Viewing Church broadcasts live over the Internet

During this April, 2011 General Conference, local units are invited to participate in a pilot for viewing General Conference live over the Internet. This thread is for questions, comments, etc. from pilot participants and other interested community members.

starkjs wrote:During this April, 2011 General Conference, local units are invited to participate in a pilot for viewing General Conference live over the Internet. This thread is for questions, comments, etc. from pilot participants and other interested community members.

I tested our internet connection using the broadcast over the Internet for a test and then one year our satellite dish went down and so I was able to show the 4 session at my meeting house using my laptop and the Internet. It worked great. The only draw back was that we could only see the general session and not the Priesthood session. Although, I understand that the Priesthood session is actually webcast and the bishop has to call in to get the URL.

Also are you looking for stakes that want to participate? If so, I think I can recommend that the Suitland Maryland Stake would be willing to participate. We are looking to do webcasting in June, so it would be a good test anyway.

Thanks for letting me know and when I get the information, I will pass the idea to my stake president.

I hope the stream is (or will eventually be) HTML5 compatible. Being able to stream General Conference to an iPad2 and then use its new video mirroring to feed a VGA or HDTV projector, along with feeding the audio system from the iPad2's headphone jack, seems like compelling option. It remains to be seen whether the composite AV cable will support the iPad2's video mirroring.

@Harddrive, This is great information. We would love to have your stake participate in the pilot test. Any interested location can send an e-mail to starkjs@ldschurch.org in order to sign up. Please include the following:

·Contact Name
·Unit Name
·Unit Location
·E-Mail
·Phone Number
·Calling
·Has your congregation previously viewed conference live over the Internet?

For this conference, we are also streaming priesthood session using our adaptive bitrate technologies. @jbh001, Unfortunately, this is a flash-based stream, which excludes iOS devices.

starkjs wrote:Unfortunately, this is a flash-based stream, which excludes iOS devices.

Would this format be compatible with some of the Western Digital "live" model media players?

I've noticed that the recently archived streams of conference available at lds.org are higher in video definition than regular satellite broadcasts.

Does anyone know what resolution the test Internet feed of General Conference will be in?

michaelfish wrote:I've noticed that the recently archived streams of conference available at lds.org are higher in video definition than regular satellite broadcasts.

Does anyone know what resolution the test Internet feed of General Conference will be in?

I checked with my stake presidency and they have given us the ok to proceed to move forward. So I sent out a message to my people to see who will participate.

Now, one of the things that we are looking at doing in the near future is to connect our clerk computers to the closed circuit TV system. This way we could actually watch conference over the Internet because we will have everything in place. So we could, except for the priesthood session, do all sessions and other satellite broadcast when that is completed.

So it will be interesting to see what happens with this.

michaelfish wrote:I've noticed that the recently archived streams of conference available at lds.org are higher in video definition than regular satellite broadcasts.

Does anyone know what resolution the test Internet feed of General Conference will be in?

To clarify, there are two ways to view conference:

1. Archived files: These are downloadable files that are at one set resolution.

2. Streaming player: One can view conference "on-demand" (after conference has aired) or live using the streaming player. This player uses an adaptive bitrate technology that changes quality based upon your Internet connection. This streaming player supports up to 1080p, which is much higher than regular satellite broadcasts. The audio is also in stereo, but most chapels only have mono audio systems and can not take advantage of this.

For the test Internet feed of General Conference, the streaming video player will support up to 1080p.

Hope this information helps!

RussellHltn wrote:Would this format be compatible with some of the Western Digital "live" model media players?

Right now, the Western Digital TV Live media player is limited to streaming only specific content. Users are not able to use this device to view the live stream on conference.lds.org. Devices such as the Roku, Boxee, and GoogleTV are able to access the live stream. Right now, we recommend the Western Digital Media Player for those downloading conference files and viewing on a delayed basis and are exploring different options for viewing live streams.

harddrive wrote:I checked with my stake presidency and they have given us the ok to proceed to move forward. So I sent out a message to my people to see who will participate.

