SLC shut our Webcasting session down for Regional Conference

Is anyone else having problems attempting to broadcast the South Western Regional Broadcast today?

The message read: "Due to the high amount of traffic on the media servers, all test and REGIONAL broadcast events that originate for SLC will be terminated in order for locally generated stake conferences to function. We apologize for the inconvenience"

We have one (1) test in NASE report that they were impacted and It appears that anyone using the portal today got this message
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PLEASE READ!!!!

Due to the high amount of traffic on the Media Servers, all test events and regional broadcast events that originate from Salt Lake City will be terminated in order for locally generated Stake Conferences to function. We apologize for the inconvenience.
[Close All]

Although I can probably guess some of the reasons for SLC canceling our webcast session, this had a strong potential to interrupt our conference. According to the instructions we received, the stake president was to address the stake during the first 30 minutes of the conference -- just prior to starting the broadcast from SLC. We scheduled our event several weeks in advance through the portal only to find out, 2 hours prior to the conference, that our session was canceled. We had planned for our entire stake to receive an address from our stake president via a webcast.

Thankfully, at the last minute, we were able to reschedule our conference in a different region and everything worked well. However, I am greatly concerned that our scheduled conference webcast was preempted. I struggle to understand how this was an unforeseen event because all of the stakes are required to schedule resources in advance.

I would appreciate some type of action plan on how to mitigate such scenarios for the future and avoid a stake conference webcast to be canceled at the last minute. At the least, should this occur again, a few days notice would be better than a few hours.

allencp wrote:According to the instructions we received, the stake president was to address the stake during the first 30 minutes of the conference -- just prior to starting the broadcast from SLC.

Just out of curiosity, were you going to re-broadcast the SLC portion (to prevent the remote sites from having to switch), or where they going to switch feeds at that point?

I'd suspect that the first things to get canceled would be re-broadcasting a SLC feed. "They" can probably detect that by the times and units involved.

russellhltn wrote:Just out of curiosity, were you going to re-broadcast the SLC portion (to prevent the remote sites from having to switch), or where they going to switch feeds at that point?

Actually, we had the remote sites switch the direct feed. The SLC broadcast was made available through the internet and we had the remote sites switch to this feed. There were, though, a handful of members who are homebound, due to illness, which the stake president had approved and allowed to see the stream -- in this case, we did not instruct them to switch to another feed.

allencp wrote:There were, though, a handful of members who are homebound, due to illness, which the stake president had approved and allowed to see the stream -- in this case, we did not instruct them to switch to another feed.

So, the times of your scheduled event duplicated the regional conference, correct?

Also, IIRC, webcasting to the home has to be approved by the presiding authority. Was it approved for the Regional Conference to be viewed by the home bound?

russellhltn wrote:So, the times of your scheduled event duplicated the regional conference, correct?

Yes, they did. I understand the correlation you are making. The point of my earlier post, however, was the lack of notification when they canceled our scheduled webcast. It would have been helpful to receive a notification, several days in advance, explaining the situation and asking that we not use the webcast. Having this fair warning would have allowed the stake presidency to make an alternative plan to accommodate for the first 30 minutes of the conference.

We broadcast all of our stake conferences, so the plan would normally have been to broadcast the stake portion during the first 30 minutes, and then have the other meetinghouses switch to the satellite feed. We are fortunate that they all have satellite, but they could have switched to the direct URL just as easily.

That would normally have been the plan, but it would appear that the best plans seem to change at the last minute when it counts the most and there is so little time to respond. Was there anything in the original letter to stake presidents that the webcasting system would not be available for the first 30 minutes?

One of the stakes in our area (not us, fortunately) runs four buildings morning and afternoon for each stake conference. This obviously was not supported today. I'm glad someone is willing to "apologize for the inconvenience." I'm sure the members will be happy to hear that as the reason they missed hearing from their stake president today.

I scheduled the webcast for our stake conference this weekend using the "Central US" region. It wasn't working; the DNS name wouldn't resolve. Tech support said to create a new event using a different region, which worked fine. I don't know if others had the same issue, but if the entire "Central US" site was down that would certainly put unexpected strain on the rest of the regions.

