two way stake conference

Discussions around receiving, originating, and holding Church broadcasts and conferences in meetinghouses including schedules, setup, equipment, and support.
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rl_albright
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Joined: Sun Apr 28, 2013 11:54 pm
Location: Lakewood, WA

two way stake conference

#1

Post by rl_albright »

So we have been doing quite a few stake conference broadcasts and they have been working well. However I had the question formulated to me by one of our remote branches (that has to take a ferry to us to come to conference, and is unable to make the early morning priesthood session due to the ferry schedule, our stake does the priesthood session at 7am.) The branch leadership would like the ability to have 2-way participation in these meeting. While use of the Teradek unit is great and I love the webcasting software. (We also do all of our video processing through wirecast). I am not sure how best to implement a 2-way video stream from this remote branch. Our system does have an HDMI matrix switcher that I installed, and I can likely import HDMI sources into and out of a laptop. But will the PVC software work well in this scenario? Has anyone else had this issue? (I can't be the only one.)

The case-in-point for this need came during this last weekend when I was last-minute (don't you LOVE those requests) that the branch had to report a rescue success story during the priesthood session. However, nobody told the STS about this before hand. They were given a pass for this time.

How would I implement this effectively. The remote branch only has a DSL line with 10Mbps down and 786Kbps up, so bandwidth is sparse.

Thank you very much.
Aczlan
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Location: Upstate, NY, USA

Re: two way stake conference

#2

Post by Aczlan »

Some have suggested using the Personal Video Conference software for that, the issue is having their sound and video show up at the transmitting end only when they are speaking.
What we have done for Q&A sessions is to have everyone (in the building or not) text their questions to a member of the Stake Presidency (I think they used a Google Voice number that they were watching on a tablet), who chose which ones to read out loud. Then a member of the panel (which had all of the Stake Auxiliaries and the other two members of the Stake Presidency) answered the question.
The problem with having them (for example) call in is that unless it is setup ahead of time with a phone patch setup, the broadcast delay will mess things up for a Q&A type session.

Aaron Z
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rl_albright
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Joined: Sun Apr 28, 2013 11:54 pm
Location: Lakewood, WA

Re: two way stake conference

#3

Post by rl_albright »

Q&A panels are always difficult to pull off with remote participants, and personally I don't find them very engaging. (But that is my personal opinion.) My situation was when someone was reporting on something (an assigned time period), I guess we would have to set up PVC, that maybe the only way to really do it.

I am thinking with my equipment, at the broadcast location, at the AV gear, I would hook a USB 3.0 HDMI capture card to a laptop running PVC that capture card would take the direct output of the wirecast feed and that would be the input into PVC, output, would be HDMI off of the laptop into the Video processing computer. I would then see the other person's camera and could inject that directly into the stream.

At the remote site, I would have a laptop, with TV and camera and boundary microphone (because I happen to have a USB version). The TV would be facing the branch, the camera would be facing their pulpit.

For Q&A types I would have to have a signaler in the chapel to let the presiding brethren know when the remote site had something to say. Then I would change the necessary connections so that the congregation could see and hear them.

This is all in theory right now, but if I got it working, this would be a great tool.
harddrive
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Re: two way stake conference

#4

Post by harddrive »

That seems like a lot of work, because PVC is a video conferencing. You shouldn't have to use wirecasr at all. Have both computer get into PVC and let it handle everything.
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