Now, one of the things that we are looking at doing in the near future is to connect our clerk computers to the closed circuit TV system. This way we could actually watch conference over the Internet because we will have everything in place. So we could, except for the priesthood session, do all sessions and other satellite broadcast when that is completed.

So it will be interesting to see what happens with this.

To clarify, priesthood IS available for streaming over the Internet for congregations that request access in advance. More information will be sent to pilot participants.

Hope this information helps!

starkjs wrote:the streaming video player will support up to 1080p.

Can you provide more information about the 'streaming video player'?

Is this a special piece of hardware or may we use a standard PC or laptop with a standard media player player (such as Windows Media Player)?

michaelfish wrote:Can you provide more information about the 'streaming video player'?

Is this a special piece of hardware or may we use a standard PC or laptop with a standard media player player (such as Windows Media Player)?

This is the live streaming player I am referring to: http://lds.org/general-conference/watch?lang=eng

It works with most standard PCs and laptops that are running Adobe Flash. Additional information may be found here: http://lds.org/broadcasts/how-to-watch?lang=eng

michaelfish wrote:I've noticed that the recently archived streams of conference available at lds.org are higher in video definition than regular satellite broadcasts.

Does anyone know what resolution the test Internet feed of General Conference will be in?

Like most things in life, it depends. The stream will be availble at up to 1080p. It is alos avaible at lower resolutions as well. so when your computer goes to pull down the stream, it will auto negotiate the resolution based on the speed of your connection. At any given time you may have 1080p, but if the internet connection slows, the next section(s) of video will be at a lower resolution, until your connection speed rebounds, and at that time, the video resolution will rebound as well.

Do you know what download speeds are requires to receive 480i, 720i and 1080p?

starkjs wrote:The audio is also in stereo, but most chapels only have mono audio systems and can not take advantage of this.

Since we only have about 40 or 50 attend General Conference broadcasts in our Stake Center, I plan on connecting the headphone output of the laptop to the stereo inputs of our electronic organ.

Not only will this allow the broadcast to be heard in stereo, the conference's organ can take advantage of the low frequency 15" woofers in the speaker's sound cabinets to produce the low and mid bass frequencies when the organ plays.

In addition, the high frequency horns will be able to product higher frequencies and harmonics of the choir and organ beyond the capabilities of our building's public address speakers.

michaelfish wrote:Since we only have about 40 or 50 attend General Conference broadcasts in our Stake Center, I plan on connecting the headphone output of the laptop to the stereo inputs of our electronic organ.

I did that once. The music was great, but the talks had a strong echo.

RussellHltn wrote:I did that once. The music was great, but the talks had a strong echo.

I wonder if you were getting anomolies in the sound due to phase-cancellation. Were your building speakers on?

I've experimented with the organ speakers and found that if the building sound is also on, there is a definite phase-cancellation in the sound as I walked from the front of the chapel to the back. Phase-cancellation can definitely be described as an echo in the sound.

I found with only the organ speakers going, sound was great (especially the choir) and I had no problems hearing all parts of the conference clearly.

No, the organ I was working with had a built-in reverb. I turned it down, but either it was still in play or because of the speaker placement it emphasized the highly reflective room acoustics. It made the spoken parts echoey.

Since I was connected to the organ and there was no connection from the organ to the main sound system, it wasn't phase cancellation.

RussellHltn wrote: Since I was connected to the organ and there was no connection from the organ to the main sound system, it wasn't phase cancellation.

The organs (in Stake Centers) is actually connected to the sound system. however the routing presets in the DSP, only route the ordan sound (in Mono) to the perimeter rooms, and the Cultural hall areas, it is not reproduced in the chapel area. That in mind if the cultural hall was oopen it could have infact been an echo coming bak from the cultural hall area.