Today's incident does highlight the prudence of a tested audio backup solution. Unfortunately, it requires the stake to spend a few hundred dollars on equipment that will probably never be used.

allencp wrote:The point of my earlier post, however, was the lack of notification when they canceled our scheduled webcast. It would have been helpful to receive a notification, several days in advance, explaining the situation and asking that we not use the webcast.

Understood. However, there might be reasons it was done last minute. The problem may have only shown up or been discovered at that time.

My point is that the Policies and Guidelines says "Webcasting to locations other than Church buildings should only be done under the direction of the event's presiding authority."

Assuming you didn't get permission from CHQ to carry the Regional Conference, the webcast would have only been scheduled for 30 minutes - and might have escaped the cancelation. (Depending on the nature of the problem.)

russellhltn wrote:Assuming you didn't get permission from CHQ to carry the Regional Conference, the webcast would have only been scheduled for 30 minutes - and might have escaped the cancelation. (Depending on the nature of the problem.)

The stake president presided for the first 30 minutes. Even those who only scheduled that time were shut down.

I can see where the loss of the Central US region would have had a large impact. That's where several hundred stakes would have tried to set the first part of the conference. Those who went east got lucky. Those who tried to go west lost out.

In any event, it provided an opportunity for a number of high councilors to become stake president for a day. You really can't beat that kind of training.

lajackson wrote:The stake president presided for the first 30 minutes. Even those who only scheduled that time were shut down.

So much for that theory.

I live in Glendale Arizona and we had the same/similar problem yesterday.

We also had our stake conference event deleted about 1 1/2 hours before 10 am (start time) I created a new event using the same region (central) and it worked.

The original conference scheduled was for 10 locations set to the central servers for only 30 minutes. Once it was deleted, I recreated it using the exact same settings. Although we have a HD camera, we broadcasted at a low quality video and mobile audio. We broadcasted using these low quality settings because of recent internet constraints.

From 1030 to 12 was the portion of the meeting from SLC, which we used a URL provided from SLC. Our stake center used the satellite but our 3 other buildings used the URL, which looked great.

At 9:45 the conference shut down and we quickly restarted it. This happened 4-5 more times between 945 and 10:02. The high councilors had been given a copy of the Stake President's talk and announcements, so they were our plan B. Fortunately, we kept restarting the broadcast because after the 10:02 shut down it worked without another incident.

I know the stakes located around us were not so lucky.

I should also note, we had a full 2 hour broadcast 4 weeks ago from our stake conference that was a disaster. The broadcast didn't work and neither did our backup option.

danieldawson wrote:I should also note, we had a full 2 hour broadcast 4 weeks ago from our stake conference that was a disaster. The broadcast didn't work and neither did our backup option.

To keep this topic focused on the Regional Conference, I have started another topic as a follow on to this comment about another stake conference broadcast that did not work, along with a possible solution to consider.

I am in Gilbert, Arizona. I did not receive any information about an internet stream of the regional conference. We have the ability to easily rebroadcast the satellite feed using our video switcher, so we planned to do just that. The added benefit is all the buildings are on the same timing and there's less fumbling around on the podium to disrupt the flow of the meeting; everyone has a very similar experience to being live. I offer the following as a caution with a hope that the reliability and communication improves in the future.

Our Stake President was very clear that he wanted each ward to attend the conference in their own building, which required us to broadcast to all three other buildings at once for the first time ever. Based on promises from the Church Technology Department and many tests ahead of time, it appeared that the Church's new solution would meet all of our needs.

We purchased three used quad core laptops to get the best quality possible and we tested them extensively. Over 30 hours of streaming time leading up to the conference showed that while the system wasn't the best quality I'd ever seen, and while the Silverlight player on the receiving computers wasn't the most stable, that if we stuck to a particular set of procedures, that the Church's new broadcast solution would work well for us.

I created my event 1 month ahead of time on the South Central server in Texas, which is the same server we used for all of our testing. The night before our Stake Conference, we did one more long test and made sure all the sites were ready to go. I sat waiting on Sunday morning at 8:00 for the encoding sign to turn green on the webcast portal. As soon as it did, I fired up the Teradek and told all of my assistants to start the stream at each building. And that's where it all started to fall apart.

One of the buildings told me they couldn't see any events on the webcast portal. One of the others had bookmarked the URL, but it wouldn't ever connect. At 8:10 I found that my scheduled Stake Conference was now listed under the "Completed" section. I frantically got started creating a second event. I gave the new event code to the Stake Executive Secretary for shut-ins to be notified of the change and crossed my fingers that everything would go well. That event disappeared 5 minutes later as well. I was still connected and sending, but my receiving sites couldn't connect.

