First Webcast

[dpenrod75]

We will be casting our stake conference soon. I have all the equipment, ran all the tests and everything seems to be working well and with decent quality. We don't have the upload capability for HD, but the audio / video is still pretty decent. I have a crew who has been very helpful and are ready and trained for both the sending and receiving sites.

So with that said, am I missing anything? Has anyone been where I am now and then the day of said something to the sort of - "If only I would have done that, then this wouldn't be an issue right now..." kind of thing. Do I need a back up solution like Skype or something "just in case"? What would be a good back up plan I could fall back on to webcast a feed out if the church's servers fail to perform as expected?

[Mikerowaved]

If you are marginal on bandwidth, then I would strongly suggest disabling all other wired and wireless connections in both the sending and receiving buildings. Others (including myself) have experienced testing our webcast setup extensively during the prior weeks, only to have it fail on conference Sunday. While the above step won't guarantee success, it WILL help guard against a common problem that causes failure.

[dpenrod75]

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll definitely do that then.

[russellhltn]

Make sure you're not exceeding the bandwidth of your slowest meetinghouse. The church servers will NOT adjust the bitstream for what each site can handle.

I'd also look at how you're handling sound for the hymns and musical numbers. You'll probably need extra mics that will be turned on for just that.

[dpenrod75]

Good thoughts. I should be good on both receiving sites (Crossing my fingers). Their download speeds are about 2 to 3 times faster than my upload speeds.

Luckily we are having no special musical number during the Sunday Session. That is the only session we are casting. We can all fit in the stake center for the Priesthood leadership and the Saturday evening session. Last time we all tried to fit in their on the Sunday Session, we broke the fire code, thus the reason we are webcasting now.

I am phantom mic'ing the organ into a separate audio channel via the mixer and only sending that channel out during music. I figure the receiving sites only need to hear the organ during a song anyway. They don't need to hear the folks at the stake center singing.

[Mikerowaved]

We can all fit in the stake center for the Priesthood leadership and the Saturday evening session.

What we've done is use one or both of those sessions as full dress rehearsals for the Sunday general session. Have your co-workers at the receive site(s) project the stream up onto a screen and feed the audio into the sound system, just as though the buildings were full of people.

Another tip, the best way I found to communicate between buildings during a broadcast was via text messaging. Set your phone to vibrate so it won't disturb those around you.

[dpenrod75]

thanks, great advice.

[dpenrod75]

Just wanted to report that all went well. We ended up having a total of 3 receive sites and they all received well. Now I need a vacation.