Stake Conference Streaming

I am a brand new STS and this will be my first time broadcasting stake conference. What is the best way to broadcast to members homes? So far the options seem to be, Zoom, Church Webcast, YouTube. We have been using zoom for our ward mtgs, but we are going to have at least 600 people watching.

So much depends on what's happening. Are you going to have any remote speakers, or will the entire conference be from the pulpit in the stake center?

If you have a remote participant, you'll have to use Zoom to produce the conference.

However, the 500 stream limit make Zoom unsuitable for distribution of a stake conference. You'll need to stream it to YouTube or Church Webcast. Both will work, and both have strengths and weaknesses.

We will be doing the entire thing from the Stake Center. No remote speakers

jbwelker wrote:We will be doing the entire thing from the Stake Center. No remote speakers

Zoom is too limiting. Your pick: YouTube or Church Webcast.

I think YouTube has a sharper picture and better deals with slow connections, however, once you start the stream, you can't resume it. If it dies, you have to start a new session and then send that link out to everyone.

Church Webcast tends to have a "mushy" picture, but you can send everyone to a fixed URL (for the stake) to find all the sessions.

russellhltn wrote: I think YouTube has a sharper picture and better deals with slow connections, however, once you start the stream, you can't resume it. If it dies, you have to start a new session and then send that link out to everyone .....

When you schedule the event in youtube studio, you can turn OFF the "AutoStop" feature, which means you can now restart/resume the stream any number of times without ending the event. The URL will not change until you press the button to end the event. If you leave the "AutoStop" feature ON, then you only have 1 minute to restart/resume the stream before YouTube ends the event for you!

CalS201 wrote:When you schedule the event in youtube studio, you can turn OFF the "AutoStop" feature, which means you can now restart/resume the stream any number of times without ending the event. The URL will not change until you press the button to end the event. If you leave the "AutoStop" feature ON, then you only have 1 minute to restart/resume the stream before YouTube ends the event for you!

Good to know. I'll pass this on to the guy who does YouTube streaming. That was one of his gripes with the system.

jbwelker wrote:I am a brand new STS and this will be my first time broadcasting stake conference. What is the best way to broadcast to members homes? So far the options seem to be, Zoom, Church Webcast, YouTube. We have been using zoom for our ward mtgs, but we are going to have at least 600 people watching.

A lot depends on the hardware you will be using. Will you be using a single wall-mounted camera or will other cameras be involved? Is the audio & video already routed to your satellite cabinet? Will you be using the stake Teradek VidiU encoder or some other means?

We recently used zoom so that the stake presidency, other speakers in the chapel and the area 70 connecting from another country had faces to look at rather than just talking into a camera.

All other members were joining from home.

You can lock down all the settings to stop any unintended interruptions. Spotlight the chapel or the area 70 as necessary and we set up TVs facing the stand so that the speakers and stake presidency could see up to 49 participants at a time.

Zoom was fed to youtube for overflow (+500 participants) purposes.

Seemed to work well and very stable for all sessions.

richarddanielwatts wrote:We recently used zoom so that the stake presidency, other speakers in the chapel and the area 70 connecting from another country had faces to look at rather than just talking into a camera.
...
Zoom was fed to youtube for overflow (+500 participants) purposes.

In that case, Zoom is required to put the conference together, but even then, it's inadequate to be the only distribution system for a stake conference.

For conferences originating only from the pulpit, Zoom seems like an unnecessary addition. I don't know what value it brings in that situation.

Technically zoom brings no value.

The value it brings is that we are not professional news anchors that are used to staring down the barrel of a camera when speaking. We are accustomed to speaking to other people.

Seeing other familiar faces on a screen in front of us brings a lot of comfort and eases the nerves of even the most confident member of the stake presidency.

But yes, if there was no area 70 remotely attending it probably would have just gone with the church webcast system instead.

The remote general authority is the only reason we used Zoom. We set it up nearly the same way, but had both a monitor aimed at the stand for the presidency and a large TV aimed at the chapel for the other participants. Those who prayed and spoke provided a nice small congretation for each speaker to see and were not asked to sit on the stand.

