Frequently Asked Questions

Live videos are full of the speaker stutters and the video itself often has buffering issues. Especially in poor-bandwidth areas. People get tense/irritated if they miss out on something important during the live event.

Pre-recorded videos (e.g. YouTube) feel alienated with the audience itching to ask a question to the author, but is unable to do so.

Pseudo-live videos where pre-recorded videos are played as if it was a live video, asks every member the audience to synchronize to view that pseudo-live video as it starts. Without adding much additional value (except that stutters and other noises are removed) Again, the actual author is often missing.

A geminar is one where viewers can come and go and see the video at their own pace. The viewers can beckon the author using a button above the chat area. A notification is then sent to the author. That author (as per his/her choice) can step in and start a live audio broadcast and/or chat with the audience.

The chat system on the geminar is continual. So future viewers can also see what others had chatted before.

All in all, a geminar is a gem of a webinar. While being simple, graceful and empathetic to both the viewers and the author.

People are getting tired of subscriptions. One common problem: Often the subscriber does not or cannot take full advantage for a few consecutive months. That leads to feeling of “unfairness” and wastage of money. All types of users are benefitted with a pay-as-you-go system. Nobody is at a disadvantage. Everyone knows that all spends were accounted for.

If the amount of credits are not sufficient, then some usage (e.g. chats, beckoning the author, etc) merely gets suspended. The user's account is not banned due to lack of credits.

There are many options for obtaining free or quite economical hosting for Videos.

PeerTube
You can upload your videos to one of the free PeerTube instances. Peer Tube is a fantastic project from France, that encourages people to use their free software and start a “Peer Tube” server – it is similar to YouTube – but without advertisements. There are many PeerTube instances out there. We found Maker Video and Liberta Vidéo to be useful. However there are many more. Choose from a long list here.

File Garden
You can also upload your videos to File Garden free of cost. Currently (Jan 2026) they allow you to upload mp4 files and you can directly give the link to that MP4 in your geminar.

Those are all free options that you have. Please use your own judgment. We are only providing some knowledge here – we are not affiliated with any of them. If your video is on a website that gives you a public HLS link, you can give that also for your Geminar. The link would end in .m3u8

BunnyCDN
If you are willing to pay for uploading and storing your videos, there are many more companies that offer those, of course. An excellent and highly economical service is Bunny Stream We have prepared a special script that can help you upload videos from your own computer to your account at Bunny Stream. See detailed help here.

GCore
You can also get an account at GCore and upload your videos there. They too offer a CDN and they also have a generous pay-as-you-go system. We do not have a special uploader for GCore; but if you go to their dashboard and select the streaming section, and there to video; it is quite easy to use their interface. Note that you will have to give a credit card to activate your account. They give a 14 day trial… and after that they will switch you to the pay-as-you-go system. Please read their pricing system carefully.

IMPORTANT
When you choose the service where you want to upload, make sure those video links are not blocked when used on other websites (such as ours). And those links should be permanently available. So do not upload to services that allow a file to be present for a limited time.

Read the terms and conditions of the service that you chose. Also; it goes without saying, that you should have read our own Terms and conditions and make sure you do not violate those too.

Read more on how authors should use Geminars.

You cannot use any video from YouTube here. One main reason is that it is not legally allowed to directly extract the actual video and use it anywhere else. Embedded videos must use YouTube's own branded player – which has several limitations. Including distractions such as showing a set of related videos when the video being played reaches the end.

Secondly, Geminars can only use videos that are publicly accessible from a link that directly accesses the mp4 file or HLS link of the video. Or it should be a PeerTube's embedded link (explained earlier).

YouTube never releases the direct video link. There are illegal ways to detect the direct video link; and unfortunately, we do not allow such illegal approaches.

A geminar can be placed into 3 “states” – If it is “published” that means anyone can reach it. If it is “unlisted” then it is not listed on the main page. But if you share its link, it would be visible to those people you shared it with. The author has no control, on who exactly knows the unlisted geminar's link. i.e. If that unlisted link is shared with others, you would have no way of knowing.

If the state is “archived” then nobody other than the author can see it. This is equivalent to “private” at YouTube. The author can then later edit any of the seminars that were created; including archived ones.

We have tried our level best to reduce the chance of downloads of videos from our platform. However, please note that it is quite impossible to totally prevent download of any video on the Internet. At the very least, someone can stand in front of a computer playing a video, and record it using a phone or a camera. So if you are worried that someone may download your video; then you must upload it with some watermark so that you have at least a claim on what was shown.

