Tech Forum

Hi everyone,

I've been asked to help troubleshoot some video latency issues with one of the stakes in my area. They've reported that remote meetinghouses experience degraded video and sometimes no video at all during broadcast meetings like Stake Conference.

My troubleshooting at this point has been limited to gathering information. Most of the meetinghouses seem to have sufficient download speeds. They have disabled the wireless network when the latency occurs.

The upload speed at the stake center hosting the meeting is about .23 Mbps (yes, that's a decimal in front of the 23... )

Is there a minimum recommended upload speed for things like this? I work in IT for a living, but am unfamiliar with the church's networks and technologies used for streaming.

Thanks in advance!

Mark

mjhufford wrote:They have disabled the wireless network when the latency occurs.

Hopefully they've disabled the wireless before the broadcast and not after the problem has occurred.

mjhufford wrote:They have disabled the wireless network when the latency occurs.

The upload speed at the stake center hosting the meeting is about .23 Mbps (yes, that's a decimal in front of the 23... )

I don't know the answer, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised but that's the problem. Also, have you disabled the wireless in the stake center? With that low a bandwidth, the last thing you need is someone to post a photo to Facebook.

There are 2 common ways of streaming a webcast and the BW requirements for each depend on the "quality" selection used. The recommended available BW for uploading is 2x the streaming bitrate and 1.5x for downloading. These are broken down as follows:

Using the Meetinghouse Webcast software:
High Definition = 1.6M bitrate. Min BW needed: 3.6M up, 2.7M down
High = 850K bitrate. Min BW needed: 1.7M up, 1.3M down
Medium = 448K bitrate. Min BW needed: 896K up, 672K down
Low = 224K bitrate. Min BW needed: 448K up, 336K down
Minimum = 142K bitrate. Min BW needed: 284K up, 213K down


Using the Webcast Communicator box:
High = 300K bitrate. Min BW needed: 600K up, 450K down
Medium = 250K bitrate. Min BW needed: 500K up, 375K down
Low = 200K bitrate. Min BW needed: 400K up, 300K down
(There are some higher settings in an advanced menu, but the above should suffice.)

Looks like unless they are using the Meetinghouse Webcast software at the "Minimum" setting (very blotchy and not pleasing to watch, BTW) they are going to have all kinds of problems. Even that setting is marginal. Personally, I wouldn't try to stream any kind of video with that low of an upload speed. You're just begging for problems.

Thanks for the feedback, guys. That's kind of what I was thinking too. I believe the wireless was disabled in all locations.

The stake center is in a relatively new location, so there isn't much infrastructure support for high speed internet.

Maybe it's time to call Google and see when they'll have fiber there.

mjhufford wrote:Maybe it's time to call Google and see when they'll have fiber there.

If nothing else, keep checking on your options. Maybe cable will come to the area, or the phone company will put some equipment closer to you.