Hello!
I am one of the AV people in my small church. We are hoping to set up a TV in the nursery to show the service. We currently only stream on Facebook. We want to try and stay away from having to login to someone’s Facebook to watch the service. Also, we can’t live stream the music on Facebook.
So my big question is… does anyone have a setup with a camera that is hardwired to a tv in another room? Our nursery is about 120ft from the pulpit.
What’s your wiring situation? How are you broadcasting your livestream to the web now? Do you foresee expanding to other displays? We use two methods to send our video to different rooms (and buildings), depending on what wiring exists.
Some churches use SDI. But with SDI, you need special hardware at the TV (or a very expensive TV), and your splitters and cables are more expensive.
Currently we have a webcam set up and connected to my pastors laptop. We only broadcast on FB Live and we are only able to stream his preaching. We do not foresee expanding to other rooms. Not sure what you mean by wiring. In our Sanctuary, we have a TV in the front and one in the back to show the words while we are singing. Those connect to a computer in the back. (Not the laptop used for streaming) We have a sound board, which runs all the sound. I am not too familiar with it, that is my dad’s area. Thanks!!!
In asking about the wiring situation, I mean: what options do you have for getting a signal from one place to the other?
The basic concept to shoot for is to have the computer transmit the video to both the web, and in the building. You can broadcast internally without broadcasting to the web (e.g. the music). But, the methods and equipment you need depend on your wiring situation.
When you go live to Facebook, are you going directly through the Facebook interface in a web browser, or are you using some other software like OBS? You will ultimately need to use external software, like OBS.
Im not sure if this is the best solution but if you want to keep it simple you could setup another camera if you have the space/budget. This way you can leave the facebook setup as is and avoid any issues there. If you are not opposed to running cable you could then get a couple HDMI over Cat6 extenders and run the cat6 cable over to the nursery.
There are plenty of other options but since you don’t forsee expaning I dont see why you need to invest significant resources into this when the simplest method may be the best. I dont have any gear reccomendations but hopefully this is at least one idea to consider!
My apologies for taking a bit to answer.
For wiring, we have a sound board that runs all the mics, instruments and such. The concept you say is exactly what I am hoping for. Video for the web and in the building. For Facebook we go directly to the Facebook live feed.
I am not opposed to running cable at all. Thank you for the idea!!
We have many locations with a similar situation. We use SDI and these splitters at the TV. We’ve also used some cheaper ones but I don’t remember what brand.
Our tech arts team has found this to be the most cost effective for distributed video in our buildings and has less latency.
I think those are the cheaper ones. They have a tendency to die after a few years. These are held as much more reliable.
Personally, I tend to think that when you’re talking about sending video between buildings (or even between rooms within a building), a couple seconds of latency isn’t a problem. That’s why we use QAM.