5 Easy Steps to Your Best Church Streaming System

Live streaming creates a window for the outside world to see into--and engage with--your church. Here are the five necessary components to make sure the window they're looking into is yours.

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Houses of worship offer unique spaces that require special attention to design and detail throughout technology upgrade projects. When it comes time to design a live streaming system for your church, it’s important to think about your organization's goals. A well-built live streaming and video production system creates a window into your church available to the outside world to accommodate existing and potential members alike. Your online audience will likely include members who are traveling, shut-ins in your local community and new potential members who are connected to friends and family of your church through social media. Your church’s online videos may very well be the first impression many potential members will see when they are “church shopping.”

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The ideal church live streaming system should be simple and Intuitive enough to be operated by volunteers but robust enough to create an engaging experience for online viewers. Putting yourself in the online viewer‘s shoes for a moment, the online viewing experience should prompt a positive action such as sharing the video on Facebook, or emailing your link to family and friends. Sharing a live stream from your church also opens up opportunities for donations. If  your church is registered as a 501c non-profit on Facebook, you can accept donations directly through your live streams with no cost to the church!

Let’s consider building the ideal church streaming system in 5 easy steps. 

1. Leveraging existing equipment in the church

2. Selecting a video production system

3. Selecting cameras

4. Working with volunteers

5. Creating an outreach program and additional uses for your equipment

1-Leveraging existing equipment in your church for video production

It’s good news for many churches to find out that their investment in high-quality audio equipment can be used with a new video streaming system. In fact in many cases, churches have more than 50% of the equipment they need for a new video production system  when they take into account audio equipment already in place. In many cases a simple and inexpensive USB audio interface can connect an existing audio system to a live streaming computer with a USB computer input. This way of connecting your existing church audio system to a new live streaming system is both affordable and intuitive. Most sound systems have an auxiliary audio output you can dedicate to this purpose. Your media team and audio engineers will be happy to find out that almost no changes will be needed to  accommodate the new live video system.

The next piece of existing equipment your church should consider using for a live video production system is an existing computer. Your church may already be using a computer  connected to a  projector or some type of large projection system to display lyrics and supporting media for  services and events. Thousands of churches are now using a free piece of software called the NewTek NDI® scan converter which easily transports the video from a laptop into an IP based video stream sent over Wi-Fi or hardwired ethernet into a  live streaming system. For many churches wirelessly sending PowerPoint slides back to a video switcher over their local area network is their first use with NewTek NDI®. Throughout this blog post we will mention numerous ways your church can leverage existing equipment and your LAN (Local Area Network) to save time and money when it comes to video production.

2-Selecting a video switcher

When it comes time to select a video switcher for your church an important thing to look into is whether or not it supports the NewTek NDI protocol. One of the most flexible hardware video production switchers is the Wirecast Gear. Wirecast is available to be installed as a software-only option on any Mac or PC but also available as a hardware switcher in the Gear product line, which is ideal for churches looking for an all-in-one package. Since Wirecast supports NewTek NDI, we can use it for all sorts of video production related solutions that leverage your existing network. We already talked about easily bringing the PowerPoint slides from a computer directly into our video production switcher over Wi-Fi or hardwired ethernet but we can also send video out from our video switcher to additional monitors or your worship presentation software using NewTek NDI out of Wirecast Pro or any of the Wirecast Gear switcher models. This means we can send high quality, low-latency video directly to overflow rooms and other spaces or screens where we want to display the video output from your system. Lobbies, waiting areas, nurseries as well as screens and displays in the sanctuary are great examples of this and are common places churches need to send their video program signals. We can use a free Windows or Mac-based application called NewTek NDI studio monitor, or any of the hundreds of NDI-enabled apps to receive these video feeds on computers or devices connected to our local area network. Generally, churches are using miniature PC or Mac computers (like the NUC or Mac-Mini) connected via HDMI to the display and Ethernet to your network.

Another great feature of Wirecast is the intuitive interface layout that makes video production fun. Wirecast teamed up with P.I. Engineering to create a custom X-Keys USB control interface for Wirecast for even faster and more fluid operation and switching. The Wirecast X-keys interface allows a volunteer to quickly understand and start using layers in Wirecast to create a rich presentation for the viewers on-the-fly. This could be something like displaying the lyrics or slides from ProPresenter or EasyWorship, or bringing in live remote guests using Wirecast Rendezvous, the build-in video calling feature. For anyone who benefits from hands on learning, the X-keys USB control surface for Wirecast provides the perfect introduction to video production. With all of Wirecast software controls mapped onto an organized, durable control surface, even technology challenged volunteers can intuitively begin to create a production rivaling what the big budget churches put  on TV.

