How To Prepare Your Church for Live-Streaming

If you’re planning on moving from pre-recorded services to live-streamed services on Sunday, there are a lot of things to consider. Here are my top 6 things to think about if you’re looking at setting up live-streaming at your church.

1. You need a plan

   Sounds obvious, but so many of us think about next Sunday so much, we fail to look far enough ahead to make the best decision. You and your church leadership need to ask the question, “Where do we want to take this?” Do you want to have multiple angles with manned cameras, or are you okay with a couple cameras that are generally hands-off and require less manpower? Think about what you’re willing to invest in and what you want the end result to be, and then you can make much better decisions about how to get there.

2. You need to think “broadcast” more than “live-stream”

   Live-streaming tends to connote the idea of turning on your phone and hitting “Go Live.” But with actual cameras, it’s not that simple. You’re going to need to take the entire video production process (recording, processing, editing, encoding, and uploading) and make all of those things happen simultaneously.

   What was simple when you pre-recorded everything and just needed a camera, memory card, and laptop, is now a multi-station process. To actually live-stream a true video feed, the bottom line is you’re going to need a lot more hardware than you probably thought, and at least one additional person on your production team.

3. You’re going to need a hardware video switcher

   Some of you reading this will disagree with me, because technically you don’t. But in reality, hardware switchers solve so many problems for you it’s just not worth jerry-rigging another solution. A switcher (like the ATEM Mini, ATEM Mini Pro, and ATEM TV Studio HD) handles the processing of video feeds for you (except the ATEM Mini).

   There is a lot of computation going on to receive an incoming video signal, display it, and then re-encode it so that YouTube or Facebook can work with it. Without a hardware switcher, you’re asking your computer to do that. Go from 1 to 2 or 3 camera feeds, and suddenly your CPU/GPU might be in trouble.

   The other main advantage of a hardware switcher is inputs and outputs. You can’t just plug HDMI into a computer; you need an adapter for that. These switchers are adapters in themselves, and provide multiple inputs so you don’t need to clog up all the ports on your computer with video feeds. Especially if you want to include lyrics and slides on your livestream, you really don’t want to run short of inputs/outputs. That’s why I’m recommending the ATEM TV Studio HD for most churches that want to get to a 3+ camera setup, since it has 8 video inputs (vs. the 4 of the Mini switchers).

4. You need to decide how important lyrics and slides are

   This is very related to the section above, but you need to ask this question before you start buying stuff. If you want live lyrics and slides on your livestream, then you need to account for the right amount of hardware video inputs on your switcher setup.

   There are a lot of ways to do this successfully, but if you’re running slides and lyrics out of one computer, into your switcher, and then out to your livestream computer, accounting for 1-2 HDMI/SDI inputs on your switcher for graphics is essential. You can get by with 1 graphics input, but having 2 will allow you to make one a “key” (where you remove a background color for transparent lyrics) and one a “fill” (where it’s a full-screen slide).

   You can use NDI (Network Device Interface) to send these things over your network, but most people struggle with latency when going this route. ProPresenter7 does allow Mac users to send graphics via Syphon, which is a Mac-only NDI solution, so do your research on what will work with your setup.

   If you need a hardware solution, PCI cards like the DeckLink Duo 2 are the way to go for sending signal out of your presenter computer to your switcher. If you’re running Mac, you’ll need to look at a PCI Expansion Chassis since you can’t put a card into your computer directly.

5. You need a broadcast mix

   If you’ve tried to send your house PA feed into your livestream, you’ll know it sounds terrible. The reason is that it is mixed for a live room with acoustic noise, especially from the drums. When you send that mix over the air, the person listening now has none of that room noise, so the mix doesn’t fit.

   If you can create a multi-track recording of a Sunday or even a rehearsal, you can then listen to it later and hear what you need to adjust for the broadcast audience. Then, adjust your Buss Out or Matrix (like a monitor or hallway feed) accordingly, and send this Out directly into your switcher.

   This is the best way to get a high-quality broadcast mix, and it really makes a massive difference in the experience your viewers have.

6. Finally, you need to invest in people.

   Live-streaming is complicated and requires focus and attention to detail. Asking your tech hero volunteer to do it while also focusing on slides and even lighting is just unreasonable. Start recruiting and training your volunteers to learn this position as an added part of your production team.

   If you want to get to the place where your cameras are manually operated, start accounting for those positions as well. Each camera will need an operator, and then you’ll need to equip your producer to manage the stream, cut the angles, and have a way to communicate with the camera ops so they get what they need.

   It may sound intimidating, but it’s going to make your live-stream experience so engaging if you start planning now, and cast vision to your team what an impact they’re going to have through their service.

Thanks for reading! If you need some help getting set-up for live-streaming and training your volunteers, we can do that! Send me an email (hello@churchvideoschool.com) and we’ll get on the phone to discuss your situation.