapStream's customers include BuzzFeed, Politico, and the Arizona Coyotes.