StevePoulsen wrote:The organs (in Stake Centers) is actually connected to the sound system. however the routing presets in the DSP, only route the ordan sound (in Mono) to the perimeter rooms, and the Cultural hall areas, it is not reproduced in the chapel area. That in mind if the cultural hall was oopen it could have infact been an echo coming bak from the cultural hall area.

Thanks for the info. I don't think there's a organ feed in our case. And in the situation I was talking about, the overflow was not opened. As for the organ, it's not a standard organ due to the size of the chapel (or should I say, tabernacle). In our case, there's a knob labeled reverb or echo setting near the organ's line inputs, so I'd assume there's something behind that control.

But it does sound like feeding the organ might work well for standard setups.

Our Stake viewed the streamed broadcast of General Conference today (about 40 were there) and IT WAS GREAT! No problems what so ever. The picture appeared to be about 720i and the sound was incredible. The only thing that could be better would be a faster frame rate, but I understand what an incredible task this must have been for Jacob.

Koodos to Brother Stark!

When the speakers gave their talks, I output the sound to the building speakers, but when the choir sang I turned off the building speakers and output the sound through the organ speaker cabinets and also through a stereo Yamaha Stagepas 300 system hidden behind the white curtains on the sides of the choir loft. Every choir voice was crystal clear and the low, low bass notes of the organ sounded as if it was playing in our chapel.

I received several comments about how good the choir sounded and although the picture was fantastic, we had to turn on some lights to allow note taking, washing out the screen a bit.

Thanks! I hope others also have positive feedback.

This weekend I watched conference using mostly my computer. I also had another friend in my unit who also tested.

I didn't watch all of the morning session on Saturday, but I caught the last 1/2 hour of it. When I brought it up and it came right up and it was a great picture and no jitter. This was on a computer that was hardwired using a FIOS (fiber connection) at 15 megabits/second down and 5 Megabits/second up.

I then decided to test wireless for the afternoon session. I decided to use my laptop wirelessly. It worked good. The picture was excellent, but I noticed a few drop out and when the speaker spoke and move quickly it would drop out. Other then that it worked great.

We then tried the priesthood session and we had a bit of a problem. One thing that needs to happen with that is that the actual feed needs to be started much earlier than 5 minutes to go. This way we can make sure that the computer is working and things get in sync before the actual service and we can make sure things work. We had the Adobe Flash crash on us when we tried to change from laptop to the projector. So we couldn't get the people to view it. However, we did take the laptops to the foyer and we were able to view it on the wireless and it worked good. You could tell there were a few drops. There also were on a couple of computers for at one point that seemed to have a difficult time staying in sync. It would repeat a statement, but this was like once or twice. One computer seemed to have to catch up, but once it did it showed well.

On Sunday, I watched it over the Internet on my laptop that was hardwired to my router. It worked terrific. There were no drops that I could see. The sound was great and everything worked great and I had a steady 2.5 megabits/second. I thought that with everyone doing Sunday's morning session, but it worked terrific.

I had a friend who did the afternoon session and here is what he said, [font=&quot]I saw only a couple of blips, those could have been caused by almost anything. Other than that, it flowed smoothly and the quality was great.

The one that had issues, I have asked him to send me his write up. I'm waiting on that and will post it.

For me the overall effect of what we did and what it looked like, it was a successful pilot. I believe that this should move to the next stage. This I can saw is something that I see coming in the future. Great work and the server seemed to be handle the load. With my stake putting the clerk computers onto the closed circuit TV system, I can see us using them as the receivers and totally lose the satellite system.
[/font]

Not sure how I missed this post earlier, but this is a great capability. We experienced an added benefit during our last conference. We discovered at the start of the priesthood session that our closed-captioning was not working. (Our satellite receiver was brand new, and nobody noticed the issue during the general sessions.) We called SLC to get the streaming link for the ASL feed for the priesthood session and then set up viewing in a clerk's office.