I called the Global Service Center to report my issues and ask for advice. The gentleman on the phone told me they were aware of the issue and there was a bridge line with engineers working on a fix, but that I should have better luck using one of the east coast servers. So I cancelled my event and created one using East 1. I waited for 15 minutes, but the sign to start the encoder never turned green. I tried again with East 2 and wasted another 15 minutes. By this point it was 9:00—one hour before the meeting time.

Since the Global Service Center tech had indicated they were working to get the South Central server back up for everyone, I tried creating an event there again. Now I was getting desperate. I started the encoder and this time it stuck. All of my receiving locations could see the event in the portal for more than 20 minutes, but the Silverlight players would never connect to the buildings' assigned URLs. It was at this point that we caved to our backup plan using Slingboxes. We hadn't tested it much since the last Stake Conference (to only two remote buildings), and we knew it would be dangerous to try to broadcast three streams with only 4Mbit/sec upstream bandwidth, but we didn't have any other choice. We had foolishly disconnected them after numerous successful tests of the Teradek webcast solution. We also hadn't installed the Slingbox software on any of our new machines.

At 9:35, I was sitting on the floor frantically trying to connect all of the Slingboxes correctly and running around looking for cables to do so while Heath, and Assistant STS, had the three buildings on a conference call walking them through downloading and installing the Slingbox software. At 9:55 I got the last of the three Slingboxes connected and at 9:59 I got the text message that all the buildings were up and running with sound and video.

Heath was driving back to the Stake Center when the opening hymn started and I was manning all of the controls by myself. I hadn't been able to do any of the preparations I had planned for the morning, so I didn't have any camera presets. My suit was soaked clear through with sweat. I missed many cues and messed up routing the audio for about 10 seconds at the beginning of the satellite broadcast, since by mind was all swiss-cheesed from having to recover from an emergency. The Slingboxes performed perfectly in all the buildings, though. I'm sure the quality wasn't as good as it could have been, but I'll bet it was better than the quality of the Church's webcast solution on its highest setting, even with the Slingboxes stepping down to lower bitrates due to bandwidth constraints.

I don't like the idea of shut-ins not being able to watch Stake Conference live, but I seriously doubt that I'll be able to trust any official Church broadcast solution that they build themselves. Tell us to use a third party that knows what they're doing and how to load balance for big events and I might be willing to come back. But as long as Slingboxes continue to function, that will be our primary solution.

Fortunately for us, we had a backup system. Many STSs are left with nothing or the official audio only solution, which would have left our three receiving locations empty. Disappointed stake members have abandoned broadcast meetings for less serious quality issues than that in the past. No video would be considered an unacceptable failure for our Stake President. We have learned that our backup systems need to be at the ready and our receiving locations need to be trained and ready to use the primary and backup systems. (That part was my fault. Going to a backup system shouldn't constitute an emergency.)

How many stakes had completely failed broadcasts because of the poor handling of the official broadcast servers? I am encouraging my stake president to communicate with other stakes around us to see what their experience was like and to communicate their dissatisfaction up the chain.


I would be interested in hearing more Stakes' experiences. Most of the STSs near me don't use the official broadcast solution, so I'm hoping others who used it will chime in with their experiences.

I for one started with the first Webcasting and found it ok at best. The stream would fail, the computer would fail and so forth. So I personally have abandon the Webcasting solution. By reading these reviews and others I am not getting a warm and fuzzy that this system is any better than the last.

From reading this you did all the testing in the world and had everything going and did your preparation to make the broadcast a success.

In my stake, I have decided to use personal video conferencing (PVC). I have found that it is very reliable. I currently have 5 buildings that connect and I will eventually add a 6th one. We haven't had the greatest picture at times but unless there is a hardware failure or reboot everyone is fine. We even use the clerk computers as our receiver. It does take a bit of watching because of people who could come in with video cameras. However things work great.

shawndowler wrote:Most of the STSs near me don't use the official broadcast solution...

[Raises hand] I feel your pain. I went through a similar scenario (several times) with the old webcast system. I've migrated to YouTube Live and have used it numerous times for both church and non-church events and found it to be rock solid every time. I'm sticking with it until the church can convince me they have something on par.

