Tech Forum

My stake has a fairly large Spanish speaking population and in the past, we've had translators both at stake conference and the receiving site an hour away. I'm brainstorming on a way to webcast both English and Spanish because the receiving site is roughly 1/3 Spanish speaking and I'd like them to be able to set up projectors in the chapel and cultural hall with English and Spanish feeds in either room. This would let us use the best translators in the stake on-site instead of splitting them between 2 locations.

My first thought is that since the stream is stereo, I can send English on the left channel and Spanish on the right. I would feed the English stream from the chapel sound system and the Spanish stream from the one of translator devices's wireless receiver units. Then on the receiving end I would need to configure a 2nd location (Spanish) for that building on the portal. One laptop will drive the chapel connected to the original receiving location on the portal with a headphone jack to stereo rca plugs cable. The left rca plug goes to a crab box which will plug into the chapel sound system. The cultural hall's laptop will connect to the (Spanish) location on the portal and the right rca jack this time will connect to the crab box and then to the cultural hall sound system.

Easy enough in theory, I plan to test it in depth later this week. One major problem I forsee is that if allowing homebound members to connect to the stream is approved, they will have to know how to pan hard left or right on their audio devices or we'll have to send someone to their homes who can help them.

The first option should work with either the VidiU device or with Wirecast. Since we have Wirecast, I'm wondering how I might do this better and easier for those receiving through the software (and it may potentially open up the option of more than 2 languages for others). I found a suggestion on a Wirecast forum that a powerful enough computer could have multiple instances of the program open with different streams set up in each. So I could run 2 instances of Wirecast, one using English and one Spanish. They would both use our single camera. It could be a bit of a juggle if multiple cameras and or media are used. Then I would need to create 2 simultaneous events on the portal and output each instance of Wirecast to the right event and have members who watch from home (and my connecting sites) choose the appropriate language feed from the portal.

I don't know if this is possible, but I'll try it out as a pair of simultaneous test events and see what happens before I try contacting the GSC with my questions. Theoretically, if the computer has the guts to do the job, it should work, but I also wonder if this is an appropriate use of the church's resources. I will post again as soon as I've tested both possibilities. Suggestions and comments are welcome and with any luck this may help others (if all goes well) who might have more than one common language in their stake.

Joe Hunt Silver City, NM

Regardless of what you come up with, I'd talk to GSC. I don't know if two streams for the same user would be allowed, or if there might be another complication.

I tested that exact method to send Spanish and English and having the receiving sites only plug in the respective audio side (L/R) they needed. It works great! No need to set up separate streams, unless you're going really complicated and translating titles on-screen.
The only issue I saw was receiving the webcast from other locations (homebound viewers), where the user would hear both audio streams without an easy way to cut one of them out. You could train them to use the panning function of their audio card, but that's not ideal for many viewers.

Running multiple of Wirecast sounds interesting but you'll more than likely have issues with CPU resources and headroom, not to mention taxing your Internet upload bandwidth. Just a single Wirecast stream usually occupies most of the CPU's resources, so I would test thoroughly.

You could use another licensed version of Wirecast on a different computer (or you use another device to uploading the stream) but you'll still have issues if your upload speed isn't sufficient.

I agree with gizmotek and would stick with running a single video stream using the stereo audio channels for the multiple languages and let your home-bound members know they will need to adjust their audio balance. Depending on how many home-bound members you have, it shouldn't be too difficult to explain how to make balance adjustments.

Michaelfish, what type of headroom are you talking about? Talked it over with GSC this morning and will be testing tonight. I only intend to use the dual stream method if homebound connection is approved and if there are enough of them to justify it. Mostly, I just want to satisfy my curiosity.

We attempted a test with the receiving site last night, but it turns out that the internet speed there can only support one stream at 320p. I may still send Spanish on the right channel for them to run through the translation unit.

Headroom - meaning available CPU memory left over after all processes are running. The more processes running, the less headroom for the CPU.

It works, with the older version of webcast or the new cloud based webcast
Some stakes in south Florida USA have been doing the bilingual webcasting for several years
Sending site:
o they use an audio mixer to allow for volume adjustments
o using translator receiver for one (1) language input
o meetinghouse audio or Assisted Listening System (ALS) receiver for second (2) language input
Receiving site: laptop with one (1) webcast stream being received
o left audio connected to an Multi-Input Audio Adapter (EJ8 or EJ10) to the meetinghouse audio
o right audio connected to translator transmitter