The Tascam VS-R264 is an HD resolution streaming encoder/decoder/recorder; and the VS-R265, a UHD version of the same product.
As I write this on March 26th, 2020, the county in which I live has just notified us that as of tomorrow at 5 PM, we are to stay at home except for certain specific situations (like grocery shopping) for the foreseeable future. Churches that hadn’t already been streaming their services to the Internet are scrambling to get something working to continue their services for their congregation.
There are numerous streaming options out there; some involve using a video capture card of some sort and a software-based encoding program; there are also stand-alone encoding boxes that take an audio and video input signal, encode into a video stream, and automatically send to a streaming service such as YouTube. The latter is the approach that Tascam, a well-respected company with deep audio roots, has taken in introducing their first streaming products to the market: the VS-R264, an HD resolution streaming encoder/decoder/recorder; and the VS-R265, a UHD version of the same product.
While we have yet to receive our review unit, here’s what we can tell you about these new encoders. They are designed to fulfill several needs that a church would find important. First and foremost, a church can use this to easily stream to a variety of destinations, such as Wowza Streaming, Wowza Cloud, YouTube, DaCast, and a Generic RTMP destination. Video input comes from an HDMI source; audio can come from the same HDMI source; an external balanced audio connection; or an external unbalanced audio connection. The
In examining the documentation, it looks pretty straight-forward to set up. Configuration and advanced control is done through a Chrome-based application called Tascam Discovery, included on a USB flash drive with the product. Once one or more destinations are configured, it appears that you merely need to press the Encode button to start streaming to your destination(s).
And, as this box is also a decoder, it can be used to receive a compatible stream and output an HDMI signal with embedded audio, balanced audio, and unbalanced audio. So, it could be used as part of a pair of devices to stream your service to an overflow room in another part of your facility through your church’s IT network.
When used as an encoder, it can also be used to record the stream to a file on an SD card or USB3 attached storage device, and even be configured to automatically upload the recording on completion to an FTP site.
Some questions I’d love to explore further are:
Churches often stream to Facebook and Livestream as well; will these encoders work well with these streaming company’s servers? We’ll certainly test this feature when our review unit arrives.
While this would not have been a typical application before the Covid-19 virus crashed the party, with no one actually attending services in person, some churches are now pre-recording their service during the week and simply playing it out during normal services times on the weekend. The documentation does not mention this capability, but I wonder if there’s a way to pre-record a service onto the SD card or external storage device, and then instruct the unit to stream it out on demand, or even better, automatically at pre-determined dates and times? That would be sweet.
I’d like to inspect the quality of the video stream; some encoders create a lot of compression artifacts. And how is the quality and reliability of the H.265 UHD stream? HD is pretty common and well-understood; H.265 is a much newer technology.
And lastly, while it’s clear that these units could be used within a facility to stream from point to point, how well might they work when streaming across the internet from one church campus to another church campus? Might this be a good tool to support multi-site churches?
Hopefully we’ll be getting a unit in soon to explore these questions and will be able to report back to you with some hands-on experiences.
