All posts tagged LiveStream

LiveStream Part 3 – Is This Really Live?

by James Lawrence on March 16, 2012 in LiveStream, Mobile, Online Church with 10 Comments
live-570x300

One of the main questions people ask when they login to the Rock’s online chat is, “Is this really live?”  With the remote exception, the answer is “yes!”  What is it about the live experience that compels us to watch?  From a technical standpoint, live streaming church is a lot more difficult than recording and playing back after postproduction processing.  But people like it live.  They almost demand a live experience!

When we decided to go live, it just seemed like the right thing to do.  The Rock often changes things up from one service to another and why not allow the online viewers to participate in that experience?  While the realities of live streaming can prove to be ulcer inducing (things don’t always work in real-time), the resulting experience is authentic and somehow feels more “real.”

The Rock’s approach to online church is evolving.  We are planning some major additions, upgrades, and wholesale changes later this year.  Lord willing, we’ll present the Sunday message more than 50 times a week.  We’ll also have video on demand content that will inspire you and blow your mind.

But there’s an internal debate.  We naturally cannot provide live messages throughout the week, only on Sunday.  Of course small groups, bible study and special events will be streaming live throughout the week.  So, should we continue to stream live on Sunday or migrate to a “simulated live” format like most large/online churches?  Does it matter?

You tell me…

LiveStream Part 2 – Commercial or Industrial?

by James Lawrence on January 29, 2012 in LiveStream with 1 Comment
live-570x300

So you’ve been tasked with the responsibility to broadcast your Sunday messages?  I’ve got good news for you.  There are a number of services and technologies which can be readily deployed to stream your churches’ video content.  However, to minimize the confusion, I’ll mainly be addressing the process to LiveStream or to simulate the LiveStream of Sunday sermons and/or special events.  This is in contrast to hosting videos or downloadable content (video on demand).

In my opinion, there are two categories of LiveStream service providers out there, what I call…

  1. Commercial
  2. Industrial

Commercial LiveStream providers tend to focus on the lowest common denominator.  These services can get you up and running quickly, with little or no specialized onsite equipment or expertise. Typically you’ll connect your soundboard and video feeds into a laptop or server that runs a proprietary encoding software platform.  Additionally, some of these services will provide a Content Management System (CMS) that you can customize to your church’s look and feel. These are generally low cost, low barrier to entry, and low-tech solutions.  Some examples include:

  1. http://streamingchurch.tv/
  2. http://www.faithnetwork.com/
  3. http://www.mychurchlive.tv/
  4. http://www.christianworldmedia.com
  5. http://sermoncast.com/
  6. http://www.christiannetcast.com/
  7. http://livestream.com/
  8. http://www.ustream.tv/

I’m not going to spend any material time discussing commercial solutions because I don’t believe they provide a well-rounded offering for most Churches.  They may provide, in some instances, a way to get your feet wet, but I don’t recommend swimming unless you’re happy with a low cost, low usage solution.  But if you’re still hoping there’s a quick and dirty way to stream for almost no cost, here’s a pretty good article on it: http://goo.gl/JLjRk

There’s one new hybrid solution which needs mentioning.  The Church Online Platform just released by LifeChurch.tv is a powerful CMS worth checking out.  If you’ve ever enjoyed Pastor Craig Groeschel online, you’ve likely engaged in their online platform. Now it’s available to churches at no cost.  You’ll still need a network provider, so keep reading…

On the Industrial side, the Rock looked at a few different solutions, including 316 Networks, Trinet Solutions, and an internally developed system riding on Akamai’s network.  In the end we chose 316 Networks because they demonstrated the engineering horsepower, network relationships (they use Akamai) and desire to push the envelope so to speak.  From my perspective, if you’re going to stream to a large audience around the globe, Akamai is the only game in town.

Here’s a simplified view of how Akamai works.

Here is the short list of our signal path to the stream encoder

  1. For the video signal we use 1080i cameras (Grass Valley LDK 4000) which feed an HDSDI router (Grass Valley Concerto).
  2. Next the signal passes through the switcher (Barco Encore) and back to the router, from the router to an audio embedder (MOTU V4HD) to combine and embed audio in the HDSDI signal and to the encoder.
  3. The audio signal is a mix, a room ambience mic and a direct feed of the pastors mic from our house sound desk (Midas XL-8) fed to our Router as two AES pairs.
  4. From the router the signals pass through a frame syncronizer (Evertz 7743-4-AES) to delay the audio correcting for delays in the video chain.
  5. From the frame sync it goes back to the router then to the audio embedder. Here the embedder allows us to further balance house feed and and room ambience specifically for the stream. At this point the audio and video are married and at the encoder.

The encoder set up is pretty straight forward:

