Meetinghouse Webcast

Using the Church Webcasting System, YouTube, etc. Including cameras and mixers.
russellhltn
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#31

Post by russellhltn »

rmrichesjr wrote:There may have also been some audio level issues (sounded like analog clipping) ahead of the digitizer.
That may be due to the difference in line level between pro equipment and consumer equipment.

Pro stuff tends to run 0 to +4 dBu and consumer stuff runs about -10 dBV. So the Pro stuff is cranking out close to +9VU when compared to consumer stuff. It might not be noticeable in a casual test, but it will turn up when things get cranking. The input stage gets overloaded.

My solution has been to build an attenuator cable.

Image

Using 1/8W resistors, I built it into an RCA plug. All the parts can be obtained from a small electronics store like Radio Shack.

Hmmmm, for some reason the math isn't working out. I think when I went though it before, I thought the consumer stuff was referenced to 1V peak to peak. I do know the cable solved my problem of the satellite receiver distorting the audio in the VCRs.

But, if you use a 470Ώ instead of the 2.2K, then the Math looks better. But you might want to double-check those values.
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WE8U-p40
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#32

Post by WE8U-p40 »

My Stake Presidency seems a little confused on how the system may work. I spoke with my President a little about Webcast at church a little. We will be having a General Authority coming in October for our conference. Right now we are using Slingbox for our needs. They are under the impression I think, that we only borrow the equipment and then send it back to Church HQ. Is this the reality? Or do we own the Webcast Equipment forever?

Thank You

Adam Tipton
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mkmurray
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#33

Post by mkmurray »

WE8U wrote:They are under the impression I think, that we only borrow the equipment and then send it back to Church HQ. Is this the reality? Or do we own the Webcast Equipment forever?
Your stake buys it and keeps it. The best part about the solution is that the Church is promising to provide technical support.
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WE8U-p40
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#34

Post by WE8U-p40 »

Great News!
OK, thanks for the answer so quickly.
We have several projects with other Stakes and since I am the new guy, I am wondering if we are going to use this technology. Pretty exciting stuff.

Thanks.
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SheffieldTR
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#35

Post by SheffieldTR »

WE8U wrote:My Stake Presidency seems a little confused on how the system may work. I spoke with my President a little about Webcast at church a little. We will be having a General Authority coming in October for our conference. Right now we are using Slingbox for our needs. They are under the impression I think, that we only borrow the equipment and then send it back to Church HQ. Is this the reality? Or do we own the Webcast Equipment forever?

Thank You

Adam Tipton

We do have a small number of kits, you can count them on one hand, that are available to borrow to support the Brethren when they visit a stake for conference. It is not designed as a try before you buy program.
There have been times when stakes have been able to borrow a kit when it did not conflict with schedules of the Brethren.

Troy
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#36

Post by WE8U-p40 »

tsheffield wrote:We do have a small number of kits, you can count them on one hand, that are available to borrow to support the Brethren when they visit a stake for conference. It is not designed as a try before you buy program.
There have been times when stakes have been able to borrow a kit when it did not conflict with schedules of the Brethren.

Troy

This must be what my President was thinking about, as it pertained to a visit by a General Authority and we have yet to gain the equipment or to fully realize the scope of what it will take to upgrade everything in the Stake.
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KOlive43-p40
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Questions about Codecs

#37

Post by KOlive43-p40 »

I just heard about this Webcast Communicator stuff 2 days ago, but we've been streaming our stake meetings for the past 2-3 years ourselves. We sometimes still have issues with pausing, etc., on the client end, and I think that lowering the stream bandwidth would help.

We've been using Windows Media Encoder 9. On the "Compression" tab, we set "Video" to "VHS quality video (CBR)", "Audio" to "Voice quality audio (CBR)", and only check "352 Kbps" (which is a 320x240 resolution).

If you don't mind me asking, what settings/codecs are you using in the Webcast Communicator for your three different quality settings?

I'm mainly looking to decrease our bandwidth usage without decreasing quality noticeably, so that we can greatly diminish or eliminate our pausing/buffering issues.

P.S. All of our client units have at least 512-Kbps-down connections, but they've been bandwidth tested and are getting at least 400 Kbps down consistently, but perhaps we're just cutting it too close (360 Kbps stream on a 400 Kbps connection). Anyway, I would love to find a way of decreasing bandwidth usage without decreasing quality.
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#38

Post by russellhltn »

KOlive43 wrote:P.S. All of our client units have at least 512-Kbps-down connections, but they've been bandwidth tested and are getting at least 400 Kbps down consistently,
What is your uplink speed? Is it fast enough to support all the clients?
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KOlive43-p40
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Upload Bandwidth(s)

#39

Post by KOlive43-p40 »

RussellHltn wrote:What is your uplink speed? Is it fast enough to support all the clients?
To do it "on the cheap", we initially set up two different DSL connections in the stake center and connected them both to the same server (with two NICs). We then had two remote units come in on one external IP and two come in on the other. The upload speeds on both DSL connections were 768 Kbps (cost a pretty penny up here).

However, I later found out that a member of the stake was already renting a hosted web server in Houston, Texas with plenty of bandwidth, etc., on which we could stage the stream (just like Webcast Communicator does to Salt Lake), which made it so that all we needed was one DSL connection with enough upload bandwidth for one stream. We're still using the 768-Kbps-up connection, but we're now only sending one copy of the stream (360 Kbps) through it, so that should be plenty.

We don't get the pausing at all four remote units, which seems to suggest that the problem is client-side.

My main question is this: What codecs (video and audio) are being used for the three quality options that are hard-coded on the Webcast Communicator boxes? I would like to try emulating those settings with our current setup, to see if we can eliminate the pausing which some units experience.

We'll probably end up buying the box anyway, so that more than just one guy knows how to make the whole thing work. (Right now, my set-up task list is a page long and takes about 45 minutes to execute, let alone trying to train someone else to do it.)
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#40

Post by jltware »

lionelwalters wrote:Hi there,

This is great news! Shame it's still only one-way, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. Can you tell me what format and resolution the stream is broadcast in? I've experimented with broadcasting using Windows Media Encoder and a high quality webcamera from one meetinghouse to another and, depending on the bandwidth, it seems to do quite well. Interesting to see how this new solution improves upon that.

Thanks,
Lionel

I wouldn't get too excited yet, at least not in Australia where you are. I contacted ics about this back in early April this year. I asked (at the request of the stake president) for details about how to get the internet connected to all our chapels, and how to get streaming equipment for all buildings. After being bounced around from person to person for a while on the phone and everyone pretending that the area newsletter heralding the introduction of these technologies never existed, I finally got a three line reply from the head of the ics department saying that these features were not available and were mentioned in the newsletter to inform us of things that would be available in the future. This contradicted the text of the newsletter from the area presidency. It also seemed to be in violation of the letter from the presiding Bishopric last December saying that internet connections were to be made available at stake expense effective immediately, and to give local support offices 30 days to make the arrangements and order the hardware firewalls etc that are necessary. It seems that the men with the priesthood keys to direct both the area and the stake have been ignored or trumped by an area support manager.

I'm still waiting more than 4 months later for the follow up email he promised filling me in on the details "soon, when they were available", so maybe Australian units will have to go back to engraving their memos on gold plates and posting them as the preferred method of communication. It doesn't help that they've just moved our area presidency to New Zealand, they just pass it back and forward between the support centre (old offices) in Sydney and the Area Offices (new offices) in New Zealand, until somebody manages to give a nondescript answer that doesn't address the original question and terminate the communication. Kind of getting a little sick of waiting for stuff that Salt Lake assumes we already have.
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