Salt Lake Assistance Required to Webcast

I begin by posting a quote from another thread:

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.

There is some kind of problem at headquarters with the new webcast system and the Teradek VidiU equipment. Each of the last two times our stake has run a webcast, it would not start. We have called headquarters, and they have had to change settings on their end on their servers so that we could start the broadcast. Each time they have said that we could have done nothing to solve the problem ourselves and that they were glad they were there to help.

We now schedule an extra 15-30 minutes before each webcast to allow time to make the call. Once Salt Lake changes their settings, the webcast works flawlessly. Without their changes to their settings, the webcast never begins.

If you have trouble starting a webcast, I highly recommend you call. It has twice made the difference between a successful stake conference broadcast and total failure.

Yes, there still seem to be some glitches in the new webcast system. For our stake conference session last Saturday evening, the webcast wouldn't start. The server name was not found. I called and the technician was not able to fix the problem, but he did suggest a workaround that worked fine: create a new event using a different region. I had to do the same for the Sunday general session. But that worked great; the quality is much better than the stream.lds.org webcast platform.

I second lajackson's advice: if you have trouble starting a webcast, call the support line. Also, take full advantage of the two hour pre-webcast window to work out any issues.

Here we are a year later and it seems more and more STS's have decided to abandon the Church's provided system and use a reliable 3rd party solution like YouTube Live, Facebook Live, etc, and not feeling bad about temporarily bypassing firewalls in order to do so.

Our experience preparing for our January 7-8, 2017 stake conference is shaping up along similar lines. Fortunately, even our tests are going poorly so we're looking at options ahead of time. I fear that if our tests were successful, then we'd be left with the inevitable surprise from the cloud on Sunday morning (if we expect it every time, now, is it fair to call it a surprise?).

What are others doing lately to have successful webcasts? It seems a lot of folks are turning to YouTube Live, but that requires a readiness to bypass the firewall, which I am reluctant (though not unwilling) to do.

I find it really interesting that when something goes wrong, the first thing they point a finger at is the church system. The system is used world wide now with countless success stories that happen every week, but yet the church system is crap.

The church has provided documentation to help, there is the support line, and there is this forum. I have even came out in this forum and asked members that have troubles to contact me with their questions so solutions may be found. I have had few takers. But yet still the church system is garbage.

I wonder what would happen if one did post their troubles on this forum or send me an email, but I guess its just easier to point a finger and say something is garbage.

Good luck with getting the word out to your stake members in what ever way you choose to do so.

The last webcast for stake conference we did with the Teradek solution was successful. As an STS, there was a lot more to learn about this newer solution, but after fixing a few issues on my end, it works. I am now preparing for the next webcast in early February and getting the tech team up and running and testing the webcast solution and other components. I had to enlist the help of other STSs in the area, my FM group and my Stake PFR and the church's GSC group to get it working the first time.

KentAnderson , what exactly and specifically are the issues you are having with your testing? Perhaps as a group on this forum and thread, we can assist and provide solutions along with help from CHQ /global service center, we can help you have a successful webcast this coming weekend.

As an extremely experience webcast user but old and new systems I can tell people that my problems have nearly always been local problems with the internal sound/video system. That said. I've also talked to the church resources when I've had issue and they have always been quick to help, even proactively jumping on test webcasts without being asked.

Rannthal, you shouldn't take this personally as you seem to have, the church IT department doesn't always have clean hands, but, in the last decade the webcast folks have been a shining beacon on a hill as it relates to the church IT.

In 10 days, my stake will be having a conference. I will be using the webcasting system for the first time in a long time. The main reason was that the old system didn't seem stable enough and it introduce problems such as Windows Media player freezing and so forth. So I hope that everything works well.

Rannthal, I understand your frustration. When everything is working, you are the last person to get contacted. The IT department and people working with the system are the last to hear, but when something goes wrong or it's bad, the IT department is the first to hear about it and very vague responses. Like you we in the IT department needs to understand the setup what was going on and how the problem was experienced. As we get more data on the issue, then we can focus in on the issues and determine what needs to be addressed to fix the problem. It could be bandwidth, bad hardware or even a Internet connection that has multiple people on the same wire, mean a hub network (comcast) compared to a switch network like (Verizon FIOS). I prefer the switch network over the hub network. So there are many things it could be, but unless details are given, then no solution will come about. So like you say, give us details and don't leave anything out.

To the team and everyone reading this:

In my previous stake, my stake center webcast using the old system was on a 1.54Mb DSL line, and in my stake we had 8 other meetinghouses with anywhere from 5Mbps to 15 Mb downloads. I successfully did 15-20 webcasts, multiple cameras, text overlays, etc... about 5-10 of those webcasts were multi-stake with upwards of 50 different meetinghouses connecting. The old rules were simple, the UPLOAD speed had to be the LEAST common denominator, the receiving stations were to be on Ethernet, and turn wireless off in meetinghouses so only the upload and download computers were using the bandwidth.

The current stake I'm in had very bad experiences in the past (I guaranteed them they wouldn't have it with me because I follow all the rules for a successful webcast), so I had a very uphill battle when doing the one I did the 2nd half of last year, and with the new system it's even easier to understand what's going on with the detail statistics pages provided. I did have a lot of issues with the internal audio/video of the stake center when I started testing, FM had to come redo all the cabling because the sound was dropping randomly, after the FM group redid my satellite cabinet it was smooth sailing. All the same rules still apply.

I don't buy it, The old system was successful, the new one is successful - It has nothing to do with some kind of hub or switched network. STS and Stakes who go out of their way not to use the systems are being extremely selfish in my opinion, they are 'separating themselves into an ISM' which we particularly don't want to do. Guess what, I'm not broadcasting in HD - nope, neither am I broadcasting in Widescreen, Nope, our broadcast doesn't have the same quality as broadcasting from the conference center. I do have multiple cameras, I have text overlays - I do all the fancy stuff, and I've done it in Rural areas where the providers are crap local cable, crap DSL, crap OTA Wireless microwave.

The new system works like a champ, it meets everyone's needs and even has some fantastic self-diagnostic tools. I also think it's very telling (about our church culture) to know that so many stakes think it's really important to do something different.

If you have enough time to research an 'alternative' method to the church system, you have enough time to research the OUTSTANDING and VALUABLE resources online, through recorded sessions, and through direct communication with the teams at the church.