Simulcast Stake Conference

[davidry]

We had a virtual stake conference where the server didn't allow more then 500 people to view the stream, I was told that it could handle 3000. Above 500, members received an error and couldn't watch. I am bouncing around the idea of streaming to the churches platform but then maybe to YouTube(or another service) to ensure everyone can watch and have a back up. Does anyone have any experience with this? What have you used?

[russellhltn]

We had a virtual stake conference where the server didn't allow more then 500 people to view the stream, I was told that it could handle 3000. Above 500, members received an error and couldn't watch.

What server, and how long ago? The current church servers don't have a problem going above 500.

Depending on how you source the stream, you may be able to send two streams as the same time, but you'd need twice the upload bandwidth.

[davidry]

About a month ago. US West 2. I reached out to tech and they said it was a rare bug where there is no solution yet.

Bandwidth isn’t an issue.

[lajackson]

About a month ago. US West 2. I reached out to tech and they said it was a rare bug where there is no solution yet.

I would just use another region.

[torriem]

I discovered that I can simulcast to both the church webcasting system and youtube using ffmpeg to copy the rtmp stream from the church backend to youtube. I run this on my personal virtual private server, so it uses no extra building bandwidth whatsoever (and I have plenty of vps bandwidth).

ffmpeg -i rtmp://churchurl/streamname -f flv -acodec copy -vcodec copy rtmp://youtubeurl/streamkey

I run that in a screen or tmux session so it won't die if I lose my ssh connection. Could run it locally, though, using twice the upload bandwidth.

[spencerto]

I discovered that I can simulcast to both the church webcasting system and youtube using ffmpeg to copy the rtmp stream from the church backend to youtube. I run this on my personal virtual private server, so it uses no extra building bandwidth whatsoever (and I have plenty of vps bandwidth).

ffmpeg -i rtmp://churchurl/streamname -f flv -acodec copy -vcodec copy rtmp://youtubeurl/streamkey

I run that in a screen or tmux session so it won't die if I lose my ssh connection. Could run it locally, though, using twice the upload bandwidth.

Could you give a bit more detail on this? First, how are you broadcasting from the building? Do you send the RTMP directly to the church servers from the building, and then your private server picks up that same stream and copies it to youtube?

[torriem]

Correct. We are using the Teradek Vidiu to push directly to the Church's webcasting system in the normal way. Then I use ffmpeg to pull that stream down from the church backend and copy it to youtube. The RTMP url for the church's back end is the same as the address that is listed on the portal under "teradek manual settings." Both youtube and the webcasting portal break the RTMP url into two parts, the url and the stream name or key. Just put the two parts together with a slash (/) into on url for use with ffmpeg.

[bartj]

The Church webcast system does not have a cap at 500 in any region. We run events ever week in various regions with more than 500 without any problems. Please DM message me if you want to talk more about this or have more details you can provide about the experience you had.

[Jacobdaviddean]

Hi all,

Another simpler option is https://restream.io . It's less than $15/month for the monthly "Standard" plan which allows you to connect to a Youtube account + 1 custom RTMP destination (the church system).

I have a broadcast TV & web development background and I've had a tough time (better read, it's worth the $15 one-time fee to not reinvent the wheel) with a DIY solution for syndicating a live stream.

I've used this back in November for simulcasting a political debate for the local NBC station I work with. It had no problems at all.

Our next Stake Conference will be the end of January and we are planning on using Restream to send to the church system and Youtube as a backup. Although, I've heard from members in our stake that a lot of people have found Youtube to be much easier to use and more reliable for playback (better automatic video quality adjustments with poor internet).

[torriem]

Last conference about half chose to watch on the church system and half on youtube. About 300 connections on each. From what I've heard the experience people had was pretty good on both systems with a slight preference for youtube. The church system has improved a lot in the last year or so. Youtube is better at adapting to lower bandwidth. Our stake president is just anxious that we have redundancy in our broadcasting methods as we've had lots of issues in the past. But lately things have been working quite well. Our wards are pretty happy using the church system for their meetings. It's nice to not have to give out urls and codes every week.