Brigham City Temple Dedication

Not sure where to post this, but I haven't seen any info on the Brigham City Temple Dedication broadcast yet. I'm hoping they will stream it, so we don't have to webcast it. It would be pretty inefficient to have all the stakes create their own webcast of it; last time a similar thing happened the webcast servers were overloaded.

I would work through your priesthood leadership for that. Given how tightly that broadcast is controlled, you may find that any attempt to stream it is killed.

It seems to me that they would only allow an event like this to be transmitted via the church's encrypted satellite feed. I would think that retransmission via webcast would not be allowed as it is not nearly as secure as the satellite feeds.

@craigsmith, what event were you a part of that this happened "last time" - was it a temple dedication? and was that the instruction (to retransmit using a webcast of your own)?

We just went through the Kansas City Temple Dedication. It was done over satellite and locked down to specific Satellite receivers in Stake Centers. There was a test to validate the receivers were all configured correctly the week prior to the broadcast.

I actually already received an email request about streaming the Brigham City Temple dedication. I passed it along to the broadcast team, and the reply was, "Due to the concern for security it has been decided that the dedication will only be fed via satellite to authorized Church units. Local units are not authorized to forward that feed locally via Internet streaming."

I believe the reasoning is that each location where the Dedication is viewed (other than the Temple) is treated as an extension of the temple. A member of a Stake Presidency presides, Temple Recommends are checked at the door. If a webcast is used, that becomes much harder to manage.

Interesting, good to know. Given that attendance will be somewhat limited I assume we will all be able to fit in our Stake Center. But I am told of at least one new stake center that is no larger than a regular ward meetinghouse because of the ability to stream.

The last event I was referring to was the Salt Lake City South area conference (or whatever it was called) within the past year.

craiggsmith wrote:Interesting, good to know. Given that attendance will be somewhat limited I assume we will all be able to fit in our Stake Center.

There will be 3 separate broadcasts of the event, 9am, 12pm, and 3pm (Mountain Time). Our stake president is currently considering which 2 of those 3 sessions he would like the worthy members of the stake to attend, because our stake center probably won't hold us all in a single session. This is worth considering if you anticipate any kind of a capacity problem.

As others have mentioned, rebroadcasting of any kind is not allowed for temple dedications. Even to the point where they've asked that the RF audio for the assisted listening devices be turned off, as there's a possibility the RF signal might escape the building.

Mikerowaved wrote:As others have mentioned, rebroadcasting of any kind is not allowed for temple dedications. Even to the point where they've asked that the RF audio for the assisted listening devices be turned off, as there's a possibility the RF signal might escape the building.

Oh, that's a good one. Typically that cabinet is locked with only FM having the key. Not really under local leadership's control.

craiggsmith wrote:Interesting, good to know. Given that attendance will be somewhat limited I assume we will all be able to fit in our Stake Center. But I am told of at least one new stake center that is no larger than a regular ward meetinghouse because of the ability to stream.

The last event I was referring to was the Salt Lake City South area conference (or whatever it was called) within the past year.

You will usually receive permission to stream an area conference if you do not have enough buildings with satellite for the members.

JohnShaw is correct about the strict controls regarding the broadcast of a temple dedication. Everyone attending will be at least 8 years old, be worthy to enter a temple and have a recommend specifically for this event, and the stake will be responsible for locking and controlling access to the building before and during the broadcast.

And as you mentioned, new stake centers are being built with chapels to hold a regular ward, not a stake, so there may be adjustments in the future. Still, we could fit our stake into the regular buildings with satellite equipment even if the stake center had a regular sized chapel.

We have to use at least 3 buildings for stake conference, but I forgot about the 3 separate sessions so it's no problem.

craiggsmith wrote:We have to use at least 3 buildings for stake conference, but I forgot about the 3 separate sessions so it's no problem.

That will certainly make a difference. As far as planning for attendance (you will know for sure after the bishops have issued recommends for the broadcast), we have found that attendance at a temple dedication broadcast is similar to a very well attended Saturday evening adult session of stake conference. You lose some because of the recommend requirement, and you gain a few more than that number with worthy children and youth.

Your experience many be different, of course.

Just curious. Does anyone know who is responsible for the transmission end of Temple Dedications? Does CHQ send their own video crew or is the responsibility fall upon the Temple Presidency to assign a tech team, or does the Stake Presidency in the Temple's location assign the broadcast duties?

Your guess is as good as mine... so here's mine. A broadcast like this, happening this close to Salt Lake City and most likely involving members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve will absolutely be handled by a technical crew from the church's A/V staff in Salt Lake City. The last few temple dedication broadcasts I've watched (involving temples in Utah) just seemed like such a close match, technically, to everything else that originates from church headquarters.

michaelfish wrote:Just curious. Does anyone know who is responsible for the transmission end of Temple Dedications? Does CHQ send their own video crew or is the responsibility fall upon the Temple Presidency to assign a tech team, or does the Stake Presidency in the Temple's location assign the broadcast duties?

Michael, I can only relay the events that recently took place in Kansas City. I am the Stake Clerk of the host stake for the Temple (our Stake Center is next door to the Temple). The Temple Open House and Dedication have committees organized to get everything arranged, etc.. for the Openhouse and Dedication.

