- In this video I'm gonna walk you through
a live streaming setup for churches
that's quick to assemble and easy to use,
even for small or portable churches.
I'm gonna walk you through all the gear you're gonna need,
as well as some of my favorite pieces of software
for streaming to Facebook, YouTube, or a private server.
Watch to the end because I think you'll discover
that live streaming for your church
doesn't have to be as expensive
or complicated as it sounds.
And with the right tools and a little bit of guidance,
you can reach your church community online
in just a few easy steps.
(upbeat music)
My name is Jake Gosselin with churchfront.com,
an online resource for innovative
and creative church leaders.
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Make sure you check out the show notes below
for links to all of the gear and software
mentioned in this video
that's gonna help you get up and running
with your own live stream system.
So, what I'm gonna do now is show you step-by-step
how to build a live streaming system for your church,
but please keep in mind that this system
needs to be customized to your church's need
and your own preferences.
So, the gear and software I use
doesn't necessarily have to be the gear and software you use
but I think you'll still benefit from this video
because you'll just have a more comprehensive understanding
of how all this works and then you
can go about customizing it for your church.
And before you dive into purchasing any gear or software
for live streaming at your church,
I encourage you to get together with the other leaders
at your church and ask yourself some of these questions.
Why do we need to live stream
our worship gatherings online?
What's the return on investment going to be?
Because a lot of this costs money,
so is it even gonna be worthwhile for our church?
Are we doing this merely to be cool
or to be like Elevation Church and we think
that we're gonna have thousands of people
tuning into our live stream every Sunday?
Are there people in our church community
who genuinely want to be a part of what happens on Sunday
but they can't make it because maybe they're home-bound
or maybe, and they're in the military
and they just can't physically be with us.
Will live streaming be a key part
of our marketing strategy in how we reach people
beyond our church?
If a potential visitor sees our live stream
for the first time, what kind of first impression
would it make?
Are we gonna publish our live streams publicly on YouTube
or Facebook or are we gonna stream them
to a private server where only people who know where to go
will have access to it?
I don't wanna go into detail here
about whether or not your church should be live streaming,
but honestly, I don't think your church should be wasting
any time or precious resources on a system like this
if strategically it's not gonna accomplish much for you.
My friend Brady Shearer has a fantastic video on this topic.
So, after you watch this video make sure you check it out.
He's gonna help you think through this strategically.
Assuming you are ready to move forward,
and live streaming makes strategic sense for your church,
let's dive into the setup and how it all works.
Keep in mind, all the hardware and software
that I'm gonna show you here is for my small church plan.
Again, it has to be super quick to set up.
It has to be easy to use for my volunteers.
Those were the main reasons I made some decisions
about the gear and software that I have here.
I'm not gonna be showing you an elaborate,
multi-cam live stream system that costs 10s of 1,000s
or 100s of 1,000s of dollars.
Everything you're about to see here
cost just over $2,000
and I as walk you through the specifics of my setup,
I'm gonna be walking you through the general overview
of how live streaming works, so you'll get it
from a theoretical sense as well as you'll be able
to see the hardware and how this all works together.
So the first thing you're gonna need is a computer
that acts as your hub for your live stream.
You can use a Mac or a PC and believe it or not,
after doing a lot of research on this,
it seems that having a PC is better for live streaming,
but you can still have a great setup on a Mac
and I'm gonna show you my setup which runs on a Mac.
Make sure your computer is going to have
a solid internet connection, and if you're really serious,
have a standalone internet connection
that's dedicated just to live streaming
so you don't have any glitches or lag in your feed.
So here is my setup.
I'm gonna be using my Macbook Pro.
The next thing you're gonna need is a video source.
There's a large variety of ways you can do this,
but I'm gonna talk to you about two.
The first way you can do this
is by purchasing an inexpensive camcorder
for a few $100 and I would recommend
the Canon VIXIA HF R800.
It's just over $200 and it has an HDMI output
which you'll need on any camera you try to use
with this setup.
From the camera, you're gonna send that video feed
through the HDMI cable to an HDMI video capture device,
which on the other side of that device has a USB cable
that's gonna plug into your computer.
So you're gonna have camera,
you're gonna have HDMI to USB capture device
and then that's gonna go into your computer.
When it's all said and done,
when you use a camcorder and a video capture device,
you're probably looking at around $500 to $600.
Alternatively, you could buy a camera
that has the USB functionality built into it,
so you don't need a separate HDMI capture device.
And that's what I have here.
This is the PTZ Optics 20 time zoom USB camera.
I'm really grateful for PTZ Optics for sending this to me
so I can show you all what a great tool this can be
for churches when it comes to live streaming.
This camera runs around $1,800, so it's not cheap.
