Video gear and streaming equipment help.

[JasonI]

Hi,

I do video at a mobile church, we are currently using a movie theater for our sanctuary. Right now our video is only being used to live stream to sermon.net and I occasionally film a live off site event to edit for video later. I'm running into the problem that we are loosing half of our videos, the stream just cuts out after 25 to 30 minutes. Currently we are using a AT&T 4G internet card to stream the video. My guess this is where are problem is coming from. The way sermon.net works once the video stream stops it takes that as the end of the feed. So if my wifi card loses connection than that's it.

My second guess is the mac mini could be our problem. We use Adobe flash media live encoder to take the video from the camera and send it to sermon.net. The mac mini we have is ancient and is way under powered.

Right now our video gear consists of a Cannon XL1s connected to a mac mini (1.6ghz intel core duo, 1gb ram) via firewire. I draw my audio from a premixed channel on the main sound board. We use an AT&T elevate 4g hotspot to connect to the internet.

Any advice or suggestions would be great. Any suggestions on what equipment I should be looking at buying would be great, right now we are only doing one camera but I own a Cannon GL2 that I've offered the church so we do plan on moving to a multi-camera setup eventually.

[Richard Tarr]

I would try using a wired connection to the internet and see if that solves the problem. I would not trust a wifi signal to stream.

[JasonI]

Richard,

That's what I've suggested to the church leadership. When we first started renting the space at the theater the original owners wouldn't let us run our own internet line. AMC recently bought the theater so the leadership team is going to go back and ask them if we can run one. We have streamed the service for a few years using 3g and 4g setups, while it's not great it has worked in the past. It seems things started going wrong when we switched to sermon.net. I've given them my opinion on what could be causing it and a wired internet connection is at the top of the list. They responded with questions about why didn't we have this problem before and I couldn't give them a solid answer other than we where not archiving the sermons before and the problem we are having isn't with the live stream but it's after the sermon is done and it's uploading for archival.

I'm also trying to convince them that the old mac mini needs to be replaced with a computer capable of editing video since we have a copy of FCP that isn't being used right now.

[scottsermonnet]

Hi Jason,

This is Scott from sermon.net, if you haven't already been in touch with us through our regular support avenues (within your account or toll-free or email) please feel free to follow up with us there and we'll be happy to help further if needed.

The wireless connection is likely the cause, and as you mentioned you can make it work during the live event because the connection restarts, but the copy that is stored on our end is incomplete and not good for archiving.

I'd suggest using the option within the Flash Media Live Encoder to save a copy of the broadcast - you'll see this in the right hand column under "Save to File". If the box is already checked you might have copies of past broadcasts, click the Browse button on the right side to see where your backups have been saved (or to change where they are saved to).

Should the connection drop and you need a complete file for on-demand viewing, you can upload the backup. If you have any other questions or trouble please let us know, we're always happy to help!

Scott

[JeffReckart]

CharltonChars,

I notice you have posted in about 3 or 4 topics about this!
Maybe a better solution is ask as specific question about your specific situation, and the good folks here will try to help. Most of the time, they will suggest an answer to try, because everybody's knowdlege/experience and equipment, not to mention goals will vary immensely. Also, if they need more info to help you, they often will ask questions for you to check on, and get back to them.

A very short version of streaming is this....

A camera connected to a computer, that is connected to the internet, braodcasting to some streaming service, for folks to view!

that is a basic setup. Where do you need help?

JR