We have given a script (see here) that you can use to upload videos to your own Bunny Stream account. Once the script does its job, the HLS link is shown to you.

However; please note that the video is not available immediately at Bunny Stream. That's because Bunny Stream would be further processing the uploaded video at their end to generate the HLS files, etc. Please be patient and the HLS link will get activated. If the video is of a long duration, this process can even take half an hour or more.

By some chance, if the script had failed when uploading, run the command again; and it will resume the upload from where it had last left off.

Every person who registered at Geminars is considered an author. After all, it is easy for a viewer to become an author: Just create a new Geminar! Every person has their own special Geminars page that displays ONLY their Geminars. If you had setup your username as “billgates” then your special home page would be https://thegems.space/of/billgates In short; give a meaningful name as a username so that it would be easy for you and others to remember your special homepage here.

(Note: Displaying your special home page will consume a tiny amount of your credits. So if you share it with a wide audience, make sure you have enough credits. The advantage of sharing is that the preview will be showcasing you – with the image of your avatar)

Though Geminars are not really meant for live video it can easily be used for live video streaming too. This may look like a contradiction but frankly, it is the nature of the technology: Geminars does not itself do any kind of video hosting (be it live or VoD). All you have to is to get the video or HLS link from wherever the video is hosted.

Luckily for those seeking to host live videos (though our philosophy is not aligned in that direction), you can host a live video session at Geminars. due to one subtle “loophole”: An HLS link is not just used only for pre-recorded videos, but it is often used for live-sessions too.

All you have to do is to select a live-streaming provider that gives you the HLS link for that live session. We tested this at GCore (https://portal.gcore.com/) and found that the HLS link they give for a live video session does indeed play at Geminars too.

But there are some important caveats: Make sure that the service you use has CORS support so that the link plays at Geminars. And such HLS links would have 30-45 seconds delay. Also, you need to configure OBS (Open Broadcaster Studio) or other RTMP software so that the live stream emerging from your computer is itself not stuttering. (That's because most home broadband Internet service provider does not have enough bandwidth to smoothly stream live-video)

To register a new account, the Username and also the Full Name which you wrote in the registration form should never be used by any other account here. Of course, you would not know in advance if the values you entered were used by anyone else. The only way to know that is when the registration did not work.

If the registration indeed did not work after repeated attempts; please email us at admin@geminars.com

To change the password, you need to go to the login page (Click on the arrow at top right) and then click on Forgot Password. That will send an email with a link; which when clicked, will show a page to change the password.

You cannot change your username, once you have registered. However, you can change your full name in the profile dialog. But please note that your full name should be unique (i.e. nobody else should have used the same name)

We have something even better: Any viewer can tag any of the Geminar they are watching with their own tags. Such a tag is equivalent of a “playlist”. You can search as per your tags from the main home page: All the Geminars that had the same tag you had searched for would be shown. So that is a “playlist”.

We've been thinking of this. But so far, we have decided against it. A Geminar author need not be told how many viewers are currently looking at the author's video. We leave the decision to the author and not actively influence that person. For all you know, the author may want to talk even if one person has beckoned.

Moreover, the author can join the same page and scan the chats to guess what are the messages that were placed in there. That will give a good idea on who are currently engaged with the author.

When an author is broadcasting a live audio session, he/she can get to know how many listeners have actually tuned into the talk. Only the count. No other information. This feature is surely working if you use BUTT to broadcast but you may not get this feature in other audio-broadcasting software.

True. When someone beckons the author of a geminar to join and/or broadcast live, there is no guarantee that the author would indeed land up at that page. So we implemented a rule: Clicking on the Beckon Author button does not immediately result in any credits being deducted. Instead, if the author did come into the Geminar within the next one hour, only then would the charges be deducted from that beckoner's account. So do not worry about wasting your credits by clicking Beckon Authors on those authors who did not respond.

You can always start your broadcast anytime. You can broadcast for any amount of time. But usually, making a short, sweet live audio broadcast would be liked by your audience. Make sure you have sufficient credits balance.

Regarding when you should broadcast; it is totally up to you. It is good manners to broadcast to your audience, when one or more of them beckons you. Another useful tip: You can specify when you plan to go live with your audio-broadcast; and edit your Geminar to state that (Use the oneliner feature when editing) Then share the time you will be live on social media, with the link of that Geminar.

That's deliberate. Only the author can see the number of unlikes placed on that author's own Geminar. Others can surely click👎and register an unlike alright, but the actual quantum of unlikes can only be seen on the author's own dashboard.

