Can't setup 2 receive PC's in 1 building?

Our stake president has a strong desire to increase attendance for stake conference. One thing the RS president pointed out was it's sometimes difficult for families with small children to sit still for two hours. The stake center has A/V distribution to the RS and Primary rooms, but neither of the ward buildings are so equipped. The simple solution is to have a notebook PC in the Primary room of each overflow building, connected to a TV with an HDMI cable. Yes, we have more than enough bandwidth to support 2 video streams. Yes, I know it will not be in sync with the receiving PC in the chapel, but there is ample distance between them that this won't be a problem.

For this stake conference, I'm going to give the church's portal system another try [gasp]. The first problem I ran into is knowing all the LDS Access names of those assisting me. The second problem is I REALLY want to keep a close watch on the PC's in the Primary rooms, as well as the ones in the chapel, but the system won't let me add two PC's to the same building. Yes, I can give them the generic URL for that webcast, but if I'm not mistaken, I won't have as much visibility for their data streams that way. Is there a workaround I can use for this?

Mikerowaved wrote:Is there a workaround I can use for this?

Using the Church system, I think you are restricted to the one "building" link and everything else has to use the event code.

You will be able to see devices connected using the event code and will know whether and at what bandwidth they are connected, but there will not be much troubleshooting information otherwise.

A possible workaround is available if you have a meetinghouse that normally does not receive the broadcast. You can set up that building as a receiving location and use that link from a different location, with complete monitoring information. In other words, if you originate from stake center A and stream to wards B and C, you can set up building D as a receiving location and use the link in building B or C (or even stake center A, or anywhere else for that matter).

lajackson wrote:

Mikerowaved wrote:Is there a workaround I can use for this?

A possible workaround is available if you have a meetinghouse that normally does not receive the broadcast. You can set up that building as a receiving location and use that link from a different location, with complete monitoring information. In other words, if you originate from stake center A and stream to wards B and C, you can set up building D as a receiving location and use the link in building B or C (or even stake center A, or anywhere else for that matter).

If you go into your profile in the webcast portal, you can add locations. Perhaps, once added, the complete monitoring information for those locations will become available.

It is interesting that the buildings don't have a AV system in the building. I thought that was a standard within the buildings. All my buildings and some are over 40 years old have a video distribution and audio distribution throughout the building. So I can listen to what is happening in the chapel in any other room.

Now with that being said, why not have a person log into the second laptop and then have them attach to the stream using the meeting code. I have done this before and it will show me the bandwidth usage for the computer connected to the stream. Also as danpass said, just set up another location and assign another person to that stream. I don't think you can assign the same person, but could be wrong.

I hope you get it worked out.

danpass wrote:If you go into your profile in the webcast portal, you can add locations.

I believe you can only add locations within your stake. We had a small regional broadcast and the originating STS tried to do this for us, but wound up giving us the event code instead when he could not add locations in stakes outside his own.

My suggested workaround works well in a geographically large stake where outlying branch members come in to the large cities for conference. It would not work at all for a stake within a city where every building other than the stake center is already a broadcast receiving location.

harddrive wrote:It is interesting that the buildings don't have a AV system in the building.

About two years ago without any request from our stake, our buildings, some 35 years old, were retrofitted with the AV distribution system. If there is time, or for the future, you may be able to request that the FM Group do this for your meetinghouses, especially if the stake president designates a need. It may take a year or seven to trickle through the budget cycle, though.

If you can get it, make sure that you get https://www.lds.org/help/support/av-dis ... b?lang=eng this because you can connect the laptop into it and the video and audio will go through out the building, so this would solve your one computer issue that you are describing. I did that in my buildings and it makes life so much easier.

lajackson wrote:

danpass wrote:If you go into your profile in the webcast portal, you can add locations.

I believe you can only add locations within your stake. We had a small regional broadcast and the originating STS tried to do this for us, but wound up giving us the event code instead when he could not add locations in stakes outside his own.

My suggested workaround works well in a geographically large stake where outlying branch members come in to the large cities for conference. It would not work at all for a stake within a city where every building other than the stake center is already a broadcast receiving location.

I just opened the Add Location dialog window and under "New Location", the following instructions are given:

Adding a location should be considered only under the following conditions: 1 You have a brand-new building that is not yet listed (once the new building is listed, delete the added location); 2 You will regularly broadcast events to other Church-owned properties outside of your Stake; 3 You will regularly broadcast events to a specific location that is not formally owned by the Church, (i.e., a nursing home or an assisted living center within your Stake). Adding a location should not be considered when the viewing location is temporary or the audience at the viewing location is minimal (i.e., a member having to view the webcast from his or her home on a computer or mobile device); instead, you should provide the viewing URL and viewing instructions to the participant(s).

