Simple Fully Automated worship webcast with Meetinghouse Webcast

[jstanworth]

I'm proposing this to my Stake Presidency. You are awesome! Thank you! I'm attaching a couple of documents, I liked the table layout someone did before this solution came out, with Pros and Cons. So I'm attaching a PowerPoint with a layout of how the cabling would work. I haven't installed it yet, so sanity check me! And I'm attaching a spreadsheet that has costs and links.

If I had one request, it would be minor. Maybe the no-signal screen could say something like "Sacrament currently being administered" so if someone joined then, they'd know what's going on?

These are on their way for approval! Thank you so much! I was struggling with all the options, and how best to balance spending the Lord's money, with performance and usability. Mainly it was the Vidiu and Sony Camera. You found an option I can present and feel comfortable with!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... t9JwyE6LkH

[bretep]

Looks good, and great idea about the image.

One quick item to note. I’m going to swap my tripods out with a boom microphone stand that already exists in each meetinghouse. This way I can position the camera more front facing to the podium while having it stationary. I also think this will be less distracting than the tripod.

[poswald]

I noticed you're here in Lehi, you can swing by one of my chapels to check out the J-Tech. We haven't had any issues with the volume.

I tested with the J-Tech today and it worked like a charm. I will most likely try the new firmware once I get a few Sacrament meeting broadcast under my belt. I have the URayCoder as well and like the ability to feed sound directly into the encoder like I did with the Teradek. I will have to try and report. For now my Stake Center with the installed camera and J-Tech will be my solution for Sacrament meeting broadcasts as well as a Stake Conference coming in November. I opted for a single device solution in my other buildings. I am using Mevo Start cameras with an Ethernet connection and injected power. It has a built in encoder and the digital zoom is great. The camera has a hotspot so killing the wifi means I can still manage things via smart devices. It can handle an external 3.5mm input for sound and testing has gone great. Some wards are using the Church Azure Cloud and some are using a YouTube stream. I am concerned about the ability of the Church webcast system to handle the load of all these broadcasts. YouTube is one of my back up options. The Mevo camera can handle a variety of streaming solutions. Thanks for your feedback and efforts.

[russellhltn]

I am concerned about the ability of the Church webcast system to handle the load of all these broadcasts.

As I understand it, it's not a fixed system, but rather a VM on demand. How likely is Microsoft data center to run out of VMs?

[Mikerowaved]

How likely is Microsoft data center to run out of VMs?

Not very, but it's my understanding the church has a finite number of licenses available that could present some problems. I'm sure they've bumped that number up while sacrament meetings are being webcasted, however, from their standpoint it's just a guessing game as to how many wards will use Meetinghouse Webcast and how many will choose a different method.

[russellhltn]

Not very, but it's my understanding the church has a finite number of licenses available that could present some problems.

Perhaps. I think they've learned their lesson from the past and are keeping an eye on what's scheduled.

[bretep]

TLDR; No need to be concerned about using the church’s webcast system. I wouldn’t use it if I didn’t trust it. Licenses aren’t involved, and if they are, Bart needs to talk with me to fix that. No licensing should be required to encode these streams.

Some information on the church webcast system. The virtual machines scheduled are WAY over provisioned per broadcast.

They do run in azure and of course azure has limits, but the church will not hit them. How do I know, I worked for Microsoft and know azure (as well as other cloud providers) quite well.

Each instance (or meeting for our case) combined with the muxing and HLS protocol for transporting the webcast can easily scale to over 2,000+ unique streams. Given our wards haven’t passed 100 concurrent sessions, and we have wards between 300 and 800 members, I’m confident you will be just fine.

There are more optimizations the church can do with the VMs and I know they are working on them.

BTW if you want to understand HLS (which Apple, YouTube, and Facebook also use for webcasts) here is the information on it. https://developer.apple.com/streaming/

[mevans]

It is not difficult, once you figure out which two buttons you need to push in a 7-ft electronic rack located behind the choir seats.

If you have an HDMI distribution system with an Extron switcher, you can get a remote. We have one in the stake center chapel. It's mounted in a single-gang box. You might ask your FM group about it.

[sbradshaw]

I'd like to see a better way of handling the sacrament ordinance than killing the stream. Doing so can have some repercussions - one of them is getting an urgent email saying the encoder has gone down. I'm also not sure as the viewers get the very last before cut-off or the very beginning when it resumes.

The recommendation from the Church is to not interrupt the broadcast, but instead to do the sacrament part of the meeting before or after the broadcast part. Another downside with doing the sacrament in the middle is that some members may feel like they need to do sacrament at home during that time, if they're authorized to do sacrament at home, which can lead to it being rushed/worrying about how much time they have.

Also, for the reset button, if anyone has a use, I can detect when it's pressed and do things based on the button being pressed. I can't think of a practical use for that right now. Let me know if you have a request.

Can you detect a long-press differently from a regular press? If so, could a long press be used to "pause" the broadcast with a specific message on the screen during the sacrament? (Though given the choice, I would still recommend doing the sacrament before or after.)

[lajackson]

If you have an HDMI distribution system with an Extron switcher, you can get a remote. We have one in the stake center chapel. It's mounted in a single-gang box. You might ask your FM group about it.

I have a remote. But since you have to be standing right in front of the switcher to gain line of sight, you might as well just push the button. I do not have an HDMI distribution system, so you also have to press the sound distribution panel buttons.