Video Conferencing

Our stake is investigating the possibility of setting up video conferencing equipment to establish two way conversations with our far flung wards and branches.

Our STS has been looking at the various information available on the church web site but has not come up with any definitive answers yet. We know that there are units out there that have set up (or are in the process of setting up) such systems.

Is there anyone with a success story to share, that could save us "reinventing the wheel"?

Thanks for your time.

Have you looked at the church-provided solutions? It was unclear whether you were talking about leader conferencing or general member meeting conferences.

If you are able to wait a few months, there will be many more supported options for you to choose from. As of right now, you can purchase approved video conferencing hardware from LDS Catalog. You must log in as a stake unit. Then, under unit administration, communications technologies, you will see the currently available hardware selections.

We are conducting a pilot https://tech.lds.org/wiki/index.php/Per ... pilot_test with a software solution that will work for various kinds of meetings. It has been used from chapel to chapel for some meetings and can have up to 20 different connections in a standard meeting.

If you can document what kinds of meetings you'd like to hold, it will help us validate this test. Thanks
Shanna (I am the product manager for video conferencing for the church)

Hi Oregonmatt and Sgerrard,

Thanks for your replies.

First, yes we have perused the church-provided solutions, without coming up with a definite game plan - although it pointed us in the right direction. It would appear that Oovo will fill at least part of our needs at the moment.

Shanna, your pilot project sounds interesting. Our situation is: broadband Internet connection in each of our buildings (8); typically one clerk computer and one FHC computer in each building, plus the stake clerk computer in the stake center. These are old computers with Celeron processors and 768 Mb of RAM on board. (They are due for replacement but the FM Group isn't doing any replacements due to budget restraints, but I digress)

We would like to be able to connect at least 2 of our units to the stake center for video conferencing, initially so they could participate in a High Council meeting or fireside or priesthood training session. We would like to be able to expand to cover full auxiliary training sessions but that would involve 11-12 separate sessions.

At this point, we feel we could accomodate a 3 way conversation on Oovo(stake center plus 2 units) but are unsure of what type of camera/mike setup we would need. There are probably other factors that we should be aware of but don't know enough to ask about. Hence my post.

Would it be possible to receive a summary of your pilot once it is completed?

Thanks very much.

I will definitely be posting results on this site when we are ready to open this up. Standard web cameras are fine. Below are the ones we have tested and liked as well as headsets and USB speakerphones. Yours is one of the use cases we are trying to create a solution for. It might not be a major issue in your area, but in some, just getting to the local meetinghouse is also a challenge, so our solution is also available when you are at home or elsewhere as long as you have equipment and high speed Internet. I've had video conferences with a few whose Internet was over satellite, and while it still worked, there was a significant delay.

Mfr Part no Description Usage US Price per unit
Logitech 960-000045 Portable Webcam C905 Web camera for use with notebook PCs $87.68
Logitech 960-000048 Webcam Pro 9000 Web camera for use with desktop PCs $87.68
Logitech 960-000254 QuickCam Vision Pro for Mac Web camera for use with desktop Macs $109.72
Logitech 981-000010 Clearchat Pro USB headset Headset w/microphone for PCs or Macs $38.49
ClearOne 910-159-001 Chat 50 USB Personal USB speakerphone $105.00
ClearOne 910-156-200 Chat 150 USB Group USB speakerphone $315.78

To order using credit card and special LDS Church pricing contact :
Global Technology Resources, Inc. (GTRI)
Janie Munroe
Office: 720-746-7991
Cell: 303-819-0883
Email: jmunroe@GTRI.com

Shanna

Perfect! Thanks very much for the information, Shanna. I look forward to seeing the results of your pilot.

Hi Shanna,

Dropped you a PM with some thoughts and requests, would be interested in the results of your pilot,

Mark Gilmour

Does anyone out there know if it is possible to use lower thirds with the web cast equipment? We have Stake Conference coming up and question came up about that and also adding hymns.

Video guru needs to post his webcast question on one of the webcast threads which are very active.

Our personal video conferencing test has gone very well. We've had great results even though most of the participants were not at all technical. Now we're waiting for leadership to make decisions about when to deploy and to whom.

We are also using this same software for interactive priesthood leadership conferences around the world. You may encounter that in the future. Sometimes we have used identical equipment as for personal use. Other times, when the leader has requested more options, we have included mixers, traveling microphones, and other improvements. We will post directions for all of these things in the wiki under the interactive communications category in the technology section.

I am a contractor with Church Translation ASL Division as well as a freelance interpreter. I have been engaged in an effort to provide video remote interpreting (VRI) to members and investigators who do not have access to live interpreters. I have been using various types of software to conduct interpreting services (ichat, aim, nefsis). Is the Church's video conferencing software available for beta testing???

sgerrard wrote:Video guru needs to post his webcast question on one of the webcast threads which are very active.

Our personal video conferencing test has gone very well. We've had great results even though most of the participants were not at all technical. Now we're waiting for leadership to make decisions about when to deploy and to whom.

We are also using this same software for interactive priesthood leadership conferences around the world. You may encounter that in the future. Sometimes we have used identical equipment as for personal use. Other times, when the leader has requested more options, we have included mixers, traveling microphones, and other improvements. We will post directions for all of these things in the wiki under the interactive communications category in the technology section.

Can you let us know where we are with this process? I would very much like to add this to the list of supported services our Stake provides leaders.

Anyone... just refreshing in case interested parties missed it