We appreciate reports on any violation of our terms of service. Such as; the other user has uploaded a video that was offensive or you thought was belonging to someone else or if something inappropriate was mentioned in a chat message, etc.

Reporting on a user is quite easy. You can click on the tiny profile image of the person (or the name of the person, in its chat) and it will open up more info about that person. There is a “Report” link at the top of that pop-up page. Click on it and a report will reach us immediately. We may need to contact you by email to learn more (if required) If there was an offensive chat message, please do not delete it till we have resolved the complaint.

Once you purchase credits from any of our payment gateways, a receipt would be sent to the email address you provided. There is a special code that is mentioned in the receipt: In case of Stripe it is the receipt number. In the image below you can see #1178-0807 – So you should give 1178-0807 when you click on “Add Credits” in your Profile. In case of Razorpay, the code is the Payment ID, which is again seen in the receipt emailed to you.

The reason for the two step process is simply because you could purchase credits as a gift to someone else. In that case, please pass the Receipt ID (for Stripe) or Payment ID (for Razorpay) to that person.

To earn from a Geminar, do this when creating/editing the Geminar:

In the section: Who pays the platform fees for this Geminar's chats and beckons? Choose “Viewers”. Then for Additional viewer credit mark-up… you should enter a value greater than zero; for the additional amount that would be transferred as you as your earnings.

Please be realistic when charging this additional amount. For if you make this mark-up large, it is likely that many would shy away from interacting with your Geminar.

Here is an example: if you gave 0.5, it means that 0.5 credits would be in addition to the platform-fees charged to the viewer for each chat message the viewer sends and for each beckons that the viewer made. In this example; let us assume that our platform fee at that point in time was 1 credits for 1 chat message and 5 credits for 1 beckoning of the author.

Hence; in this specific case – when the viewer sends a chat message, he/she would be charged 1.5 credits; of which 0.5 would go into your earnings.

Similarly, if the viewer beckons the author, he/she would be charged 5.5 credits; of which 0.5 would go into your earnings.

NOTE: Audio broadcasts are paid for by the author only. To be clear: Only the platform fees are to be paid for audio broadcasts, and they must be paid by the author.

Please refer our main website where our current rates (i.e. platform rates) are mentioned.

Currently; due to prevailing RBI (Reserve Bank of India) rules, earnings cannot be withdrawn back as currency. We are consulting some legal experts regarding this. The earnings would be held in abeyance in your account and when the credits in your account goes zero (or less) then the earnings would be used to top-up your credits.

We hope to get clarity on this soon; and we hope we can give your earnings back to you. If this happens, there would be some platform charges that would be deducted and most likely the earnings can be withdrawn by you in Indian Rupees.

Till that time, we are sure there would be many authors at Geminars who would earn sufficient credits that they can use our platform practically free. They will earn sufficient credits from their audience and then consume the credits earned on other Geminars here.

We have provided two payment gateways for purchasing credits. Both would allow credit cards from practically any country. So you can indeed pay using USD, Euros, etc. However, we will be receiving money in Indian Rupees – so there would be some International exchange fees also that would get deducted. We currently absorb those costs ourselves. But if such additional costs gets too large, then we may change that policy.

No. The reason is that we do not ask our members for subscriptions instead they pay-as-you-go. That means, they can pause using Geminars for any time period. And continue to use the remaining credits after that paused period. Another reason is that companies are not allowed to send currency to anyone unless the company applies for special permissions. (I wonder why. Possibly the Reserve Bank of India is wondering if such a feature is allowed, some clever and nefarious company may use that as a loophole to setup an unauthorized online bank! Not sure though)

However, we may implement a “transfer” credits feature – where you can transfer some of your credits to some other member.

Some authors can charge some additional credits for certain Geminars. We gave this feature so that authors can also earn some credits in this manner. So if you interacted (chatted or beckoned author) in those Geminars that had these charges; then those extra charges would be deducted from you. This is in addition to the platform fees. Our platform fees are seen in our home page here.

When you visit any Geminar make sure you read the line below the title of the Geminar. You would see the additional amounts mentioned there.

A user's credits are deducted AFTER usage. So sometimes it can so happen that you consume more credits than what you have. Our system forgives one such negative credit.

That means if you have 9 credits and you send 10 messages (each costing 1 credit) then it would go below zero (i.e. negative)

You would not be able to do any further interactions (e.g. sending chat messages or broadcasting); till the credits are replenished and the amount of credits raised to be more than zero. So in the above example; if your credit had become -1 and you purchased 500 credits, then you would get 499 credits balance to use.

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