3-Selecting cameras for your church

When it comes time to select cameras for your church’s live streaming system, one of the most important aspects to consider is optical zoom. Houses of worship are generally large spaces and the need to zoom in from a distance of 50 to 100 feet is typical. Many churches are using PTZ (pan tilt zoom) cameras because they can be discreetly placed in hidden away locations and controlled remotely. The best place to start when selecting a PTZ camera is measuring the distance between the location you want to put the camera and the object you want to zoom in on. PTZOptics offers an easy to use online tool which allows you to calculate the dimensions of your camera image based on the optical zoom lens that you choose and the distance from the camera to your subject. PTZOptics cameras are available with NewTek NDI built-in allowing churches to install a single ethernet cable to power the camera, control the camera and send video & audio. Using a PoE (power over ethernet) network switch to connect the cameras to the local area network, the installation of these cameras is only limited by the maximum length of ethernet cable supported which is 100 meters. PTZOptics cameras also support traditional video output such as USB, SDI, HDMI and RTSP video streaming.

Depending on the location you would like to mount your cameras, you may want to choose to wall mount the cameras at the back of the church. Generally, when it comes to wall mounting a PTZ camera, you want to make sure that the camera is high enough to provide a clear view over the heads of any church members standing in front of the camera. You also have the option to ceiling mount or pole mount your camera to provide the best view for your video production. Many churches have high vaulted ceiling that are ideal for securely pole mounting a camera from the superstructure of the building.

4-Working with volunteers

An important consideration for any church implementing a live streaming system is the fact the volunteers will be helping out quite a lot. It’s quite common to find church members interested in technology and video production who will champion a media program within the church. Many churches encourage media programs with volunteer positions because it's generally a win-win situation for everyone involved. Volunteers in the church media programs can apply their experiences in the job market and the church benefits from the outreach.

One entry level volunteering position is camera operation which can be made even easier with an intuitive PTZ joystick. Using NewTek NDI studio monitor with an Xbox joystick is a great way to connect the younger generation with your video production system. Wirecast offers multiple ways to integrate with social media which is an opportunity to provide useful job for volunteers interested in engaging with the online audience.Working with volunteers at your church for your video production system is both rewarding and productive.

Here is a short list of potential tasks volunteers can handle in the media production area:

1.) Video switching 

2.) PTZ Camera operation with iPad, joystick, xBox controller, X-keys, NDI, Joystick

3.) Social media integration and comment queuing

4.) ProPresenter/EasyWorship song lyrics management

5.) Lower thirds and titles management and queuing

5-Outreach programs and additional benefits

When you’re considering a live streaming system for your church it’s important to remember that the community and potential outreach programs can benefit from your investment. Perhaps your video production system can be used to record a wedding for a family that is renting out the space? Maybe you can use it to record baptisms and save video of the special day that happened inside your church. Many churches are taking their live streaming and video production technology on outreach programs around the world. Allowing your media team to leverage your video production equipment outside of your church can have many benefits. We highly suggest investing in a LiveU solo wireless streaming system to accommodate use cases. LiveU solo is a wireless streaming pack that can take HDMI and live stream it directly to Facebook or YouTube. This can allow your church to report on events that are happening outside the church inside your community. Is your church working with local theater on an outdoor performance? Perhaps there is a parade or festival happening in a location without Internet access. The LiveU solo will allow your church media team to live stream the event from anywhere that receives cellular service. The LiveU solo can also be used to supplement your existing Internet and Wifi speeds available inside the church.

In Conclusion:

Every church is different and new technologies are coming out all the time. Popular trends include a shift toward IP based video production and automated camera control with pan, tilt and zoom. Smaller churches are now able to put together high quality video production system on a surprisingly lower budgets. Making an educated decision is important and PTZOptics has developed a completely free live streaming and video production course available right here on UDEMY. Consider following along with the Ultimate Church Streaming Makeover Giveaway. The winner of this complete live streaming system will also receive help setting up the system and a video will be posted below of the amazing transformation the church will enjoy.