On Saturday the presiding authority conducted a full-up discussion with stake leaders via a Zoom meeting. On Sunday we sent the Spanish speakers (about 100) to the Zoom link and the rest of the members (about 1000) to the Church webcast system fed by a Zoom webinar.

The hardest part was getting the meetinghouse sound into the Zoom meeting and the Zoom meeting back into the chapel sound so that the stake president and the general authority could chat with each other in real time.

lajackson wrote:On Sunday we sent the Spanish speakers (about 100) to the Zoom link and the rest of the members (about 1000) to the Church webcast system fed by a Zoom webinar.

Since Zoom supports translation, that would be a reason to use it for a single pulpit-only stake conference.

russellhltn wrote:If you have a remote participant, you'll have to use Zoom to produce the conference.

Not necessarily. Checkout OBS Ninja. Playing around with it, I'm really impressed.

Mikerowaved wrote:Not necessarily. Checkout OBS Ninja. Playing around with it, I'm really impressed.

I'm sure there are alternatives, but given the limited toolset most STSs would know about, it's the only one.

Looks interesting, but it appears to be a private effort. I'm not sure if it will survive promotion here.

lajackson wrote:The remote general authority is the only reason we used Zoom. We set it up nearly the same way, but had both a monitor aimed at the stand for the presidency and a large TV aimed at the chapel for the other participants. Those who prayed and spoke provided a nice small congretation for each speaker to see and were not asked to sit on the stand.

On Saturday the presiding authority conducted a full-up discussion with stake leaders via a Zoom meeting. On Sunday we sent the Spanish speakers (about 100) to the Zoom link and the rest of the members (about 1000) to the Church webcast system fed by a Zoom webinar.

The hardest part was getting the meetinghouse sound into the Zoom meeting and the Zoom meeting back into the chapel sound so that the stake president and the general authority could chat with each other in real time.

Yes, we had some fun with the sound. We did also have TVs facing both ways for a small congregation exactly as you describe. Those praying and their families etc.

Feeding the sound out of the church PA into the laptop line in directly created a delay between the video and audio feeds.

We then routed the chapel PA into the mevo cam audio input, set the mevo up in webcam mode to the laptop which resolved the synchronisation issue.

We then fed the audio output from the laptop into the aux / line in to the chapel PA to bring everything full circle and get audio both ways.

When the laptop was charging it produced some hum/interference which wasn’t audible in the chapel but was to those at home so needed to add a suppression filter between the laptop audio out and the chapel audio aux in.

Worked a treat.

During our most recent Stake Conference, we broadcasted to 2 other ward buildings. There were about 1,000 people in the Stake Center where I was broadcasting to YouTube, and it was transmitted to the other 2 buildings. The wireless microphone was making clicking sounds and every 2-3 seconds it went quiet for 1/2 second. I think it was because I was using a KIMAFUN bluetooth wireless microphone (it cost $50 on Amazon) that was 50 feet from the pulpit. With a room full of people using their smartphones, I wonder if that was why my microphone was having problems.
I have 6 months to figure out how to make this work before our next Stake Conference. Does anyone have a recommendation to improve the sound?

kelsontl wrote: Thu May 23, 2024 10:22 amI have 6 months to figure out how to make this work before our next Stake Conference. Does anyone have a recommendation to improve the sound?

There are a number of posts about how to tap into the sound system. I'd look at doing that. However, most of the time, the feed is near the podium, so you'll have to run a line. Wireless always adds some risk of problems. Especially if you're running in the 2.4GHz band where Bluetooth and WiFi are.

russellhltn wrote: Thu May 23, 2024 12:28 pm There are a number of posts about how to tap into the sound system. I'd look at doing that. However, most of the time, the feed is near the podium, so you'll have to run a line. Wireless always adds some risk of problems. Especially if you're running in the 2.4GHz band where Bluetooth and WiFi are.

I'll second what russellhltn posted. Tapping into the chapel sound system and hard-wiring it back to your webcast PC will net you much better results than trying to capture it wirelessly.

Yeah, I know this is even later than the last few posts, but you could always put in a FIR asking for a record out line be run to your broadcast area if you are using a mixer that you need to bring it in to. We utilize NDI capable cameras so we feed the audio into the camera so that audio sync is correct.