Although he missed the first talk while we got things straightened out, the deaf brother was so excited to get the ASL feed, rather than the closed-captioning. For those who may not have seen it, the ASL feed shows an individual actually signing, with the video of the speaker up in the corner. This is much more preferable to reading the "ticker" in closed captioning.

We'll be working to make this the standard setup for our deaf members -- just not in a clerk's office. And we'll still need to provide closed captioning for the hearing impaired members who don't know ASL.

Just thought I'd add a note about how these technologies can truly bless the lives of members.

sgcurtis wrote:We discovered at the start of the priesthood session that our closed-captioning was not working. (Our satellite receiver was brand new, and nobody noticed the issue during the general sessions.) We called SLC to get the streaming link for the ASL feed for the priesthood session and then set up viewing in a clerk's office.

Sounds like you got bit by the bug in the Unity552 receivers. By default (meaning after a reboot), the unit will not pass though the Closed Captioning even though that's what's set in it's internal menus. You have to go into the menu and toggle it to display the captioning, wait a few seconds and then switch it back to "Pass Though". After working with one of their techs, the church is now aware of what codes they have to send to fix it from their end. (If the two codes are sent too quickly, it doesn't work.) So hopefully this won't be a problem going forward. (And hopefully a new firmware will fix that bug.)

sgcurtis wrote:the deaf brother was so excited to get the ASL feed, rather than the closed-captioning. For those who may not have seen it, the ASL feed shows an individual actually signing, with the video of the speaker up in the corner. This is much more preferable to reading the "ticker" in closed captioning.

Just a quick note, what's "preferable" depends on the individual. Generally, people who lose their hearing very early in life prefer ASL. Members who lose their hearing after their language skills have been developed prefer Captioning. Despite the use of "American" in it's name, ASL uses a different sentence structure making it more like a foreign language.

RussellHltn wrote:After working with one of their techs, the church is now aware of what codes they have to send to fix it from their end. (If the two codes are sent too quickly, it doesn't work.) So hopefully this won't be a problem going forward. (And hopefully a new firmware will fix that bug.)

Any idea when they found this out? We ran into this at General Conference and again in mid May for the Northeast Stake Conference broadcast. Both times it took at least 15 minutes to figure it out.
The first time they did it remotely, the second time, they had me do it through the interface, so I can now do it myself for future broadcasts.

Just a quick note, what's "preferable" depends on the individual. Generally, people who lose their hearing very early in life prefer ASL. Members who lose their hearing after their language skills have been developed prefer Captioning. Despite the use of "American" in it's name, ASL uses a different sentence structure making it more like a foreign language.

Good to know.
Does the ASL feed require a second receiver, or can that be run over the "normal" receiver?

Thanks

Aaron Z

Aczlan wrote:Any idea when they found this out? We ran into this at General Conference and again in mid May for the Northeast Stake Conference broadcast.

We worked it out just after the April conference. From your experience, maybe the lesson wasn't really learned.

Aczlan wrote:Does the ASL feed require a second receiver, or can that be run over the "normal" receiver?

ASL is a separate video feed. It requires a second receiver. Note that there's no Closed Captioning on the ASL feed (that I've been able to find).

RussellHltn wrote:We worked it out just after the April conference. From your experience, maybe the lesson wasn't really learned.

I was calling in during "off hours" (~9PM Eastern on the Thursday before General Conference and ~10:30AM on Sunday for Stake Conference), so it is possible that not everyone knows about the fix.

ASL is a separate video feed. It requires a second receiver. Note that there's no Closed Captioning on the ASL feed (that I've been able to find).

That is what I thought. I will mention it and see if they want to request it, or just keep going with Closed Captioning.

Thanks

Aaron Z

Thank you everyone for the feedback! We will be having another set of tests later this year. This time, we plan on using a dedicated hardware device. I look forward to keeping you all in the loop.

