Church broadcasts using MEVO

The attached articles describe how to use MEVO camera to broadcast Sacrament Meetings using any RTMP service (ChurchWebcast, YouTube Live, etc). I hope this is helpful to those who are looking at the MEVO system as a solution for broadcasting Sacrament Meetings.

I just wanted to +1 on using Mevo for easily broadcasting Sacrament meetings. It is a relatively inexpensive solution that's easy for a non-technical user to be trained to set up and turn on/off. The pinch to zoom is also really effectively done. We plan to charge ours between meetings so they don't even have to run a power cable to the camera.

Now if we could just get traffic prioritization settings for TM so we could give priority to the camera...

sammythesm wrote:We plan to charge ours between meetings so they don't even have to run a power cable to the camera.

If you run a network cable to the camera and use the adapter from Mevo, you can power it from the network. Also, with the network connection, you can turn off the WiFi. Although, unless the unit has it's on AP, that would make it hard to control.

I used a Mevo camera to stream a funeral last week and it worked perfectly. Super easy. We setup a live stream through YouTube live. For Sunday I'm planning on streaming our meeting with it and on YouTube put the settings to not make the stream available when it was over and not enable DVR and also remember to mark auto start stream when it receives the signal. If you use YouTube, another thing you can do is put your channel id in the URL as follows: https://www.youtube.com/embed/live_stre ... RCHANNELID and that link should work every week for your meetings. You can find your channel id by going to studio.youtube.com and it's the number at the end of that URL after you are signed into your account. You will need to make the live stream public for that link to work each week, but I think it's a great solution to not having to send a new link to the members each week. I bought a cheap $17 ethernet to USB C adapter and plugged into our Ethernet and it worked great. Don't buy the $150 adapter Mevo has on their site. I've typed up detailed instructions for using a Mevo camera for this purpose if anyone would like it.

akrogers wrote:I bought a cheap $17 ethernet to USB C adapter and plugged into our Ethernet and it worked great. Don't buy the $150 adapter Mevo has on their site.

Can your $17 adapter power the Mevo via PoE? Unless you have a power plug handy, that seems like a useful feature.

Mevo.com's support documentation reports that the only TRUE PoE adapter that is compatible with the Mevo Start is their own. Of which out stake got a Mevo Start + adapter for each building.

https://help.mevo.com/hc/en-us/articles ... t-Adapters

However, the same support page reports two adapters that can inject power into the USB-C (not over Ethernet).

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LXFHGM5
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PPGWQ15/

I just tested these two adapters along side the Mevo PoE adapter and they both worked just like the Mevo one when powered by the cable. The second one is my favorite because of it's small size.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PPGWQ15/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B086SV2FK4/

The only reasons I can see for getting the Mevo adapter: You have PoE already available or you prefer the cleaner look with the extended cable going from the camera to the PoE adapter.

CarrTC wrote:The only reasons I can see for getting the Mevo adapter: You have PoE already available

I'm confused. I thought you said it worked just like the Mevo one.

Mevo's adapter has two modes...

* True PoE where power is delivered from a PoE injector, often a network switch that supports such. In this mode, only the Ethernet cable is connected as data and power go over it. From Mevo's documentation, only this adapter is supported for true PoE.

* USB-C power passthrough. In this mode, both Ethernet cable and USB-C power is plugged into the adapter. Data over Ethernet, power over USB-C. This mode is NOT exclusive to the Mevo adapter and there are several adapters on the market that are available.

@CarrTC is commenting on the 2nd mode.

Ah, got it. Many of the switches provided by the church have PoE and assuming you want to avoid WiFi, running a cable is necessary.

Depending on where the Mevo will be located, power may or may not be available. Depending on how it's handled, running power could create a fire hazard. (Such as running an extension cord under a piece of carpet to avoid a trip hazard.)

While cameras close or attached to the podium are functional, I think a more natural picture is obtained from about the second row were running power would be problematic.

But yes, it depends on the planned usage.

Sorry if my post was a bit confusing. We were trying to avoid the extra cost of the Mevo PoE adapter, but that may not be reasonable if you want reliable power and network to the camera.

In further testing of the USB-C powered devices, they only provided power to charge the camera about 20-50% of the time (depending of the adapter). I even tried several different power sources and cables including a QuickCharge 2.0 charger. The other adapters provided network every time, just not power. The Mevo PoE adapter worked reliably every time for both power and network.

I'm all for saving money as long as needed functionality or reliability isn't sacrificed.

We were able to get an ethernet into the Mevo using a USB-C to Ethernet adapter. Of course, then we're relying on how on the battery charge on the Mevo lasts (it says 6 hours). It's a lot less expensive than the Mevo POE adapter. We'll see how it goes.

If you don’t need audio via USB-C, an affordable adapter is C2G USB-C to Ethernet Adapter with Power Delivery, Black - 29749 https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07B7P2JY5/ ... EFb9EKRRCT

Our stake did its first webcasts today. All units except one used Mevos (in one unit someone with professional video equipment volunteered to do its ward's broadcast). Overall, we were pretty happy with the quality and people in various units were able to use it.

For those that have used the mevo, where did you have the camera located? Is the zoom good enough to be able to get good quality from say the second or third row of pews if on a tripod? Are you running audio from the aux-out into the camera and if so are you just using a long stereo mini cable or are you relying on the built in cameras and how is that?