PVC may be a viable solution, but at the time I was restricted from using it, otherwise I might have given it a try.

We used the old Meetinghouse Webcast solution for years. It was never very reliable and the quality was terrible. We abandoned it in favor of using Slingboxes a couple of years ago. The primary drivers for trying the new official webcast solution were the free Teradek VidiU devices, the desire to allow shut-ins to watch live again, and not having to send a three of the same stream to broadcast to three receiving sites. (Slingbox is point to point only, so every receiving location requires its own stream.) It turns out even with the bandwidth limitations, quality and reliability are still better with our Slingbox solution. If we can get just a little more upstream bandwidth, then there will be no reason not to use the Slingboxes as long as the Slingbox company supports them.

It turns out there was supposed to be a communication sent to Stake Technology Specialists to let them know about the Internet stream from Salt Lake. I never received it and I know 2 others who didn't receive it either. I saw the text and it doesn't say not to use the webcast portal. It just says there is an Internet stream as a backup in case you don't have satellite. And given that some Stakes were only scheduled for the first 30 minutes and their events were cancelled, it doesn't seem like it would have solved the problem even if everyone had received it. We would have done the same thing.

Note: SlingMedia (SlingBox) now forces video ads when first connecting to streams and then displays banner ads for a few seconds when not in full-screen.

Due to those ads, and the company not currently offering a way to hide advertisements has left some of us anxious for the church's new Webcast solution.

Over the years, I've read numerous lds.tech posts similar to Shawn's where STS's have tested thoroughly in advance, only to experience a total failure during conference.

I can't imagine the embarrassment of someone (and it's usually only ONE person) working so long and hard to prepare for an event, with as many as a thousand plus members getting dressed up to view - with the humiliated STS kneeling on the floor in prayer, desperate for a solution, searching for and attaching cables - and the majority of the stake sitting and waiting in the dark for the problem to be corrected, only to eventually leave and go home.

For that reason, I purposely set up the Regional Conference on the new Teradek Webcast as a backup only to our tried-and-true SlingBox set up and although we have never had much success streaming to home bound members with the previous Webcasting software solution (using Wirecast), I was hopeful our home bound members would actually get to view this conference. Unfortunately, I experienced a portion of the same issues Shawn did (luckily it was our backup for streaming which failed) and resorted to the old telephone conference bridge (2nd) backup for home bound members.

I'm sure the church's technology department will be diligent in correcting this issue and I'd sure hate to be in their shoes after this past weekend's blunder.

Our stake purchased SlingMedia's SlingPlayer set top boxes 7 years ago and fortunately, we are still immune from the ads - but our boxes are based on first generation streaming technologies, and is only capable of 640 x 480 - which has served us well but needs to be retired.

Do any of you know actually what happened that weekend? Its called growing pains. Any company out there to make money would be jumping up and down, thrilled to have this problem.

World wide church serving world wide members.

rannthal wrote:Do any of you know actually what happened that weekend? Its called growing pains. Any company out there to make money would be jumping up and down, thrilled to have this problem.

World wide church serving world wide members.

Please don't be so dismissive. We know exactly what happened in each of our stakes.

Before we did broadcasts we would just hold two sessions of stake conference instead. This isn't due to growth, since we'd been too big to fit in one building for decades. It's due to a mandate to stop holding multiple sessions of stake conference. The stake presidents and stake technology specialists are not thrilled about the prospect of disappointing thousands of people leading to decreased future attendance of stake conference.

I just want our members to be able to participate in stake conference using the systems designed for them to do so. Reliability of the broadcast has been my stake president's #1 concern for years, ever since we stopped holding multiple sessions of conference. Our previous stake technology specialist did not have the time nor expertise required to make the broadcasts reliable. He was 100% reliant on Church Technology solutions. If those fail, then the conference failed. I put in an inordinate amount of time testing and retesting official systems only to have them fail when we really need them. Something has to change. Many stakes don't have the resources to work around the official solutions.

We aren't here to make money. We can't reach 99% and say it's good enough, because we made enough money from the people who weren't excluded. Local problems are local, but when the broadcast system itself fails in our stake, that's three buildings full of disgusted people. I'm not going to lower my expectations.