There was an Audio/Video committee, that I was apart of. Our responsibilities included setting up all the A/V equipment for the Open house, and providing volunteers to work along side a crew that came out from Salt Lake. This crew has the operations of the Temple Dedication well in hand. Each new temple is designed with the temple dedication broadcast in mind. There is conduit run from inside the Temple to outside the temple to accomodate the connections from the broadcast equipment to a broadcast van parked outside near the temple. The conduit is basically one-time use for the dedication broadcast only. Cabling is also setup throughout the temple to invite as many as can view the dedication inside the temple. Because the Temple Dedication rooms are setup wtih Video Monitors to view the Dedication, there is a bunch of RG6 cables connected through the rooms and along the hallways. The AV committee assists this crew in setting up the Monitors in all the rooms in the temple and after the third session they help tear it down, pack it up and get it on the truck to ship.

The STS for each stake was assigned to setup the internal CCTV / Projector equipment for viewing the dedication in stake centers in the temple district. As I stated before, there was a pre-check of an encrypted broadcast that was specifically sent to pre-configured satellite receivers

Excellent response...thank you. I'm our Stake's STS and I live a few miles away from the new Temple they're building in Gilbert and was hoping I could do the video broadcasting. Looks like I'll have to wait and volunteer to help in other ways.

Anyone know if this will have a Spanish audio feed?

BarkerAJ wrote:Anyone know if this will have a Spanish audio feed?

Just got a reply from HQ, yes it will be available in Spanish.

BarkerAJ wrote:Just got a reply from HQ, yes it will be available in Spanish.

Our stake is asking me about Spanish audio, so thanks for the info. Also, since the hearing-impaired transmitter will be off, will the dedication video be encoded with Closed Captioning for those who have hearing problems?

wille wrote:Our stake is asking me about Spanish audio, so thanks for the info. Also, since the hearing-impaired transmitter will be off, will the dedication video be encoded with Closed Captioning for those who have hearing problems?

Closed Captioning will be available by default for the dedication.

Was it just me or did the 3rd session start 5 mins early?

The only issue I had was the volume -- it didn't seem like they normalized it very well. The worst part was the the congregational singing though; when everyone was singing we couldn't hear the broadcast and got out of sync, so I went up to the rostrum and turned it up. I'm going to rig up a way to insert a mixer into the satellite signal as well so I can adjust it without going up to the rostrum.

craiggsmith wrote:Was it just me or did the 3rd session start 5 mins early?

No, it really did start about 5 minutes early. We were all supposed to be in our seats well before that, but it's a bit disconcerting for the technical folks to start that early!

craiggsmith wrote:The only issue I had was the volume -- it didn't seem like they normalized it very well. The worst part was the the congregational singing though; when everyone was singing we couldn't hear the broadcast and got out of sync, so I went up to the rostrum and turned it up. I'm going to rig up a way to insert a mixer into the satellite signal as well so I can adjust it without going up to the rostrum.

I noticed the volume issue, too. If the picture hadn't been focused on the conductor so that we could follow his beat as the congregation sang, we would have been very much out of sync with the choir singing onsite. I also thought that the lighting onsite was rather poor and so many of the speakers had dark shadows on one side of their face. I'm sure it's a challenge in those cramped spaces to get lighting and microphones perfectly balanced, but it seems that previous temple dedication broadcasts worked a bit more smoothly.

But I don't think any of those problems were so severe that they distracted significantly from a spiritual service.

aebrown wrote:No, it really did start about 5 minutes early. We were all supposed to be in our seats well before that, but it's a bit disconcerting for the technical folks to start that early!

I noticed the volume issue, too. If the picture hadn't been focused on the conductor so that we could follow his beat as the congregation sang, we would have been very much out of sync with the choir singing onsite. I also thought that the lighting onsite was rather poor and so many of the speakers had dark shadows on one side of their face. I'm sure it's a challenge in those cramped spaces to get lighting and microphones perfectly balanced, but it seems that previous temple dedication broadcasts worked a bit more smoothly.

But I don't think any of those problems were so severe that they distracted significantly from a spiritual service.

Yes, more disconcerting than anything. Timing was more of a problem at the worldwide training that I had to record the night before to show at another building when they went over 5 minutes, and I had only set it to record for 2 hours.

For the second session I stayed up in the alcove where the satellite volume is for the first few items to get the volume right. I turned it up for the choir but then one of the speakers was too loud so I turned it down, and so forth for the first 10 minutes or so. But I managed to get a happy medium and didn't have to touch it the rest of the time except for the final songs. Although I wasn't sure what volume to put the Hosanna Anthem at; some parts were majestic and some more reverent.

Did they change the choir mics for the later sessions? I noticed recording mics on the wall behind the choir later, but I didn't notice them in the first session and I thought I had seen a handheld mic on a stand in front then. I thought the 2nd and 3rd choirs sounded better than the 1st, but it could have been something else.

At any rate, no, nothing detracted from the spirit and I was glad I had to stay for all 3 sessions!