Church Livestream with OBS & project to Television on wall

[BrianInGray]

Hello all.

Looking for any help I can get.

We have been live streaming our church services are using OBS and sermon.net for over a year now since the pandemic started. We use two 4K camcorders that are connected to the laptop, one with a Utap hdmi converter and one with an camlink hdmi converter. I use multiple scenes from different camera angles during the service. Even though we’ve been doing this for a year, I am still learning new things about OBS and how to stream as I knew nothing about this stuff prior to the pandemic.

My pastor recently bought two big screen televisions he would like to put up on the walls in the sanctuary so that we can run the live stream on the televisions Simultaneously from the same laptop that we live stream from.

My question is - is it possible to livestream the service and also view the obs program (not what’s showing on the screen of the Laptop,but rather the program that is being live-streamed) to televisions in the sanctuary. I need to still be able to use the laptop to change things on OBS during the service

I was planning on using HDMI cable from the laptop to a splitter, then running 2 hdmi cables, one to each television. Will that work? Or do I need another setup? How do I make sure it’s the “program” only being shown and not what is on the screen of the laptop that I am using?

Thanks for any help and suggestions.

 

[konsolenritter]

That should work (with hdmi splitter), although its not the most reliable way. But if the pastor strongly wants two screens...
So one (both) external screens would be hooked up as 2nd display to your laptop, right?

In studio mode then you can right click into the program window and use the projector to your 2nd display area.
Within the general settings you can set obs to save the state of the projectors on closing. So - as long as your 2nd displays are cabled - that projecting feature should show up automatically when OBS starts next time.

 

[BrianInGray]

That should work (with hdmi splitter), although its not the most reliable way. But if the pastor strongly wants two screens...
So one (both) external screens would be hooked up as 2nd display to your laptop, right?

In studio mode then you can right click into the program window and use the projector to your 2nd display area.
Within the general settings you can set obs to save the state of the projectors on closing. So - as long as your 2nd displays are cabled - that projecting feature should show up automatically when OBS starts next time.

Thanks so much, I’m hoping this will work.

How do I set up the televisions as a “second display” on my laptop? Is there a specific procedure for that?

Thanks

 

[BrianInGray]

That should work (with hdmi splitter), although its not the most reliable way. But if the pastor strongly wants two screens...
So one (both) external screens would be hooked up as 2nd display to your laptop, right?

In studio mode then you can right click into the program window and use the projector to your 2nd display area.
Within the general settings you can set obs to save the state of the projectors on closing. So - as long as your 2nd displays are cabled - that projecting feature should show up automatically when OBS starts next time.

Also, Is there a more reliable way to do this? Any suggestions would be very helpful.

Thanks again

 

[konsolenritter]

You never used an external monitor or display?
Normally there should be a hotkey on your keyboard. Typical its signed by a projector or television-style icon on one of the Functionkeys and used together with a Fn-Key.

 

[BrianInGray]

Normally there should be a hotkey on your keyboard. Typical its signed by a projector or television-style icon on one of the Functionkeys and used together with a Fn-Key.

thank you I’ll check it out when I go back to the church tomorrow

 

[TJR]

At our church, we do something similar, and yes, it's basically exactly what you described. We have 2 big TVs up on the front wall. We wired them with HDMI cables to an HDMI splitter box, and then wired that splitter box to our OBS PC. So, in OBS you'd right-click the program window, go down to Full Screen Projectors, and select that HDMI splitter box or big TVs' name, whichever your hardware shows up as). Thereafter, the big TVs will show the exact same material as the stream. Should be no problem.

In our church, we do not show the stream up front. But we do put up "emphasis slides", so in our case we do not project the Program window, but instead we set Full Screen Projector to our TVs on a set of dedicated Scenes/Sources. So our service looks a little different from what you're describing, but the methods with OBS is basically identical.

 

[konsolenritter]

Jepp. The way TJR describes is often used to show (only) slides with bible verses and/or worship lyrics for the public, that do appear as lower thirds in the stream, too.

 

[BrianInGray]

At our church, we do something similar, and yes, it's basically exactly what you described. We have 2 big TVs up on the front wall. We wired them with HDMI cables to an HDMI splitter box, and then wired that splitter box to our OBS PC. So, in OBS you'd right-click the program window, go down to Full Screen Projectors, and select that HDMI splitter box or big TVs' name, whichever your hardware shows up as). Thereafter, the big TVs will show the exact same material as the stream. Should be no problem.

In our church, we do not show the stream up front. But we do put up "emphasis slides", so in our case we do not project the Program window, but instead we set Full Screen Projector to our TVs on a set of dedicated Scenes/Sources. So our service looks a little different from what you're describing, but the methods with OBS is basically identical.

