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My stake president landed a bombshell on me a couple of Sundays ago (that I learned later came from the area authority). He stated, beginning the following Sunday, all the wards will be putting the sacrament ordinance back in its usual timeslot in the meeting; right after ward or stake business and before the first speaker. Like many of you, after returning to church following the first Covid surge, the sacrament was moved to the end, following the closing prayer. I thought about the request for a while, wondering how I could pull it off, with 1 Nephi 3:7 ringing in my head.
Our stake center was upgraded with the latest A/V equipment and uses the HD wall-mounted camera with the Teradek VidiU encoder. I'll focus on pausing that in another topic. The two ward buildings use a cellphone in a cradle with Larix Broadcaster. The chapel audio is fed to the cellphone using a 4-section 3.5mm cable from a custom attenuator box I built. Each ward streams to their own live event on the stake's YouTube channel. Members at home start there, then select the worship service they wish to watch.
My goal in setting up the YT channel was to try and make it "Larix friendly". In the YT Live settings I turned on Enable auto-start, Enable auto-stop, and turned off any possible viewer interaction to avoid unwanted comments from bad actors. The auto-start feature allows the webcast to go live once a valid stream is detected. The auto-stop will end the webcast if it doesn't see a stream for 60 seconds. I also have Unlist live replay once stream ends enabled, to take the webcast from "Public" to "Unlisted" once it ends. This also removes that ward's link from the stake's channel. This is all done automatically and works very well. Unfortunately, it doesn't provide for stopping a webcast for the sacrament in the middle of a meeting.
Looking deeper into Larix, I found there's a Pause feature that can put up a static screen (Larix calls them "overlays") all while muting the audio. Perfect! I put together a rather simple image and uploaded it to my personal website. (Larix can use either a URL or a picture in the phone's memory. I chose the former, as it's easier for me to control.) You are welcome to download it, or simply link to it using the following URL (it will stay there for many years to come):
https://grovesnet.org/pics/bread-and-water.jpg
I made it 1280x720 pixels as our webcasts are all in 720p. Here are the step-by-step Larix changes for Android devices:
Go to Settings --> Overlays -->
Show layers on preview --> OFF
Enable standby mode --> OFF (Yes, this is correct. For Larix, “standby” is different than “pause”.)
Scroll down to New Layer --> (For iOS, hit the + in the upper-right corner.)
Name --> Sacrament
URL --> https://grovesnet.org/pics/bread-and-water.jpg
Active --> OFF (default)
Scale --> Move slider up to 100%
Position --> Center (default)
Z Order --> 4 (default)
--> SAVE and go back one screen to Overlays
Do NOT enable any layers on this screen!
Scroll to the bottom and click on --> Check layers images availability
If any do not say “Success”, go into “Manage Layers” and check for any typos.
When all is good, go to Pause overlays --> Check the box for “Sacrament”
Exit Setup
If all goes well, you should be able to start a stream, then press and hold the red square for 1 second to pause it. The phone’s screen should go dark with the red square changed to a “pause” icon. A simple tap on the pause icon will get the stream going again. If the stream is accidentally shut off trying to pause it (indicated by the red square changing to a white circle and the screen not going dark), simply tap the white circle to restart it, then do the long press until the screen goes dark.
Last Sunday was the first week we put this into play, and with minimal training, the brethren conducting had no issues pausing the webcast for the sacrament and restarting it again.
Our stake center was upgraded with the latest A/V equipment and uses the HD wall-mounted camera with the Teradek VidiU encoder. I'll focus on pausing that in another topic. The two ward buildings use a cellphone in a cradle with Larix Broadcaster. The chapel audio is fed to the cellphone using a 4-section 3.5mm cable from a custom attenuator box I built. Each ward streams to their own live event on the stake's YouTube channel. Members at home start there, then select the worship service they wish to watch.
My goal in setting up the YT channel was to try and make it "Larix friendly". In the YT Live settings I turned on Enable auto-start, Enable auto-stop, and turned off any possible viewer interaction to avoid unwanted comments from bad actors. The auto-start feature allows the webcast to go live once a valid stream is detected. The auto-stop will end the webcast if it doesn't see a stream for 60 seconds. I also have Unlist live replay once stream ends enabled, to take the webcast from "Public" to "Unlisted" once it ends. This also removes that ward's link from the stake's channel. This is all done automatically and works very well. Unfortunately, it doesn't provide for stopping a webcast for the sacrament in the middle of a meeting.
Looking deeper into Larix, I found there's a Pause feature that can put up a static screen (Larix calls them "overlays") all while muting the audio. Perfect! I put together a rather simple image and uploaded it to my personal website. (Larix can use either a URL or a picture in the phone's memory. I chose the former, as it's easier for me to control.) You are welcome to download it, or simply link to it using the following URL (it will stay there for many years to come):
https://grovesnet.org/pics/bread-and-water.jpg
I made it 1280x720 pixels as our webcasts are all in 720p. Here are the step-by-step Larix changes for Android devices:
Go to Settings --> Overlays -->
Show layers on preview --> OFF
Enable standby mode --> OFF (Yes, this is correct. For Larix, “standby” is different than “pause”.)
Scroll down to New Layer --> (For iOS, hit the + in the upper-right corner.)
Name --> Sacrament
URL --> https://grovesnet.org/pics/bread-and-water.jpg
Active --> OFF (default)
Scale --> Move slider up to 100%
Position --> Center (default)
Z Order --> 4 (default)
--> SAVE and go back one screen to Overlays
Do NOT enable any layers on this screen!
Scroll to the bottom and click on --> Check layers images availability
If any do not say “Success”, go into “Manage Layers” and check for any typos.
When all is good, go to Pause overlays --> Check the box for “Sacrament”
Exit Setup
If all goes well, you should be able to start a stream, then press and hold the red square for 1 second to pause it. The phone’s screen should go dark with the red square changed to a “pause” icon. A simple tap on the pause icon will get the stream going again. If the stream is accidentally shut off trying to pause it (indicated by the red square changing to a white circle and the screen not going dark), simply tap the white circle to restart it, then do the long press until the screen goes dark.
Last Sunday was the first week we put this into play, and with minimal training, the brethren conducting had no issues pausing the webcast for the sacrament and restarting it again.
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