Tech Forum

Is anyone else having problems attempting to broadcast the South Western Regional Broadcast today?

The message read: "Due to the high amount of traffic on the media servers, all test and REGIONAL broadcast events that originate for SLC will be terminated in order for locally generated stake conferences to function. We apologize for the inconvenience"

We have one (1) test in NASE report that they were impacted and It appears that anyone using the portal today got this message
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PLEASE READ!!!!

Due to the high amount of traffic on the Media Servers, all test events and regional broadcast events that originate from Salt Lake City will be terminated in order for locally generated Stake Conferences to function. We apologize for the inconvenience.
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Although I can probably guess some of the reasons for SLC canceling our webcast session, this had a strong potential to interrupt our conference. According to the instructions we received, the stake president was to address the stake during the first 30 minutes of the conference -- just prior to starting the broadcast from SLC. We scheduled our event several weeks in advance through the portal only to find out, 2 hours prior to the conference, that our session was canceled. We had planned for our entire stake to receive an address from our stake president via a webcast.

Thankfully, at the last minute, we were able to reschedule our conference in a different region and everything worked well. However, I am greatly concerned that our scheduled conference webcast was preempted. I struggle to understand how this was an unforeseen event because all of the stakes are required to schedule resources in advance.

I would appreciate some type of action plan on how to mitigate such scenarios for the future and avoid a stake conference webcast to be canceled at the last minute. At the least, should this occur again, a few days notice would be better than a few hours.

allencp wrote:According to the instructions we received, the stake president was to address the stake during the first 30 minutes of the conference -- just prior to starting the broadcast from SLC.

Just out of curiosity, were you going to re-broadcast the SLC portion (to prevent the remote sites from having to switch), or where they going to switch feeds at that point?

I'd suspect that the first things to get canceled would be re-broadcasting a SLC feed. "They" can probably detect that by the times and units involved.

russellhltn wrote:Just out of curiosity, were you going to re-broadcast the SLC portion (to prevent the remote sites from having to switch), or where they going to switch feeds at that point?

Actually, we had the remote sites switch the direct feed. The SLC broadcast was made available through the internet and we had the remote sites switch to this feed. There were, though, a handful of members who are homebound, due to illness, which the stake president had approved and allowed to see the stream -- in this case, we did not instruct them to switch to another feed.

allencp wrote:There were, though, a handful of members who are homebound, due to illness, which the stake president had approved and allowed to see the stream -- in this case, we did not instruct them to switch to another feed.

So, the times of your scheduled event duplicated the regional conference, correct?

Also, IIRC, webcasting to the home has to be approved by the presiding authority. Was it approved for the Regional Conference to be viewed by the home bound?

russellhltn wrote:So, the times of your scheduled event duplicated the regional conference, correct?

Yes, they did. I understand the correlation you are making. The point of my earlier post, however, was the lack of notification when they canceled our scheduled webcast. It would have been helpful to receive a notification, several days in advance, explaining the situation and asking that we not use the webcast. Having this fair warning would have allowed the stake presidency to make an alternative plan to accommodate for the first 30 minutes of the conference.

We broadcast all of our stake conferences, so the plan would normally have been to broadcast the stake portion during the first 30 minutes, and then have the other meetinghouses switch to the satellite feed. We are fortunate that they all have satellite, but they could have switched to the direct URL just as easily.

That would normally have been the plan, but it would appear that the best plans seem to change at the last minute when it counts the most and there is so little time to respond. Was there anything in the original letter to stake presidents that the webcasting system would not be available for the first 30 minutes?

One of the stakes in our area (not us, fortunately) runs four buildings morning and afternoon for each stake conference. This obviously was not supported today. I'm glad someone is willing to "apologize for the inconvenience." I'm sure the members will be happy to hear that as the reason they missed hearing from their stake president today.

I scheduled the webcast for our stake conference this weekend using the "Central US" region. It wasn't working; the DNS name wouldn't resolve. Tech support said to create a new event using a different region, which worked fine. I don't know if others had the same issue, but if the entire "Central US" site was down that would certainly put unexpected strain on the rest of the regions.

Today's incident does highlight the prudence of a tested audio backup solution. Unfortunately, it requires the stake to spend a few hundred dollars on equipment that will probably never be used.

allencp wrote:The point of my earlier post, however, was the lack of notification when they canceled our scheduled webcast. It would have been helpful to receive a notification, several days in advance, explaining the situation and asking that we not use the webcast.

Understood. However, there might be reasons it was done last minute. The problem may have only shown up or been discovered at that time.

My point is that the Policies and Guidelines says "Webcasting to locations other than Church buildings should only be done under the direction of the event's presiding authority."

Assuming you didn't get permission from CHQ to carry the Regional Conference, the webcast would have only been scheduled for 30 minutes - and might have escaped the cancelation. (Depending on the nature of the problem.)