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It is becoming more and more crucial in church building and system design to remember the people who are not in the room. Not in the room, “What do you mean?” I sense you saying.
Online streaming has become a huge part of churches today. Whether the goal of a church’s online presence is for promoting attendance of the current congregation while on vacation or sick at home, giving potential new attendees the ability to experience the church in a virtual visit, or it is a full-blown online campus, the content being delivered is the same. With so many people being able to watch a service live or on a simulated live replay (may be delayed slightly) as designers the idea of sightlines, lighting, and equipment has to move beyond the physical people in the room.
Helping a church that wants to stream figure out what their end goal is, is the crucial step I so often see overlooked. While I understand vision can change along with budgets, seeing churches invest in equipment, time, and personnel, only to have to overhaul it later is unfortunate.
Here are three keys areas of focus:
1-Design/Content
... hopefully, you are involved early enough to help them design their room with the online stream in mind.
While as a designer you won’t have any control over the final content choices your client makes, you can set them up for success. Content for streaming is more than just a camera pointed at the stage. As I said earlier, hopefully, you are involved early enough to help them design their room with the online stream in mind. With this, I mean finding ideal camera positions and proper stage lighting.
Beyond the live video, I encourage churches to think about a separate graphics machine, a video switcher like a Blackmagic Design ATEM, and a small audio console to mix between local audio and the live service. I say local audio because depending on their CCLI licensing, they may need to cut away from live services to something else for copyright material they do not have permission to stream. Also, if they are going to Facebook Live or YouTube Live, I like to send a different audio feed for pre-service music because those services will flag you for use of copywritten material (even if you have the proper licensing, they can be a pain).
2-Capture
The capture and encoding part of the process is where the sky is the limit when it comes to budget and options. Camera resolution, lenses, cabling infrastructure, are the cameras manned or robotic style PTZ? If the church really has the budget for it, 4K is cool. My church is still capturing and streaming at 720p, and it honestly looks great still. Most of what is seen on cable providers like Comcast is really a down-converted 720p to allow better data transmission. Don’t blow the budget on the camera, remember, the stream is only as good as its weakest link. If all the money goes to the camera, then the rest of the chain is low-quality gear, and the camera doesn’t matter. I always recommend finding that balance (which you’re probably rolling eyes at the common sense of that statement, but you’d be surprised the installs I have seen).
... remember, the stream is only as good as its weakest link. If all the money goes to the camera, then the rest of the chain is low-quality gear....
Next is the encoder, which can be a computer running a program like Wirecast, or a standalone box like the AJA Helo or Haivision Makito. There are other options out there, but for the sake of time, I will focus on these.
I have used all of these devices and they have their pros and cons--along with varying levels of a learning curve for the user. I will say, the nice thing about the AJA Helo (that I use at my church) is the push button start ability. There is literally a stream button on the front. That's really easy to train someone on.
Depending on the required reliability of the online stream, I recommend having a backup encoder. It is technology, and sometimes things don’t work as planned. I also use the second encoder to send a stream internally over the local network for pastors and staff who are in and out of the services on the weekend. That way, they are not eating into my overall internet bandwidth. They also only have to endure a 1-second delay, as opposed to watching the online campus feed that is 45-50 seconds delayed. But I will use bandwidth to segue to the final piece, the Delivery.
3-Delivery
Once the captured content is encoded, it needs somewhere to go. It can be sent to Facebook as a Live event, it can go to Vimeo, Livestream, Church Online Platform, or any number of other endpoints where viewers see it. Getting it there involves several elements, including the church’s network infrastructure, the internet, a Content Delivery Network (CDN), and a video hosting provider.
I oversee the online campus for my church in Franklin, Tenn., and I was recently explaining to our executive team the signal flow. Before the video even hits the encoder, there are five connections it flows through. Then the various network switches to the firewall and router then to the Internet Service Provider’s ethernet to fiber converter--all before the video leaves our building. From there it hits our hosting company, where their servers transcode the video, allowing for multiple bitrate streams for those watching on slower internet connections or mobile networks.
Having a proper network installed with QoS (Quality of Service) allows for the outgoing stream to take precedence over the person in the back row who is updating their phone or streaming a football game during the sermon (we all know it happens).
I lay all that out to explain that while, for the most part, streaming is the push of a button, there is a lot going on behind the scenes. And there are many pieces that are out of the church tech’s hands once [the content] leaves the building. Making sure all those pieces that can be controlled [are], and mitigating the ones that can’t, is important. Having a proper network installed with QoS (Quality of Service) allows for the outgoing stream to take precedence over the person in the back row who is updating their phone or streaming a football game during the sermon (we all know it happens).
Getting back to the resolution of your video really comes into play at this point, as well. Netflix recommends a 5.0mb/s connection for HD video. It is considered a best practice to multiply your encoded video bitrate (quality) by a factor of 1.5x to allow for overhead. Following that, you would need a minimum of a 7.5mb/s upload capacity to effectively stream in HD. (Remember that most internet providers post their speeds in megabits per second, not mega bytes. So the 7.5 megabytes/second stream requires a 60mbps minimum upload connection.)
... streaming a quality service is [far] more than just holding your iPhone up like a lighter as a rock concert.
As you can see, streaming a quality service is [far] more than just holding your iPhone up like a lighter as a rock concert. There needs to be a vision so that a plan can be built--and then executed. Starting early in the design phase and helping church clients understand what they are wanting to achieve can be the best investment made.
