Getting Started with Webcasting and Video conferencing

Question

Our church is trying to move into the 21^st century. We have the opportunity to apply for a grant of up to $20,000 ($10,000 would be more likely to succeed) for equipment purchases.

We need to be able to accomplish two things. First, to stream our Sunday morning service along with recording for our archive. Second, to host video conferences as a remote site. The Diocese (bigger entity over us) is already setup with MegaMeeting, we just need the equipment to send and receive audio and video to MM in real time.

Given the above, I know I need a Video Camera (or two), a few more Mics, a dedicated computer, and the equipment to hook them all together. It is the last part that I am not sure about.

I'm fairly certain that once I get audio and video into the computer I can get it out to the web, what I need to know is how to mix it all together.

Answer 1

Blackmagic and Livestream are your friends :)

You probably want to get 3 cameras - one for the priest, one for roaming action shots and one for the audience. You'll need a whole bunch of microphones and an audio mixer. But you probably already know all this.

Buy a Blackmagic TV Studio and buy a Livestream Broadcaster - plug the TV Studio's HDMI output into the Livestream Broadcaster and plug a computer into the TV Studio's ethernet port. You use the computer to control the switching between cameras and the Livestream Broadcaster spits it out to the Internet using Livestream's servers. Make sure where you're broadcasting from has a fast Internet connection.

Lots of churches seem to have projectors these days, so you can plug the output from your projector's source (use a splitter of some sort, and a scaler to match the frame specs as the cameras) into the TV studio too, and add what's on the projector into the mix as well.

You can replace the Livestream Broadcaster with a computer, but the Livestream Broadcaster is cheaper, more flexible and more reliable, in my opinion.

I guess this is a starting point - but if you want more info, just post and I'll answer any questions :)