It's not as cheap as getting a small little Canon camcorder,
but here's why I like this camera
and why I think it's worth the price tag.
First, it's super compact.
Look at the size of it compared to my hand here.
So it's super small, it's gonna work great
for our church context, because, again,
we're a set up and tear down church.
We can't have big bulky items.
This camera can easily be controlled via remote control,
it can pan, it can tilt,
and it can also zoom in and out.
It can also be controlled by Ableton Live,
which I'll be sure to make a video about that in the future.
The image quality on this camera is also great.
Actually, that's what you're seeing right now.
I'm looking into the PTZ Optics camera
and I'm really happy with the dynamic range of this camera
and I actually have it at this angle purposely
so that you see that even though
I have the bright windows right here
and the shadows on my face, you can still see
decent details.
Since we're a church that meets in a large auditorium,
I love having the ability to have this 20 times
optical zoom, which it's super close to my face right now
and looks ridiculous.
Probably can't even focus, it's too close.
But this is important when you are trying to stream
a worship gathering, because you have a large room,
you need to be able to zoom in on people on stage
or zoom back out wide to capture the whole stage
and you don't want digital zoom
because that will look grainy and nasty.
And finally, one of my favorite things about this camera
is that it plugs into our streaming computer via USB
so we don't need another video capture device
to go from HDMI to USB like you would with a camcorder.
So for us at our church, the simpler the setup,
the better.
You simply plug it into the computer and it works.
So those are a couple options for capturing
the video portion of your live stream.
And of course, you've got to think through
how you're gonna mount your camera or where
you're gonna place it.
At our church I'm just gonna place it on top
of a basic video tripod at the back of the room
by our sound console.
At your church, you may have a permanent worship space
where you can mount your camera permanently
so you don't have to worry about setting it up
or tearing it down every week.
Now let's talk about capturing audio for our live stream.
So like the video capture device,
you're gonna have an audio capture device
that's gonna be sending your audio feed
from your sound console to your computer.
I recommend having the ability to create a unique mix
for your live stream because often things
need to be mixed a bit differently for computer speakers
or speakers on a mobile device
versus what you're gonna be hearing from your PA system.
So we use a Midas M32R.
There's plenty of mix bus outs on that sound console.
We could plug the USB cable from the Midas M32R
directly into the computer and send audio that way,
but I think there's a more simple way of doing it
and that is to use one of those XLR outputs
from the back of the Midas M32R,
one of the mix bus outs,
and route that into a basic little audio interface
like what I have here, the Behringer UM2 interface.
This is a $30 interface, and this is an easy way
to send a unique mix from the board into an interface
and into our computer for the live stream.
And then our sound person can then
put on his or her headphones to kind of dial in
what mix would sound good for the live stream.
And with this setup on our live stream computer,
we won't need to be running a DAW
like Ableton or Pro Tools or Logic
to mix the sound from the sound console.
It will be coming into the computer
through this one mono input all mixed,
all ready to go.
So that's the audio setup, it's not quite as complicated
but you still want to make sure that you do a great job
streaming high-quality audio with your video.
And that covers all of the hardware we need
for video capture and audio capture,
so we have our video and audio coming through our computer,
but now we need a software that's going to take
that video and audio and put it together
and then send it to the internet,
to YouTube or Facebook or to a private server.
In my opinion, this is the most difficult aspect
of building your live stream system,
because the software you choose really depends
on your context, whether you're using a Mac
or a PC, and just your personal preferences.
So here are a couple popular and great solutions.
The first software you can check out,
but I don't necessarily recommend,
is OBS Studio.
It's a free software.
It runs both on Mac and PC.
Because it's free and open source,
it means it's not quite as easy to use
or plug-and-play as what I prefer.
If you're gonna use OBS Studio,
be prepared to go on YouTube,
find a bunch of tutorial videos,
and figure out how to configure it for your context.
At our church, we simply don't have time
to troubleshoot audio syncing issues
and to have these little glitches
that I was finding with OBS,
so that's why I'd rather go find a affordable paid option
for a software that's just gonna work well.
For those of you using a Mac for your live stream,
I recommend using Ecamm Live.
It's $79, it's super easy to use.
You simply plug the camera into it,
whether you have a setup like me
or if you have a HDMI capture device with a camcorder,
and it just works.
With this offer, it'll also just take seconds
to log in to your YouTube or Facebook accounts
so you can send your live stream there.
And Ecamm Live has a cool feature
where you can monitor the comments on your Facebook Live
without needing to open your browser window in Facebook
to do that.
You can do it all within Ecamm.
If you are a PC user, then I recommend checking out vMix.
It's very comparable in price to Ecamm Live.
I honestly wish vMix was available for Mac
because for live streaming a worship gathering,
it might even be a little bit better than Ecamm Live.
vMix does have a free version,
but you have to pay $60 for the version
that can stream in HD.
