Church Webcasts using YouTube Live Streams

[russellhltn]

Can you use an iPad for YouTube live streaming or do you have to use a laptop?

The app described in the first post of this thread will work on Android and iOS, including iPads.

If you have a laptop, you can just use the web page, but my understanding is that you have to have 1,000 subscribers to use YouTube's own app on any mobile devices.

[jeremywillden]

Anyone else had the experience that when you stop the stream for the Sacrament that YouTube redirects your viewers to other religious videos on YouTube (not from our church)? We did during our first video test streams a few weeks ago, and while it might be somewhat amusing for a test, it's not ideal to have your viewers redirected against your will. I believe it can be avoided by configuring a "repeating" event and using it, instead of a one-time scheduled event, but...

I used to use only YouTube for our Stake events because of all the problems we used to have with the Church Webcast site, but have kept trying to see how it has improved. Last year we simulcasted Stake Conference on both the church webcast site and YouTube, and both worked very well for us, so with the "redirection" issue, we've been using the church Webcast system now with great results, and even written automation scripts to automatically configure and start OBS Studio (I've posted about it elsewhere on the forum if you are interested). While still not quite as good as YouTube, the Church Webcast system is looking quite good these days. Kudos to the development team - while I wouldn't have built it on Azure, it's better than it used to be, and appears to be set up to scale as much as needed.

OBS Studio has far more flexibility on configuring bitrates, so for our building with only 768k upload speed, a 500 kbps video stream plus 32-48 kbps audio works, as long as you've disabled WiFi in the building. While I use a pretty sophisticated setup for Stake Conference (with equipment I own), OBS Studio on an inexpensive older computer works very well for weekly meetings. We're using 2009-era iMac computers purchased surplus, at a cost of $50 each, including adding a second Gig of memory. Running Ubuntu brings new life to old computers and saves a lot of machines from the landfill, while saving cost. Even a Raspberry Pi (with a camera, SD card, case, cables, and so on) costs more.

[BubbaBollinger]

Can you use an iPad for YouTube live streaming or do you have to use a laptop?

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2853834?hl=en

To broadcast from a mobile device you need to have at least 1,000 YouTube subscribers. I'm not sure if an iPad is considered a "mobile device."
Laptops have no such restriction.

[russellhltn]

To broadcast from a mobile device you need to have at least 1,000 YouTube subscribers.

That's true if using the YouTube app. If you use another app like Larix Broadcaster, you can circumvent that restriction.

[mrcolj]

Broadcast-Error: "Connection:Cannot resolve address []

I'm replying largely to get notifications on this topic, because we're still stopped on that error from the Teradek/Vidiu. Everything's set up--we have for a long time broadcasted Stake conference to remote buildings, I can see my feed on the vidiu app and YouTube Live's preview, but the moment I push Go Live on Youtube, I get Broadcast-Error: "Connection:Cannot resolve address []. Now that I type it that way it makes me wonder whether some ytimg-type subdomain of youtube maybe specific to broadcasting, is being blocked. Because it's working internally, and can't resolve that null address with no option to set a custom address. Anyway, these last two weeks we set up a laptop with a webcam in the front row and had to broadcast by tethering to my cell phone. That's going to cost me as much as a vidiu within a few months! (not really, but still...) Thoughts?

[mashcraft]

My stake has been using Youtube live for a few weeks now with great success.

We are using laptops with 2 USB ports and one Ethernet port -- one for a webcam mounted right in front of the podium and one for a USB audio adapter, pulling the audio from the line-out jack under the Sacrament table. We are using the Ethernet jack by the podium and turning off wi-fi to save bandwidth for the broadcast. [For Apple laptops USB-C adapters to provide USB and Ethernet have worked].

We've used Chrome with YouTube Live webcam broadcasts. This eliminates the need for having software installed (only the Chrome browser is required) as well as the need to learn OBS or other broadcasting tools.

[DuaneBenson]

Last week 10/18 was our first live stream for Sacrament meeting. We have 4 wards in our building which is about 10 years old. We ran a continuous youtube live stream from before the first meeting till after the 4th meeting. The laptop runs OBS and we selected a scene that had no camera or sound during the sacrament. Our stream worked fine the whole 5+ hours.

[evancpugh]

Our ward has been using youtube live (webcam) for a couple of weeks. Everything has gone smoothly with one exception. Our setup is a laptop (internal camera) and line-in audio from the pulpit microphone (RCA jacks). When someone is at the pulpit, the audio is perfect. However, when the organ is playing prelude and/or we're singing a song, the audio (as it is received by a viewer at home) fluctuates up and down. To isolate the problem (see it was the sound system or something else), I recorded my wife playing the organ. I first recreated the problem with youtube live and webcam option. Then, I used "audicity" and I recorded her playing. The play back was perfect, no fluctuation. Conclusion, youtube live is not handling the audio very well. I've sent a comment to youtube about the issue and have not yet gotten any feed back. Has anyone else experienced this? Any comments or suggestions? Would using OBS improve this? Or is this a problem we have to wait for youtube to address?

[russellhltn]

I first recreated the problem with youtube live and webcam option. Then, I used "audicity" and I recorded her playing. The play back was perfect, no fluctuation. Conclusion, youtube live is not handling the audio very well.

I think you're on the right track. You might want to explore YouTube live's settings for something like a noise gate. If you find it, disable it.

You could also try an external mixer to adjust the sound going into the laptop to keep it happy. But that's extra setup.

OBS would be one of the tools, but I understand it's got a bit of a learning curve. It would be nice to keep everything simple so someone else can take over if conditions require it.

[evancpugh]

Because the test using audacity resulted in near perfect reproduction of the sound (organ), a mixer wouldn't help. I see no settings at all especially for audio. I'm pretty sure it is a youtube live issue, but when they might address this.. COV-19 will be a thing we'll be talking to our grandkids about.