Bilingual broadcast

Does anyone have experience doing a bilingual broadcast for stake conference? Our stake is going to try its first meetinghouse broadcast for stake conference in a few weeks. We have mastered the process of broadcasting in the English language but we are struggling to come up with a good solution for broadcasting in English and Spanish since we have almost just as many members who speak Spanish as English.

If the method you're using for broadcasting can do stereo, you could put English in one channel and Spanish in the other.

Another solution might be to run two broadcasts - however I think you'd need two separate room for watching as the two broadcasts are likely to be a bit out of sync at the receiving end.

Our stake bought a wireless headset system with 10-15 headsets and 1 wireless mic. It is delayed since we have to have a translator. Makes it more complicated if they are also watching because it's delayed.
Anyone with some ideas?

Thank you for the idea of running stereo. To make sure I understand your notion I would split the stereo connection into two mono transmissions english in one and spanish in the other?

Allow me to explain my proposed set up. I will be running the Meetinghouse Webcast software from a laptop. The video will be coming in through a composite to usb converter to the laptop. The Audio will run through the 3.5mm audio input on the laptop. The english audio comes from the meetinghouse audio network and the spanish will come from an fm system.

If I understand your idea I would just take a splitter and plug the english into one and the spanish to the other. Then on the receiving end we would run the audio out the same way we run it in?

bcjenkins wrote:If I understand your idea I would just take a splitter and plug the english into one and the spanish to the other. Then on the receiving end we would run the audio out the same way we run it in?

"Splitter" is not the word I'd use. It's a cable that create two mono feeds from a stereo. Something like this. It looks like a splitter, but it functions a bit differently.

But yes, that's the idea. It does require that the webcast itself be in stereo. And I'd try it first. There's a possibility that the isolation between channels won't be good enough.

bcjenkins wrote:Allow me to explain my proposed set up. I will be running the Meetinghouse Webcast software from a laptop. The video will be coming in through a composite to usb converter to the laptop. The Audio will run through the 3.5mm audio input on the laptop.

You'll need to check your laptop, but all the ones I've seen only have a microphone input - which is mono. So you may need to go with a desktop or get a USB soundcard for the transmitting site.

I've done successful bilingual webcasts using the Webcast Software (I believe only the software supports stereo transmission, not the hardware webcasting solution).

I'd recommend getting an inexpensive sound mixer to pull off the effect. Each channel should have a "balance" or "pan" knob which allows you to fade the sound to the R or L channel. You plug the translator microphone into the mixer and fade it all the way to the right. Also plug in the podium microphone (or chapel audio feed) and pan it about 90-95% to the left. This creates the effect you hear in Conference where you can only faintly hear the english behind whatever language the translator is speaking in.

It's important to also have a couple of mics to pick up "ambient" sound, and/or a direct organ/piano input. You leave these panned to center (R and L), and only bring them up during times when translators aren't translating. This will ensure that you can still pick up congregational singing and music w/o messing with your faders, and that those hearing the Spanish feed dont' hear dead air during music and other parts of the meeting.

Run all your audio inputs into the mixer, and use the line-out from the mixer to go into your webcast audio capture card. The mixer will allow you to easily and quickly adjust levels based on whatever translator is speaking or speaker is speaking (some have quiet voices, some have loud voices). This is a critical ability to have to make the webcast receive well.

Since we had 3 Spanish-speaking units in our stake, we set aside a chapel in our stake (nearest to most of the spanish-speakers) and had them all attend there and offered the webcast in Spanish only (by only plugging in the Right channel of audio into the building sound system). We did this for our past 2 webcasts. However, it seems that the Stake President received some feedback that the Spanish speakers didn't like being segregated into their own building, so he's instructed me that we won't be using the setup for the next conference. We'll be doing English only. Kinda sad after putting in all the effort to make it happen, but I'm sure it will come in handy down the road.

bcjenkins wrote: I will be running the Meetinghouse Webcast software from a laptop. The video will be coming in through a composite to usb converter to the laptop. The Audio will run through the 3.5mm audio input on the laptop. The english audio comes from the meetinghouse audio network and the spanish will come from an fm system.

Only last bit of advice here is to NOT use the 3.5mm audio input on the laptop if you want any hope of having audio sync with video. See all the other posts on this forum on USB video capture cards - it's not pretty. You may have good luck, but you may also want to look into a desktop computer with an Osprey or Blackmagic Design capture card, which have been rock solid for this community in terms of audio capture and sync.

We have done our first stake conference broadcast with pretty good success. I am a counselor in a branch that is 85 miles from the stake center which is why we started to do this.

We have a bilingual stake, with two Spanish speaking units and our branch which is bilingual (about 30% Spanish and 70% English). All units, except our branch meet in the stake center where there are local translators using radio headsets for the Spanish speaking members. We didn't have time to set up the system of broadcasting bilingual, so were forced to have translators in both locations.

My goal before next stake conference is to set up something to broadcast the translation from the stake center. I was thinking about using a setup very similar to the one suggested, except taking the translated feed from one of the receivers.

I appreciate the suggestions regarding the mixer. I will discuss this with our STS.