Thank you, I think our next step will be putting Bible verses up on the screens and maybe lyrics to some of the hymns that are played. So that will be my next question is how to set up projection from certain scenes specifically for Bible verses and him lyrics. Do I just go to the specific scenes and set them at the “full screen projector”? Is that how you do it?

Thank you

 

[BrianInGray]

Jepp. The way TJR describes is often used to show (only) slides with bible verses and/or worship lyrics for the public, that do appear as lower thirds in the stream, too.

Thank you, I think this will be our next step is projecting Bible verses and hymn lyrics up onto the screens… So I may need some advice on that as well. What specific programs do y’all use for project in the Bible verses or him lyrics? Thank you

 

[TJR]

Do I just go to the specific scenes and set them at the “full screen projector”? Is that how you do it?

Yup. We find it easiest to set up one Scene for our big TVs. We right-click that Scene and set it to Full Screen Projector to the big TVs (only have to do this once, and the TVs will stick to the Scene forever).

Inside the Scene, we layer up Sources, which in our case are Powerpoint slides exported out to PNGs. (can be other JPG images, MP4/MOV movie files, whatever you need) We load them up as Sources in order that they will appear in the service, the top slide is the first slide, 2nd is below that, ..., last item at the bottom. Then, during the service, we just click the eyeball icon to turn off the top-most slide, so the 2nd appears through to the big TVs. Then, on cue, we eyeball off the 2nd slide so the 3rd shows through, etc. Easy peasy.

For us, this makes driving the big TVs up front very simple, so we can concentrate on the stream (Program window) itself. About 90% of our energy goes into the stream to the outside world, about 10% of our brain power is needed for the big TVs.

Of course, YMMV, and there are more than one way to skin cats.

 

[BrianInGray]

Yup. We find it easiest to set up one Scene for our big TVs. We right-click that Scene and set it to Full Screen Projector to the big TVs (only have to do this once, and the TVs will stick to the Scene forever).

Inside the Scene, we layer up Sources, which in our case are Powerpoint slides exported out to PNGs. (can be other JPG images, MP4/MOV movie files, whatever you need) We load them up as Sources in order that they will appear in the service, the top slide is the first slide, 2nd is below that, ..., last item at the bottom. Then, during the service, we just click the eyeball icon to turn off the top-most slide, so the 2nd appears through to the big TVs. Then, on cue, we eyeball off the 2nd slide so the 3rd shows through, etc. Easy peasy.

For us, this makes driving the big TVs up front very simple, so we can concentrate on the stream (Program window) itself. About 90% of our energy goes into the stream to the outside world, about 10% of our brain power is needed for the big TVs.

Of course, YMMV, and there are more than one way to skin cats.

This sounds exactly like me at my church, we are a small church. My focus has been primarily on live stream but since we’ve gotten pretty good at that, pastor wants to try to do some other things so it’s up to me to figure it out LOL. That’s why I’m here. Thank you so much, I’ll probably try to set up the TVs this week and see how it works.

 

[CBCGrayGA]

At our church, we do something similar, and yes, it's basically exactly what you described. We have 2 big TVs up on the front wall. We wired them with HDMI cables to an HDMI splitter box, and then wired that splitter box to our OBS PC. So, in OBS you'd right-click the program window, go down to Full Screen Projectors, and select that HDMI splitter box or big TVs' name, whichever your hardware shows up as). Thereafter, the big TVs will show the exact same material as the stream. Should be no problem.

In our church, we do not show the stream up front. But we do put up "emphasis slides", so in our case we do not project the Program window, but instead we set Full Screen Projector to our TVs on a set of dedicated Scenes/Sources. So our service looks a little different from what you're describing, but the methods with OBS is basically identical.

So I got it to work and I am projecting to the two televisions, but I cannot get any sound. Picture is fine, but no sound.

Is there a reason for that, do I need to do something else to get the sound to work on the televisions?

thanks

 

[konsolenritter]

So this one may help you. Especially in the case if your hdmi output and splitter is capable to act (can be found) as a sound output device in windows and route the audio thru to the two monitors:

Audio Monitor

Plugin for OBS Studio to add Audio Monitor dock and filter. It allows you to put the audio of a OBS source to an audio device by adding the Audio Monitor filter on the Source in OBS Studio. This can be useful in different use cases...

obsproject.com

 

[CBCGrayGA]

So this one may help you. Especially in the case if your hdmi output and splitter is capable to act (can be found) as a sound output device in windows and route the audio thru to the two monitors:

Audio Monitor

Plugin for OBS Studio to add Audio Monitor dock and filter. It allows you to put the audio of a OBS source to an audio device by adding the Audio Monitor filter on the Source in OBS Studio. This can be useful in different use cases...

obsproject.com

That worked, thank you so much. Now I have another issue, my livestream is too choppy. Seems everytime i figure out one thing, another issue comes up.

Thanks again.