So forgive me for not jumping up and down, thrilled that tens of thousands of members across many stakes were let down and those who worked the hardest to make it a good experience were left holding the bag.

I got a phone call today from GSS. We have a stake conference this weekend with a GA and they were reaching out to make sure everything was set. Thankfully, we're not webcasting this one, so that's easy. But I did get to bend their ear a bit about what happened.

Simply put - they ran out of licenses. They never anticipated that so many stakes would web cast the first 30 minutes. They expected it to be handled "locally" to each building.

The canceling of sessions apparently happens if the startup fails - which in this case it did due to the lack of licenses. So no one at SLC knew there was a problem until the phones started to ring. Hence, the short notice.

They've since obtained additional licenses, so according to them, "it shouldn't happen again".

Thank you russellhltn. That is exactly what happened. Growing pains for a system that is less then a year old, that is used by many more then was first expected and in other ways then was first anticipated.

FYI, on an average Sunday there are upwards of 70 events. The system handles these events.

On that particular weekend, there were 180+ events. Well over double then the average.

The church is continually making strides to serve every member world wide. There are going to be some hiccups and some growing pains along the way.

rannthal wrote:That is exactly what happened. Growing pains for a system that is less then a year old, that is used by many more then was first expected and in other ways then was first anticipated.

It sure would have been nice if the church had sent out a email or phone call explaining what went wrong and the steps taken to prevent that from happening again. I feel for the guys who did all the testing they could possibly do only to have to meltdown in front of their friends. In the absence of information, the only rational conclusion is that the system can never be relied upon again.

I happened to be lucky in being a the right place to find out.

I understand that. As a fellow STS, I feel the pain. (See my new posting) That's why I've decided to frequent this forum more and try to answer questions that I am able to. I am lucky enough to work for the church and the webcasting project is one of my main projects. I'll try to pass any information on that I can here. The system is really a good system. There are some things that just happen that are not under our control and are very unexpected. The church is very concerned about what happened and are indeed making steps and putting things in place so something like this will not happen again. We are all human trying to get better on all aspects.

Thank you for joining in the conversation, rannthal. It is reassuring to hear that we are being heard. It would be helpful if we could have some official communication about what happened and the steps that are being taken to assure us that this isn't just a novelty to the Church technology department. We take it very seriously. We really want it to be usable. I think we need more two way communication so we know what to expect and so we can can also let the Church technology department know what to expect.

We felt like we did everything we could to telegraph our intentions.

I have another Stake Conference in January. I will be looking forward to trying it again. This time, we will be well prepared to fail over, however. Our number one goal is for people in remote buildings not to feel like they had a lesser experience for not being there in person. That means we want to avoid anything that could distract and detract from the message.

So no one at SLC knew there was a problem until the phones started to ring.

Are you sure?

This was a Regional Conference to 7 states in the North America South West area, with over 225 stakes expected to receive the broadcast.

IMO, it should have been easy to predict there would be an overload and strain on the system - especially since webcast portal events are scheduled ahead of time.

They expected it to be handled "locally" to each building.

This was not clear in the Stake Conference Broadcast Instructions for Stake Presidents. "If other buildings with receivers are available, members should be invited to attend in the building most convenient for their family"

The Webcast Overview suggests using the Webcast system for Regional conferences.

Definitely sure. As being on the Web casting development team, we check the amount of events scheduled Friday before we leave and there were definitely not that many.
If the events had been scheduled ahead of time, it could have been detected that there was going to be a problem. The gotcha is that many events are/were scheduled on Saturday or even Sunday.
With the events being scheduled in that timeframe, no one can tell what is going on. The scheduling of events aren't watched 24/7. It would be nice if events were scheduled days, if not weeks in advance as suggested via the documentation, so preparations could be made. Sadly this was not case.

rannthal wrote:Definitely sure. As being on the Web casting development team, we check the amount of events scheduled Friday before we leave and there were definitely not that many.
If the events had been scheduled ahead of time, it could have been detected that there was going to be a problem. The gotcha is that many events are/were scheduled on Saturday or even Sunday.
With the events being scheduled in that timeframe, no one can tell what is going on. The scheduling of events aren't watched 24/7. It would be nice if events were scheduled days, if not weeks in advance as suggested via the documentation, so preparations could be made. Sadly this was not case.

