What's Our Live-Stream Set-Up?
A few people have asked what our service recording and live-streaming set-up is. Here’s a brief history/summary of what we have done and are now doing…
From April 2020 to March 2021 we used recorded segments from different contributors (readings, sermons, etc.), including making our own lyric videos with our own music group which were all “stitched” together to form a single pre-recorded service that was scheduled as-live at our regular service time on our YouTube channel.
As our capabilities and resources grew, as well as being able to meet in person, we upgraded to full live-streaming in April 2021. We started using the Logitech/Mevo Start camera and multi-cam app ecosystem for this. One of the reasons for selecting this ecosystem is that at LFC we don't have the need to implement "lower-thirds" alpha-channels for lyrics.
For about 10-months we used a combination of the Mevo multi-cam app, RTMP streaming to a local Mona server and using screen share to Stream Yard for multi-destination streaming to YouTube and Facebook. Around Easter 2022 the Mevo multi-cam app had all the features we needed so we simplified the configuration and moved away from Stream Yard and Facebook streaming to just YouTube.
The set-up takes audio from the main sanctuary analogue mixing desk (via per channel effects/return cable “tapping”) to a dedicated small digital desk so that we can create and control an audio mix for the stream; the mixed output is fed into one of the Mevo cameras that auto-magically synchronises and lip-sync’s audio with video across all cameras. Our main projector display is duplicated to a separate monitor screen which one of the Mevo cameras points at – low tech, but effective!
In mid-2024 we updated a few things; (1) we started using iSingWorship (iSW) to complement live music in services from the media PC and (2) we upraded to a digital mixing desk. This required a number of practical changes as well as to the future plans for live streaming, largely due to iSW suporting just a single video output and there being no integration with EasyWorship! So, we now started to take the audio mix for the live-stream directly from the digital desk and the Media PC projector output video feed was tapped with an HDMI-NDI encoder, which means we no longer need to point a camera at a monitor screen. This allows us to use both EasyWorship and iSingWorship seamlessly and take these directly into the Mevo Multicam app for the live-stream.
Then in early 2025 we completed a few more actions to simplify and reduce ongoing stream effort and costs; (1) installed an optical zoom PTZ camera (NDI output), to replace the lectern Mevo camera and (2) moved over to OBS using NDI camera inputs (Mevo & PTZ) and projector capture via a card ratrher than NDI conversion for streaming to YouTube with camera combinations and digital zoom presets (scenes) instead of Mevo multi-cam working.
Remaing activities to complete include; (1) upgrade to Easy Worship v7, (2) migrate PCs to Windows 11 and (3) add a PTZ camera controller for operator ease.