  1. Connect your video cameras & audio inputs into your encoder. We use a KulaByte (more specs later).
  2. Determine the bit rate (frame rate and quality of the video/audio stream).  Generally speaking, you’ll want 300KB, 600KB, 1200KB, and possibly 3000KB (HD quality).  We use all of these and also provide a 600KB just for the iPad.
  3. Schedule the encoder to fire up, encode the signal, and start streaming (if you’re streaming live).
A few questions you might have about the process:
  1. What is the client side viewer?  We use an Adobe based Flash viewer.  There’s a ton of Flash flavors to choose from, so this is really more about the type of experience you want to have.  And no, Flash does not work on iOS, so we have an alternative for iOS devices.
  2. What kind of viewer can be used on the iPhone and iPad?  316 Networks pushes a dedicated stream to iOS devices over Amazon’s S3 Network. I’ll talk more later about streaming to mobile devices or tablets.
  3. What kind of statistics are available?  Gathering stats on LiveStream is part art and part science.  316 provides an included stats product called MediaSuite, which is a web based LiveStream and stats management tool.  In short, what you care about is a) How many unique IPs connected to your stream, b) Where they watched from (by county and US States), and c) How many streams were viewed in total.  I’ve spoken with a number of churches that stream and they all go about gathering their stats a little differently. In the end it’s mostly some combination of IPs and stream pulls.
  4. To chat or not to chat?  I don’t think a church can have a relevant dialog without a chat experience during the service.  I won’t get into the philosophical or ideological discussion today, but I’m a believer in the chat experience.  316 provides a relationship with ChatRoll which has been pretty solid for us. We’re currently looking at more malleable solutions, but it’s getting the job done.
  5. Giving?  Yes, you want to provide online giving.  It’s easy and people will give online during or after the service.  The Rock uses Mogiv for our online giving (disclaimer:  I co-founded Mogiv) and since we launched, the live stream giving has more than paid for the services we’ve provided.  Amazing.
  6. Costs?  If you’re going with an industrial strength solution, be ready for an industrial strength cost.  A high end encoder (KulaByte) will run you about $1,000 a month along with bandwidth fees ranging from $1,500 to $5,000 a month depending on the number of streams that are viewed.  Also, the Rock uses a 50MB fiber connection to the Internet, which isn’t cheap.  You’ll want to be sure that you’re balancing your network usage with a LiveStream solution.  If you don’t make network improvements with your LiveStream set up (VLANing, QoS, etc), you may learn some hard lessons about network saturation. Hint: VLAN your LiveStream traffic whenever possible.
  7. Social Media? We use a simple Facebook integration and Twitter feed on our LiveStream page.  Also, you can chat by logging in with your FB credentials. We’re working on some new enhancements to make the social aspects better.

In my next post on LiveStream, I’ll talk about how we support LiveStream every Sunday in terms of user experience, staff, volunteers and the occasional technical problems that pop up.  Stay tuned for part 3…

(A special thanks to Doug Mote, our Production Arts Technical Director for his tireless contribution to the Rock’s LiveStream services.)

LiveStream Part 1 – Jesus is the Way, but the Web is the Road

by James Lawrence on January 2, 2012 in LiveStream with No comments
Rock Church LiveStream UI

In June of 2011, Glenn Beck traded in his massively popular cable based program for a web based pay as you go format.  Now called Glenn Beck TV, it’s available only on the web for the low price of $4.95 a month.  Apparently some people (80,000 to start) are willing to pay for Beck’s online only content.  I have to ask…why does someone with a remarkably successful TV program scrap it for the web?  And what’s my point?  This is, after all a church technology blog right?  The answer is simple: Reach.  Beck himself, summed it up this way:

“GBTV is the future. The confines of traditional media no longer apply. GBTV is about getting active in the community, participating in stories, and finding new ways to deliver news, information, and entertainment directly to the audience.”

So why should churches produce online programming or stream Sunday services for all to view?  The answer: Reach

I didn’t want to use the other “R” word, but being relevant in today’s culture means meeting people where they’re at. That means we need to provide church content online and into mobile hands. We have to bring the Gospel to the people.  Jesus is the Way, but the Web is the road.   Every church needs to wrestle with technology convergence and work towards meeting its community needs whether in person or online.  And I would contend that every church can’t afford not to.

People are “participating” in their TV viewing differently these days.  Don’t just take my word for it, here’s some stats to prove it…

  • More than 33% of adults now watch full length TV online
  • “Already 40% of all Internet traffic is from video according to CISCO and this is slated to rise to 91% in 2014, Broadband penetration in US households has increased to 63.5% in 2009 from 50.2% in two years and certainly higher today. The trend for young professionals is not to buy a TV and just watch streaming video on the Internet very much like not having a home land phone line and entirely depending on the cellphone.”  See more stats…
  • There are more than 20 sites providing TV/Movie Video experiences online and more coming.  See list…

For the past 10 years the Rock hasn’t wholeheartedly pursued a live online experience.  Part of the issue is that the Rock’s Sunday experience is second to none, and how could one replicate that experience online?  The truth is, you can’t.  However, as we made the decision to broadcast live on Sunday, we looked at several compelling factors:

  1. Our congregation rarely comes every week.  Most of our core congregants come two to three times a month.  This means that for whatever reason they miss a message or two.  I have three kids and I know the pain and suffering involved with trying to get them to church every Sunday, especially when someone’s not feeling well.  By providing a live Sunday experience, we’ve been able to engage and minister to a huge part of our community that would simply have missed it.
  2. Our community is technically savvy.  The Rock has always been about technology, but we have come to a demarcation point where technology now provides a very cost effect way to leverage much of what we do.  We can stream a 60-minute message in HD to anywhere in the world for less than 20 cents.   It’s hard to argue with that math.
  3. Lastly, we chose to deploy an industrial strength solution.  We meant for this to be a global outreach and we intentionally chose to stream an HD quality broadcast when few other churches even attempt it.  We’re committed to providing the best online experience technology can support and we’re not doing anything without a mobile framework going forward.

As I continue this dialog on LiveStream or what will soon become the Rock’s Online Church, I’ll present a number of the key issues churches face in streaming their services.  I’ll address the technical aspects (hardware, software, CDNs, CMSs, support, management, and costs).  I’ll address the doctrinal implications and the realities of doing ministry virtually.  Lastly, I’ll address the limitations of the medium and talk about the corresponding miracles that happen every week online.

The Rock now provides online services for more than 4,000 people each week in every state and in most countries.  Lives are being impacted and Christ gets the glory.  And it’s only the beginning.  Glenn Beck may be smarter than he looks.  What do you think?  Stayed tuned for part 2.