Might I suggest a nightly email be sent to whoever is on call with the number of webcasts scheduled per region?
Also, in the case of such a widespread catastrophic failure, PLEASE COMMUNICATE as things are happening.
You (or someone on the team) has the ability to put up the messages on the top of the webcast portal. If something breaks like that again, a message saying "hey things are broken here in SLC, its not just you, please switch to your backup plan" would save a LOT of hair from being torn out.

After the fact, (since you have the email address of each person who setup the webcast), an email sent to all of them saying "we are sorry things broke, here is what broke and what we have done to fix it" (ie: we are sorry for the issues you had this weekend, we ran out of licenses but we have since purchased more and this shouldn't happen again) would help to resolve the doubts of those who got burned trying to use the system this time (especially those who don't frequent this board and might think that they were at fault for it not working).

Aaron Z

rannthal, you say "The system is really a good system." I won't say one way or the other because I haven't used it yet. However, with that said, the feedback I have been reading on this leaves me questioning if the system is really good. I understand about licensing and other items that you can't forecast, but as mentioned there should be some safe guards put in place for this to not happen again.

Also, communication between us STS and SLC is very lacking in my book. It is like here is the equipment and now you go make it work. Based on what I'm reading, everyone in the church is doing things their own way. Some are using YouTube, Sling box and so forth because the system seems to be unreliable. Each of us are using different machines for receiving the broadcast. To me there isn't a set standard for everyone. I may be asking for too much, but let me tell you what we do in my stake.

At the outlying buildings, we use the clerk's computer as our receiver and then we send the signal to cabinet that has the satellite receiver. We then put it into a switch which then feeds the TV and the podium jack. It works very well. I'm having our FM group install the AV Mixer that the church has on it's website.

Since the old webcasting and for me this new system are from what I have read unreliable, I will stay with my current set up of using Personal Video Conferencing (PVC). Once I made the switch over to it, I have never had the signal drop, freeze or anything. I have lost clarity because of bandwidth usage or when a router rebooted on us. Otherwise, we have never had an issue. My plan is to stay like this and I will begin to test the new system at some point.

Terry

Aczlan wrote:Might I suggest a nightly email be sent to whoever is on call with the number of webcasts scheduled per region?

Like I said before, we check on the weekdays to see how many events are scheduled. On the weekends, this would not help as the vendor does not respond in that fashion.

Aczlan wrote:Also, in the case of such a widespread catastrophic failure, PLEASE COMMUNICATE as things are happening.
You (or someone on the team) has the ability to put up the messages on the top of the webcast portal. If something breaks like that again, a message saying "hey things are broken here in SLC, its not just you, please switch to your backup plan" would save a LOT of hair from being torn out.

Agreed, I was surprised that there wasn't something put up.

Aczlan wrote:After the fact, (since you have the email address of each person who setup the webcast), an email sent to all of them saying "we are sorry things broke, here is what broke and what we have done to fix it" (ie: we are sorry for the issues you had this weekend, we ran out of licenses but we have since purchased more and this shouldn't happen again) would help to resolve the doubts of those who got burned trying to use the system this time (especially those who don't frequent this board and might think that they were at fault for it not working).

Our product manager is already in the process of doing this.

This is also the reason why I'm getting on the boards. I understand how it feels to not know what is going on. I hope to be able to relieve some of that frustration where I can. No one has asked me to do this. I'm doing it of my own accord, because I am also one of you, an STS. I eat my own work.

rannthal,

Thank you for your participation and feedback. It's really nice to be able to have a response from someone actually involved in the project.

It's like our voices are finally being heard. I answered the questionnaire but like so many other questionnaires, I felt that nothing would come of it.

I appreciate someone on the inside, who is involved, keeping us in the loop...Mike

harddrive wrote:However, with that said, the feedback I have been reading on this leaves me questioning if the system is really good.

As with anything out there, something new that we are not familiar with always gets punched up because it is new. After the newness has worn off, it will seem like "how did we ever function before this". Also, if you ever have used the old system.....you will know this is magnitudes better.

harddrive wrote: I understand about licensing and other items that you can't forecast, but as mentioned there should be some safe guards put in place for this to not happen again.

Already putting in place.

harddrive wrote:It is like here is the equipment and now you go make it work. Based on what I'm reading, everyone in the church is doing things their own way. Some are using YouTube, Sling box and so forth because the system seems to be unreliable. Each of us are using different machines for receiving the broadcast. To me there isn't a set standard for everyone.

