Ideas for a stake-wide webcast

[bartj]

The new webcast solution will be deployed to all regions the end of July. We have completed quite a bit of testing and have been able to successfully go well beyond 1,000 connections. The final messaging that will be sent to STSs will state the system can support 3,000 connections for a single event. We successfully connected more than this, but that number should cover any locally managed event.

The new code ("webcast 4.0) has been released in the following regions already:

US East 2
US West 2
UK South
France Central
Brazil South 2

You are welcome to complete your own testing in these regions to feel comfortable with the solution.

We will be making one final update to the code to address a known issue associated with using the OBS software encoder.

[ulupoi]

Hello, All.

May I ask a few questions?

1. Is there a way to use the new Church webcast system to webcast a meeting where the participants speak from their computers/iPads/smartphones at home? The only thing I can think of at the moment would be to have them all talk via Zoom, then take a computer displaying the meeting and route its HDMI output to a Teradek unit.

2. Will the ability for speakers to access the Church webcast system directly from their devices at home ever be integrated into the Church webcast system as a feature?

3. Does the Church webcast system include any way to handle simultaneous translation?

Thank you!

[russellhltn]

1. Is there a way to use the new Church webcast system to webcast a meeting where the participants speak from their computers/iPads/smartphones at home? The only thing I can think of at the moment would be to have them all talk via Zoom, then take a computer displaying the meeting and route its HDMI output to a Teradek unit.

Yes. On paid versions of Zoom, there's an option to stream via RMTP. That can be sued to feed the Church Webcast system. You will need to turn on "High Bandwidth Encode" when scheduling the event. No VidiU needed.

2. Will the ability for speakers to access the Church webcast system directly from their devices at home ever be integrated into the Church webcast system as a feature?

Not that I've heard of, but then we rarely hear about things in the works.

3. Does the Church webcast system include any way to handle simultaneous translation?

At the moment, I think the only option to to start a second meeting. The problem then becomes how to feed both with video. A better plan might be to distribute the translated audio separately. Perhaps via a conference call.

[bartj]

2. Will the ability for speakers to access the Church webcast system directly from their devices at home ever be integrated into the Church webcast system as a feature?

Not that I've heard of, but then we rarely hear about things in the works.

We are evaluating this, but for the time being if you have a paid Zoom account you accomplish this by sending your Zoom feed to the Church's webcast service using the RTMP feature they offer.

[drepouille]

I use the church-provided G Suite account and Google Meet to broadcast Sacrament meeting. I wish I could use the live stream option for the G Suite account, but that is not available.

[RSubramanian]

Is it intended that this webcast functionality be reserved for occasional meetings at the stake level? Or is it also suitable for regular weekly meetings such as sacrament meeting, Sunday School, etc. (where authorization has been granted for remote viewing by the general membership of the congregation)?

[russellhltn]

Is it intended that this webcast functionality be reserved for occasional meetings at the stake level? Or is it also suitable for regular weekly meetings such as sacrament meeting, Sunday School, etc. (where authorization has been granted for remote viewing by the general membership of the congregation)?

It depends on the directions given by the Area Authority.

The Church Webcast software setup is/was intended for Stake Conference, so the STS or someone at the stake level has to set it up.

Some areas have received permission to hold other meetings via technology. While some are allowed to do the sacrament meeting, the sacrament itself is not broadcast.

[natet]

It's mid August at this point, and I expect that the OP's meeting has already happened. I'd like to hear how it went? A couple of months ago, we streamed a zoom meeting for Seminary Graduation (spanned multiple stakes) and did so to Youtube. It mostly went off well. There were a couple of hiccups: I accidentally reversed the video (we showed a video of the graduating students, and the high counselor over the young men read the names off the screen. Fortunately he had the list on his iPad so he didn't have to read the names backwards) and the sound on the video we used for the closing song was distorted. We have a bit more of a technical set up than most at our stake center for stake conferences, which I made use of for the graduation broadcast. I did make use of a service that can simultaneously stream to multiple other streaming services with the intent of sending the stream to both our youtube channel and the stake announcement facebook page. I wasn't able to make the facebook stream work, so I put up a post to redirect everyone to the youtube stream. Only 3 people were at the stake center: the Stake President, myself, and the high counselor. Everyone else that participated was virtual.

For the physical set up, I placed a TV at the front of the chapel in front of the podium, and connected that to the broadcast return feed. I mounted a single camera on top of TV using a flexible camera mount connected to the outgoing podium feed (this is a new building, so those are standard). The TV showed the zoom meeting so that both persons in the chapel could watch the talks and prayers given by the other participants, and I used the TV speakers for sound. I connected to the zoom meeting from our broadcast "booth" so I wasn't in the room with the other 2 people, and used the output from our video switcher (with feeds from the camera in the chapel and a laptop with the videos loaded as inputs) as the input camera for zoom, and sent the zoom output back to the chapel. I used the RTMP features of zoom to send to the stream splitting service.

I hope this made sense. It was kind of a ramble.

[BEWilson]

I would love to see your set up, maybe a diagram if you have one? I am trying to figure out the best way to run better cameras and audit to our older version stack (no hdmi) only RCA input and serial input from a computer. The audio is the bigger issue. Currently we run to a teradek encoder but the picture looks like 1980 TV. Trying to do the best I can for our upcoming conference in September as we will have a visiting GA. We should get the new stack set up next year for more options.

Thanks