The OP's secondary locations don't seem to meet any of these conditions. If deemed a desirable solution to satisfy the OP's needs, and if it wouldn't cause any issues with the webcast system, perhaps this use case could be added to the list of conditions, by those managing the webcast system.

harddrive wrote:It is interesting that the buildings don't have a AV system in the building. I thought that was a standard within the buildings.

It's standard for a building with a satellite system. Until internet streams became available, there wouldn't have been a need in buildings not equipped with a satellite system to distribute video. Typically only stake centers (which would have had a satellite system installed) would be holding meetings large enough to need a video overflow.

I do believe most buildings have the ability to have chapel audio overflow to other rooms. That would go a long ways to helping the parents with crying children.

Instead of setting up laptops in the RS and Primary rooms you could "extend" the HDMI signal from the laptop in the chapel using one HDBitT transmitter and two HDBitT receivers. The units are inexpensive and work over existing IP LAN wiring and switches. https://www.amazon.com/gofanco-395ft-10 ... nder&psc=1 The video is lightly compressed but that should not be noticed on a TV.

Thanks for all your suggestions. Since the "cry rooms" will be used to receive present and future webcasts, I went ahead and created two "custom locations" that used the same physical address as the meeting houses, but gave them an identifiable name, such as, "Evergreen Building Primary Room". Yes, there will be (at least) one assistant in the chapel and one in the Primary room for each ward building. Depending on what the members want, it may end up being the RS room with softer chairs, but that can get ironed out down the road.

Mikerowaved wrote:Yes, there will be (at least) one assistant in the chapel and one in the Primary room for each ward building.

Last I tried, you can put the same assistant, including yourself, for every broadcast location. I did that one time in setting up a test broadcast where the receiving participants had not been identified.

I believe the information is important and would be used during an actual webcast if there were catastrophic problems at a receiving site. So it is better if correct names are used. But the key is that everyone click on the correct URL for their receiving location. It can really get confusing if someone trips up that one.

lajackson wrote:Last I tried, you can put the same assistant, including yourself, for every broadcast location. I did that one time in setting up a test broadcast where the receiving participants had not been identified.

Yes you can, and that's fine for testing, but for a live webcast wouldn't the unnamed assistants need my LDS Account credentials to select a receive site?

Mikerowaved wrote:Yes you can, and that's fine for testing, but for a live webcast wouldn't the unnamed assistants need my LDS Account credentials to select a receive site?

I don't think so. They do need to sign in with their LDS Account, but they can go to the event page and (we have had it happen) click on any of the available links successfully.

And for one actual conference broadcast, a receiving unit said they could not connect to their URL, so I had someone else at the stake center do it, successfully. We then dropped the URL, and I walked the receiving unit assistant through the copy/paste function (he had tried to type in the URL, which was likely the problem). He successfully received the broadcast.

On several occasions, I have also signed into various available URLs after the conference had concluded and the receiving unit had dropped off the webcast.

Because there is a great possibility for mischief, I have emphasized to assistants that they select the correct link, and to the stake presidency that they select the correct individuals for the calling.

On the other hand, I do not wish to have it locked down too tightly. We have many occasions where a stand-in is running the receiving webcast due to on-call work, military deployment, and a host of other reasons. We appreciate the flexibility. And in the event of a total crisis or miscommunication, the event code is still available for recovery.

One more way to consider is using the event code. A member of the stake would just have to login to the system and in the home page use the event code to get the event. Using this way would make that particular receive location be considered a non-configured location under the person who logged in and logs wouldn't be collected, but the event would be viewable.

I can't find the post now, but I thought someone mentioned setting up a relay such that only one stream needed to come across the ISP, but it could be broadcasted to multiple devices in the meetinghouse. That sounds really useful in some situations.

russellhltn wrote:I can't find the post now, but I thought someone mentioned setting up a relay such that only one stream needed to come across the ISP, but it could be broadcasted to multiple devices in the meetinghouse. That sounds really useful in some situations.

This post?

danpass wrote:

russellhltn wrote:I can't find the post now, but I thought someone mentioned setting up a relay such that only one stream needed to come across the ISP, but it could be broadcasted to multiple devices in the meetinghouse. That sounds really useful in some situations.

This post?

Only if I'm remembering it wrong. I thought it was something that worked on the IP stream itself.