Tech Forum

I am a brand new STS and this will be my first time broadcasting stake conference. What is the best way to broadcast to members homes? So far the options seem to be, Zoom, Church Webcast, YouTube. We have been using zoom for our ward mtgs, but we are going to have at least 600 people watching.

So much depends on what's happening. Are you going to have any remote speakers, or will the entire conference be from the pulpit in the stake center?

If you have a remote participant, you'll have to use Zoom to produce the conference.

However, the 500 stream limit make Zoom unsuitable for distribution of a stake conference. You'll need to stream it to YouTube or Church Webcast. Both will work, and both have strengths and weaknesses.

We will be doing the entire thing from the Stake Center. No remote speakers

jbwelker wrote:We will be doing the entire thing from the Stake Center. No remote speakers

Zoom is too limiting. Your pick: YouTube or Church Webcast.

I think YouTube has a sharper picture and better deals with slow connections, however, once you start the stream, you can't resume it. If it dies, you have to start a new session and then send that link out to everyone.

Church Webcast tends to have a "mushy" picture, but you can send everyone to a fixed URL (for the stake) to find all the sessions.

russellhltn wrote: I think YouTube has a sharper picture and better deals with slow connections, however, once you start the stream, you can't resume it. If it dies, you have to start a new session and then send that link out to everyone .....

When you schedule the event in youtube studio, you can turn OFF the "AutoStop" feature, which means you can now restart/resume the stream any number of times without ending the event. The URL will not change until you press the button to end the event. If you leave the "AutoStop" feature ON, then you only have 1 minute to restart/resume the stream before YouTube ends the event for you!

CalS201 wrote:When you schedule the event in youtube studio, you can turn OFF the "AutoStop" feature, which means you can now restart/resume the stream any number of times without ending the event. The URL will not change until you press the button to end the event. If you leave the "AutoStop" feature ON, then you only have 1 minute to restart/resume the stream before YouTube ends the event for you!

Good to know. I'll pass this on to the guy who does YouTube streaming. That was one of his gripes with the system.

jbwelker wrote:I am a brand new STS and this will be my first time broadcasting stake conference. What is the best way to broadcast to members homes? So far the options seem to be, Zoom, Church Webcast, YouTube. We have been using zoom for our ward mtgs, but we are going to have at least 600 people watching.

A lot depends on the hardware you will be using. Will you be using a single wall-mounted camera or will other cameras be involved? Is the audio & video already routed to your satellite cabinet? Will you be using the stake Teradek VidiU encoder or some other means?

We recently used zoom so that the stake presidency, other speakers in the chapel and the area 70 connecting from another country had faces to look at rather than just talking into a camera.

All other members were joining from home.

You can lock down all the settings to stop any unintended interruptions. Spotlight the chapel or the area 70 as necessary and we set up TVs facing the stand so that the speakers and stake presidency could see up to 49 participants at a time.

Zoom was fed to youtube for overflow (+500 participants) purposes.

Seemed to work well and very stable for all sessions.

richarddanielwatts wrote:We recently used zoom so that the stake presidency, other speakers in the chapel and the area 70 connecting from another country had faces to look at rather than just talking into a camera.
...
Zoom was fed to youtube for overflow (+500 participants) purposes.

In that case, Zoom is required to put the conference together, but even then, it's inadequate to be the only distribution system for a stake conference.

For conferences originating only from the pulpit, Zoom seems like an unnecessary addition. I don't know what value it brings in that situation.

Technically zoom brings no value.

The value it brings is that we are not professional news anchors that are used to staring down the barrel of a camera when speaking. We are accustomed to speaking to other people.

Seeing other familiar faces on a screen in front of us brings a lot of comfort and eases the nerves of even the most confident member of the stake presidency.

But yes, if there was no area 70 remotely attending it probably would have just gone with the church webcast system instead.