Question / Help Broadcasting a church sevice

MrNutsy

New Member
Greetings!

So I will admit that I am absolutely new to the idea of broadcasting video and I have little knowledge about the process and pros and cons. I am hoping you can offer some advice in layman's terms. I will tell you that I do have computer support experience - 15 years worth. But I have never dealt with broadcasting video.

What I am looking to broadcast is a single camera stream of a church service. (Multi-camera is an option, if there is an easy way to switch between the cameras). The church has DSL (I know - cable is better. We can't get cable where we are or FiOS), but I am not sure of the up / down speeds. I can find out if needed. I doubt it is very high.

We do broadcast the audio right now - through a Peavey soundboard to a desktop and out to paltalk. It works ok - but barley. There is static and it sometimes cuts out. It was real bad until I dropped the output from the soundboard - then the drops were reduced. But the buzzing and static is still there. As an FYI - there is no buzzing or hissing in the line prior to the computer - it was the first thing I thought to check - bad cable or conenctors.

The soundboard is a Peavey RQ 4332C, if that helps. I can feed audio into the video stream from the soundboard. I would just need to know if that is practical or not. Give the configuration of the church (below), I think I will have to figure out a way to make that happen.

The next challenge in this is that the sanctuary has a high, vaulted ceiling with an open floor - no pillars or cross beams. There are vertical support beams running up the side along the walls about half way down the length of the sanctuary. I do have access to use them, but this would give me a shot from the side, not straight on. And the back wall is about 60 feet away from the pulpit.

I am willing to dig into my pocket a little, but the budget is pretty limited. I can do a custom build of a computer, if needed - that will probably be the least expensive way for me to go to get the most bang for my buck.

Ideally, what I would like to have is a setup that I can access the computer remotely to turn it on and run it. I have VNC installed on the computer we use for the audio broadcast, so I can use that for control. Or I can set up a lights out board for access as well. Network speed inside the church 1gb

Tell me what else you need to know and I will get you the information.

Thank you!
 

dodgepong

Administrator
Community Helper
I'm confused...do you need help actually using OBS, or are you asking for advice on what audio/video hardware to get?
 

MrNutsy

New Member
Sorry - I guess I wasn't clear on that point.

Both. I need to know have an idea of what hardware is recommended for streaming a live broadcast and what pros and cons I need to be aware of using the OBS software for a live broadcast. I have the sound equipment, so I should be able to provide reasonable sound from the mics upfront.

My main concern is getting the best quality for the broadcast - without breaking the bank. OBS came highly recommended, so I am confident in its ability. But, as with any software, I want to make sure the settings are correct and the hardware under the software meets the needs of the software.
 

Cryonic

Member
Laptop with an i5/i7 CPU (Sandy, Ivy or Haswell) would do the job pretty good.
Sound equipment - sounds like a mixer with multiple microphones and an audio interface.

When i use Quicksync (Intel HD GPU needed) my CPU usage is about 5 to 10%.
x264 encoder will use more power but my Ivy i5 with 2,3GHz can handle it pretty good, up to 60-70% CPU load for slower presets (slower preset = better quality and a lot more cpu load)

For video capture - a good webcam will do the job (logitech c920), but if you want real nice video you can use an external capture card (HDMI input) with any cam that has HDMI out (DSLR, camcorder blah).

And you should look at OBS remote app for your smartphone to control OBS, that will make your life easy :-)
 

Cryonic

Member
Just think about some things - CPU is the most important part for streaming (encoding live). My laptop has only the Intel HD GPU, you dont need a dedicated GPU (but it can help, specially Nvidia).

Quicksync on Intel GPUs will remove the load from the CPU (great for multitasking on a laptop, i do this while DJing from the same laptop), but the video quality is better with the x264 encoder (and more settings avaliable).

AMD CPUs are pretty weak, but it will work too.

Just get a laptop from a friend for a short test and connect anything that you will use (cameras, sound equipment) and test it with the same bitrate that you can use outside. Recording & streaming in OBS use the same settings, so for testing you can record local videos. That will give you some infos about the power that you need to get a smooth videostream with your settings.

There are many guides how to stream, but not so many for streaming just a camera input and audio. Most people use OBS with a really powerful PC; but if OBS is the only thing that will run on the laptop, any midrange laptop with i5 dualcore (with hyperthreading) should do the job.
 

Boildown

Active Member
Questions that need answering: What kind of camera are you using, what is the video signal format that it outputs that you plan to record/stream, and how do you plan to capture this on whatever computer you use?
 
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