Cheers,
Jacob

starkjs wrote:Thank you everyone for the feedback! We will be having another set of tests later this year. This time, we plan on using a dedicated hardware device. I look forward to keeping you all in the loop.

Cheers,
Jacob

Jacob, I for one look forward to it. Again, I will ask you during the priesthood session to start the stream at least 15 minute before it is to begin. This way we can make sure that the computer we use will be ready and not miss any of it when there are 75 brethren in the room.

Thanks.

Thanks-- I believe we are looking into adding exactly that functionality.

Cheers,
Jacob

I apologize if this is the wrong place to ask, but will any internet testing of conference take place for the October 2011 conference?

We have a large Stake and usually have trouble getting all the brethren into the Stake Center during the Priesthood Session. It would be great to have them meet in the other ward buildings and view the broadcast on Saturday nights Priesthood Session. Is this something that will happen again?

Thanks for any info you might have.

According to this document:
http://lds.org/service/serving-in-the-c ... e?lang=eng

It will be broadcast over the internet - scroll about 3/4 of the way down, looking for the "Internet" heading.

Does anyone know what is required to view the "live secure broadcast" for the Priesthood session? Secure being the operative word here.

aprayzr wrote:According to this document:
http://lds.org/service/serving-in-the-c ... e?lang=eng

It will be broadcast over the internet - scroll about 3/4 of the way down, looking for the "Internet" heading.

Does anyone know what is required to view the "live secure broadcast" for the Priesthood session? Secure being the operative word here.

When I did it the last time in April. What was needed was a computer and then the URL for the priesthood session. If you don't have the URL and passcode, then we aren't able to get it. I got it about a week before the broadcast and I haven't seen anything yet myself.

I would like to know. I probably won't do it this year, or if I do, I will do it in another part of the building. I tried it in the chapel, but there was such a short time to get the system stable that it was basically useless. I suggested that they increase the time to 15 minutes so that we had a chance to get the computers in sync and get things stable before the actual broadcast.

Look forward to see if this is going to go again.

Relief Society and other General Conference sessions will be streamed in multiples languages at lds.org. To request information about viewing the secure priesthood session on the Internet in American Sign Language, English, French, Portuguese (Brazil), or Spanish, e mail streamingsupport@ldschurch.org. Please include your name, your calling, your stake name, the event you are requesting information for, and the languages you need. Information will be sent only to members of stake presidencies.

Cheers,
Jacob Stark

My family has viewed conference via the internet at home for several years now. This yearthe experience has been pretty bad. The Adobe Flash component has crashed again and again and again and again. This has been the case with firefox as well as with Google Chrome.

Thank you for the feedback. Would you mind providing some information about the computer you were using (what operating system, processor, etc.). Also, did you test on any additional machines?

... and right after posting this comment I found a page on lds.org telling me the problem will disappear if I disable hardware accelleration. I'll try that if it happens again...

Ah, great. Please let us know how it goes...

Watching on the LDS channel in English with a Roku box this afternoon. It keeps jumping back to a talk from the first session for 10-30 seconds and then resumes the live talk.

Anyone else seen this?

Aaron Z

Yes, we are seeing that one of the feeds is pulling from a previous cache. Our engineers are currently looking into this.

Thanks. We switched to the BYU channel and so far it is stable.

Aaron Z

Other than it stopping to buffer frequently.

Is the LDS channel now down? Not getting anything on it.

Aaron Z

This afternoon it often jumped back and repeated a few seconds, in some cases several times in a row.

Roku was unusable for most of the 2nd half of the afternoon session today.
20 mins of the "loading" screen and it came back just as President Monson said "amen".
On a funny note, Mom said "go turn off the carrots" and then President Monson came on and said "Amen"
Now listening to the closing song.

Aaron Z

FWIW - We watched the conference at home with no problem.

Using the lds.org link http://lds.org/general-conference/watch?lang=eng
Laptop - HDMI out - TV

The picture quality was amazing and at 1080P.

Thanks for the feedback!