Being an STS is a very daunting task. A lot of it is "do your own thing" because every stake and district is different and every STS has their own preferences and experiences. The main point is to be able to deliver the messages to the members that aren't at the stake center.
Of course, "doing your own thing" does have problems in itself. For example, if an STS setup a custom system that works because he knows the ins and outs of it, what happens when he gets released and the new STS takes over that does not have any experience with the system?
Also, if something does go wrong, they are on their own with trying to figure out what is going on.

The church has created webcast to allow those who do not want to "do their own thing" a system to be able to broadcast to outlining meetinghouses and be able to have some support while doing it. It is not required that stakes and districts use the system. It is there for the members to use if it works for them. If it doesn't they can "do their own thing." The most important thing is to be able to get the conference to the members.

The church, as far as webcasting goes, does have some recommendations. They can be found here: Webcast Requirements.
There is also a products page found here: Purchasing Webcast Products.
All this can be found on the webcast support pages found by clicking on the Need Help link on the portal.

I hope this helps. If I wasn't on the team, I would be as lost as many of you. That's why I'm doing this. I'll post some recommendations on my other post Webcast Help Offered.

They've since obtained additional licenses, so according to them, "it shouldn't happen again".

Deja Vu...it failed again for the February 14th NW Regional Conference.

Fear = the church's new webcasting portal

Faith = use Ustream

If one is prepared, there is no fear.

Sorry, this was not Deja Vu.....it was an entirely different reason some could not view events. The event could not be viewed due to some not following the instructions given or the portal being slow.
We are looking into why the Portal was slow.

With a little pre-prep, if the portal being slow or down is easily over come....please see What to do when the Portal is down.

I finally decided to use the church's webcast system. All the testing we did was perfect, so we felt confident in attempting to use the Teradek ldswebcast system. I am in the Salt Lake valley using the West servers.

For the first Stake conference, even though there is supposed to be a 2 hour buffer, the media server was not ready. GSC said to cancel the event and create a new one. Everything worked great after that.

The next Stake Conference, which took place a few days ago, was a disaster. Even though there is a two hour buffer, I scheduled the event start time for an hour earlier. That was fine, but there was no audio. At the receive sites, the supposed that I had muted the audio, which I would never do.

I created a new event, but it took a very long time to get the media servers ready. The receive site missed the first 40 minutes of the meeting. They did have speakers there who were ready, and Elder Satati went down in person to run the first part of the meeting down there, so the congregation was doing something during that time. Elder L Whitney Clayton was the presiding general authority.

This was an embarrassment to me and to our Stake.

I guess here's what I could have done better:

1) Have someone local to our building monitor the transmission (including sound) in our building.
2) Having read this message, definitely keep the slingbox as a backup. If I didn't have that the first time I used ldbwecast, the transmission would have completely failed. Slingbox has also stopped being reliable lately.
3) I'm going to do some more youtube testing. If it works more reliably, maybe I'll just do that from now on still using the Teradek. Maybe 10 am on a Sunday morning is the busiest time.

Even though one meeting was a disaster, I still don't want to give up entirely on ldswebcast. They have improved things so much, but I'm also tired of sweating bullets.

For our last stake conference (a few weeks ago) I setup a simple VPN* between the sending and receiving PC's that navigated through the firewalls at each end, so there was no need to bypass them, like when using YouTube. Once that was in place, I configured Wirecast as a Windows Media Streaming server on the sending side, and on the receive side, entered the URL for the streaming server into Windows Media Player.

It worked like a champ at 720p/60 (approx 5 Mbps), except for an unfortunate update from Panda antivirus that went full-screen on the receive PC right near the beginning of conference. The guys there had to force a reboot to finally clear it. I felt bad because that was MY notebook PC. Needless to say, Panda antivirus is now on my blacklist.

The reason I chose the above method was to have much greater control of the webcast from end-to-end (and to also stream without a bitrate cap). I think the church's portal system is getting there, but it seems there are still a few too many issues that crop up almost weekly in the forum for me to have total faith in it. I'm sure that will come, knowing how much effort the church employees are putting into it.

* For those interested, I used the open source SoftEther for the VPN. Much simpler to configure than OpenVPN.