Mevo Start on front row at all 5 chapels mounted on mic stands.

2 use AUX output directly to back off Start. Long cable wrapped together USB power cable.

3 use Shure X2U XLR to USB adapter, along with TripLite USB C adapter with PD, Ethernet, and USB A.

mikevandre wrote:For those that have used the mevo, where did you have the camera located?

First or second row with camera level to speaker's chest/head area. This height should make people appear "normal" and make the lines in back wall appear straight up and down.

mikevandre wrote:Is the zoom good enough to be able to get good quality from say the second or third row of pews if on a tripod?

The picture will be good quality but just a bit less resolution. Whether you can "see" a difference is a function of how close you are sitting to the screen & the size of the screen.

mikevandre wrote:Are you running audio from the aux-out into the camera and if so are you just using a long stereo mini cable or are you relying on the built in cameras and how is that?

If you want bad audio then use the builtin mic array.
If you want excellent audio then run a $15 50 foot mini stereo trs to trs cable to the chapel record out jack.
See the attachment in this post for more details viewtopic.php?f=140&t=37670.

If you're streaming from Mevo to You Tube, you probably received a message that things are changing with YouTube support and you must have at least 1,000 subscribers to stream from Mevo to YouTube starting on December 1, 2020.
Someone in our stake did some research and figured we could use restream.io and stream to YouTube through that. I also noticed that the church is adding static RTMP URLs and stream names on December 1, so that may be an attractive option.

For clarity, Mevo can still stream to YouTube after December 1st. It is only the convenient event selection and PUBLISH integration that will no longer work.

You can still use the manual RTMP method. Setting YouTube event to automatically go live can help here, as well.

Given the problems our ward had been having using our Mevo Start camera with the Church's webcast system, we decided recently to switch to an alternative provider. This was before the Church's Zoom license announcement, but now is even more relevant. We used Zoom for our webcast (using a regular business license, not the new webinar one yet) for the first time yesterday and so have a few notes that may help others.

Currently the Mevo cameras don't support directly streaming to Zoom, so an external device (e.g. laptop) is necessary. No drivers are required for Mac, Windows, or Linux (we verified both Windows and Linux this past weekend) when using wired mode (requires a USB-C to USB-A adapter if your device doesn't support USB-C). It might also work on Android or iOS (just has to support UVC - the USB Video Class protocol), although from Googling around it seems Android 10+ might no longer support this feature.

Using Mevo as a webcam disables regular direct streaming from the camera, and so it is not enabled by default. Follow these instructions to enable "Wired webcam mode (beta)" from your Mevo mobile app: https://help.mevo.com/hc/en-us/articles ... Mode-Beta- . This is also important to note in case different units are sharing a camera -- If so and you're having trouble starting a direct stream from the camera, make sure to check that this toggle is disabled.

Then all you have to do is select "mevo-xxxxx" from the (^) dropdown next to the "Start video" or "Stop video" button in Zoom to use the Mevo just like an external webcam. You might need to do the same to get audio from the camera as well.

The Zoom host doesn't have to be the same person running the camera. They can be someone at home or elsewhere in the building watching via Zoom to make sure there are no problems.

The only way to stop the stream from the Mevo mobile app going this route is to turn off Wired webcam mode in the app. We didn't test whether Zoom would fall back to the laptop's built-in camera when doing this, though, so it's probably best to first have the Zoom host end the event altogether when it's time for the Sacrament.

Given all that, our broadcast went very smoothly, with double the viewers over when we used the Church's system.

akrogers wrote:I used a Mevo camera to stream a funeral last week and it worked perfectly. Super easy. We setup a live stream through YouTube live. For Sunday I'm planning on streaming our meeting with it and on YouTube put the settings to not make the stream available when it was over and not enable DVR and also remember to mark auto start stream when it receives the signal. If you use YouTube, another thing you can do is put your channel id in the URL as follows: https://www.youtube.com/embed/live_stre ... RCHANNELID and that link should work every week for your meetings. You can find your channel id by going to studio.youtube.com and it's the number at the end of that URL after you are signed into your account. You will need to make the live stream public for that link to work each week, but I think it's a great solution to not having to send a new link to the members each week. I bought a cheap $17 ethernet to USB C adapter and plugged into our Ethernet and it worked great. Don't buy the $150 adapter Mevo has on their site. I've typed up detailed instructions for using a Mevo camera for this purpose if anyone would like it.

Any tips for getting the mevo to reliably connect to ethernet before I purchase the official mevo adapter?

Is there a specific order of connecting the device that needs to be followed?

I have a Dell USB C Ethernet dongle which does work with the mevo but last Sunday it just wasn't connecting.

We've been using the mevo since August last year for streaming sacrament meeting and it has been awesome but FM replaced our AP with a new Meraki MR33 and now the chapel seems to be a bit of a dead-zone for wi-fi.

Last Sunday I had to use my 4G LTE from my phone hotspot as a last minute fix.

A reboot has fixed every time when USB Ethernet isn't recognized. It has happened a few times to us in our stake. Even using the Mevo Ethernet adapter.

bido101 wrote:A reboot has fixed every time when USB Ethernet isn't recognized. It has happened a few times to us in our stake. Even using the Mevo Ethernet adapter.

Thanks. Will try that if I have an issue this coming Sunday.

I.T support 101 huh? Turn it off and on!