Oct 2008 General Conference Internet Broadcast

Well Done!
Well Done!
Well Done!

Let me be the first to congratulate you all on the Internet broadcast this go round. This is the first time I can remember since it started that I didn't resort to the audio-only version. Usually after GC I'm ranting a little bit about all those members who get the broadcast on television using the Internet Broadcast, limiting the viewing of those not in and around the mountain west, but this year, wow... again, thanks, and well done.

I couldn't agree more. I fired it up for the Sunday AM broadcast, which has traditionally been the most difficult to keep a steady feed going, as it was a perfect, high quality stream throughout the entire session. Seems they did their homework on this and (at least for English viewers) solved a nagging problem.

I noticed my feed was lagging about 2.5 minutes behind "live", so there might be a possibility of using a good audio program to buffer one of the alternate language audio feeds for that long to pseudo-sync with the video. I'm starting to tread into deep water, but I know there are others in the forum that can let us know if there are any low-end software packages that can do this, or if it's even possible.

Mike

The new player is excellent!

We received the satellite-recorded DVDs from the Stake to show in our ward the week following Conference (usual practice given the time difference here in Australia). For some reason, the Sunday afternoon session was not recorded, so I made arrangements to have LDSAccess enabled at our chapel so we could stream the session we had missed on the satellite. As it turned out, half-way through both the Saturday sessions, the video broke up and we were left with audio playing against a blank screen, so I fired up the laptop and we watched the remainder of those sessions streamed from the Internet. If our connection was just a bit quicker, the quality would have been better than what we had with the satellite DVDs, and it was much more stable. We'll likely use that method for all sessions (except priesthood, of course) in the future!

Thanks for the exceptional service!

Oddly, I had more success with the original Media Player.

The Move player was really sensitive to other stuff going on in the computer - and not necessarily stuff I was doing purposefully. It often paused or broke up.

But then, I have a temperamental "lite DSL" connection here which is 12x slower than a standard DSL. That said, the regular Media Player stream did work just perfectly for me both on this connection as well as on my parents' cable connection.

Hopefully I'll be on Temple Square in April of '09 so it won't matter

Does anyone know why we can't get audio & video (mp3, avi, etc) files of Priesthood Session off LDS.org?

A while back, I tried emailing the lds.org administrator. I got an email back telling me that it is because Priesthood Session is not streamed on the web. However, this doesn't make sense to me because the General RS and YW sessions aren't streamed on the web either, but you can get audio & video files for those sessions. Also, you can get a video (with no sound) of the ASL, so why not audio and regular video?

I have no problem with it if there is a reason. It just seems to me that there is no technical reason why audio and video of Priesthood Session aren't posted.

Looking to understand!

Thanks!

pinakaslick wrote:Does anyone know why we can't get audio & video (mp3, avi, etc) files of Priesthood Session off LDS.org?

This same question is being discussed in the following thread. We have not heard an "official" answer to the question.

The Priesthood session will not be made available on LDS.org. I do not know the reasons why, but it never has been. It's not streamed either.

telfordca wrote:The Priesthood session will not be made available on LDS.org. I do not know the reasons why, but it never has been. It's not streamed either.

Just to clarify, the transcripts of the Priesthood session are indeed available on lds.org, as are ASL QuickTime videos. It's just the regular audio and video versions that are available for the other sessions, but not for the Prieshood session.

lionelwalters wrote:For some reason, the Sunday afternoon session was not recorded, so I made arrangements to have LDSAccess enabled at our chapel so we could stream the session we had missed on the satellite.

It's probably appropriate for me to note for my Australian colleagues that I learned a week or two after Conference that LDSAccess is not an approved option for our Area and had it disabled at our meetinghouse immediately. Consequently, we're quite happily relying once again on the DVDs recorded from the satellite feed, especially now that we've worked out how to get the audio directly into the chapel sound system.

lionelwalters wrote:It's probably appropriate for me to note for my Australian colleagues that I learned a week or two after Conference that LDSAccess is not an approved setup for our Area and had it disabled at our meetinghouse immediately.

Can you elaborate? It's not listed in the original memo for the states. It came along afterwords to fulfill a need. If someone is reading the original memo, they might conclude it's not authorized, but I don't know any reason why it would be.

RussellHltn wrote:Can you elaborate? It's not listed in the original memo for the states. It came along afterwords to fulfill a need. If someone is reading the original memo, they might conclude it's not authorized, but I don't know any reason why it would be.

I can't really, I was simply advised by local ICS and facilities people that it is not approved at present, and that was enough for me. Subsequent conversations have suggested that it has something to do with the fact that there is a download limit on our meetinghouse connections, and so reasonably there needs to be tight control on the access to those connections (not sure what that limit is, but we were able to stream 4 of the Conference sessions without any capping to our download speed). In addition, I understand that the current meetinghouse Internet connections are there primarily to support the Family History Centres, so that being the case, the wards and stakes are just "borrowing" the connections for MLS transfers.

lionelwalters wrote:Subsequent conversations have suggested that it has something to do with the fact that there is a download limit on our meetinghouse connections, and so reasonably there needs to be tight control on the access to those connections (not sure what that limit is, but we were able to stream 4 of the Conference sessions without any capping to our download speed).

I have no clue how Internet access is sold in other countries. In the US, that doesn't happen for DSL or Cable users, but it can happen for those using a wireless ISP.

lionelwalters wrote:I understand that the current meetinghouse Internet connections are there primarily to support the Family History Centres, so that being the case, the wards and stakes are just "borrowing" the connections for MLS transfers.

Ummm, yes and no. That was the original reasons for the installs - to support official FHCs. Then wards and stakes were allowed to borrow it. Now in North America, it's permissible for the stake to install Internet as use it and they see fit. (But the stake pays.)

RussellHltn wrote:To add to the fun, LDS Access was a profile created to more closely emulate the access needed by FHCs. So on one hand you're telling me you're not allowed to use that profile, but on the other hand the primary user is the FHC which needs the broader access.

Maybe you've got an older PIX 501 box that only has one profile. LDS Access wouldn't apply to that. But the good news is that you've already got the least restrictive access.

Umm, sorry to have to remind you again, but you are confusing a filtering level with a wireless access security profile. LDSAccess is a wireless security profile loaded on Cisco Aironet WAPs, which replaces the Odyssey client. It has nothing to do with the "General Access" filtering level used in FHCs.

So the problem described in this thread seems to be a question of the number of connections allowed on the LAN side of the Internet connection. It's conceivable that this could be a legal limitation for the particular service provided to that building. If so, allowing wireless connections could easily cause the installation to exceed that number; using only wired connections is more controlled. Usually that limit could be controlled at the router, which seems like a better way to enforce it. But the earlier post seemed to say that it was a local Church policy to restrict how the limited bandwidth is used. In any case, it sounds like the local authorities have a clear plan and policy.

Alan_Brown wrote:In any case, it sounds like the local authorities have a clear plan and policy.

That's really the point that I was trying to get at earlier. All of the above is possible and may even be made available here sometime in the future, but we need to respect and adhere to the local policies in place.

Alan_Brown wrote:Umm, sorry to have to remind you again, but you are confusing a filtering level with a wireless access security profile. LDSAccess is a wireless security profile loaded on Cisco Aironet WAPs, which replaces the Odyssey client.

Dang. You're right.

Yes, there's a couple of possibilities as to why the limitation. Since that's for a different area, I'm not sure what policies apply.