So while these two pieces of software are not free,
I think it's totally worth the price tag of $60 or $80
to save your team the headache when it comes
to getting this all up and running.
So finally, the last thing you need within this system
is your Facebook account or YouTube account,
so hopefully your church hasn't been living under a rock
for the past 10 years and you already have those set up.
They're free, they're easy to use,
and no matter what software you go with,
it's very easy to send your live stream to your account.
Simply follow the support videos or instructions
that come with those pieces of software.
So that covers all of the hardware and software
you're gonna need for a live stream system at your church.
To recap, you have a video capture device
and a audio capture device that's gonna send
those signals to your computer
where then it's gonna go into a software
like Ecamm Live or OBS or vMix
and then from those pieces of software,
whichever one you choose, you can then broadcast
to YouTube, Facebook or a private RTMP server.
Now I want to show you exactly what this looks like
for our church's live stream system
using the PTZ Optics camera, this Behringer interface,
the Mac, and Ecamm Live.
So both this camera and the interface
are just plugged into this Macbook Pro via USB
and we're gonna pretend that this mic here
is the mix coming from our sound console
for our live stream,
because this mic is going into this audio interface
into Channel 1.
So everything's plugged in ready to go.
I'm gonna open up Ecamm Live.
And by default, Ecamm Live is using my Facetime camera
on my computer and it is using my computer's built-in
microphone.
And then it's really easy to select the right input,
so I want to go to camera, I'm gonna select
PTZ Optics camera, it automatically detects it.
So that's what you're seeing here and I'll just pan that up
a little bit, zoom out so we're not super close.
So that's good to go with the video feed
and then under microphone, I'm gonna select
USB audio codec.
That is the Behringer UM2 interface that I have right here.
And then under Window I can bring up my sound levels
just to make sure that the sound is good
so I can monitor,
if I turn it way up it's gonna clip,
I can turn it down on the interface
to have a good healthy feed coming in there.
So my video and audio are ready to go in Ecamm Live
so now I need to select the destination.
So I could have record only or I can send it
to YouTube or Facebook.
For this example, I want to send it to YouTube.
And it's important to keep in mind
that you can actually have it record
all broadcasts up here, so it'll send the broadcast
to the internet, but it'll also record it locally
on the computer.
So I have YouTube set as a destination
and then I'm gonna press Login
and I'll select the right channel
and I'll allow it to manage my account
and then I will go ahead and make sure right now,
I'm just gonna test out this live stream
so I'll keep things on private,
because I don't really need all of you guys
to see this random live stream.
And I highly recommend you do the same
when you test out your live streams.
Always do it first in a private mode.
And then I'll hit Get Started here
and I'm ready to go live on YouTube.
So I'll go ahead and do that,
I'll press Go Live.
And we can see here I'm live
and I can be operating my camera
and then Ecamm Live can do a lot of fancy stuff
with overlays and stuff like that,
so if I wanted to have a countdown in there
I could do that.
I could add images and titles.
Lots of fancy stuff in Ecamm Live.
It makes it really, really easy to do that,
so that's why I recommend the software if you have a Mac.
So let's pretend that I'm all wrapped up.
I'll just press Finish.
So then I can view the post on YouTube and I will do that.
And we can see here I'm live and I can
be operating my, to have a countdown in there,
I could do that.
I could add images and titles,
lots of fancy stuff in Ecamm Live.
It makes it really, really easy to do that, so,
so the live stream worked.
It's super, super simple.
Right now it's a private video on YouTube.
Again, I could set this to public if I wanted to.
I'll just go ahead and delete this video,
but that's how it works.
It's really that easy.
Again, using the PTZ Optics camera,
the Behringer interface and then Ecamm Live,
again, if you're running on a Mac.
It only takes a couple seconds
to get this stuff up and running.
Now you know how to set up a live stream system
at your church.
In the near future, I'll be recording
some of the services at our church at Mission Lakewood.
We can't live stream from the school we meet at
because we do not have a reliable internet connection there.
There's only this really cruddy public wifi
that's available at the school
and it just would not be reliable to stream,
but a cool trick you can do is you can record locally
to your computer, because software like Ecamm
can do that automatically and then you can
actually play that video file back later
within Ecamm and live stream just at a later time
and this could be a cool way to be able
to have yourself or someone on your pastoral team
engage with people during the live stream
because you're not preaching a sermon
or leading worship, but you could just be at home
on the coach.
So keep an eye on my channel
as I'll be releasing more videos on this topic
in the future.
I'm really excited to show you how you can automate
the PTZ Optics camera with Ableton Live.
If you are a worship tech nerd
and you want an organized list of all the gear
we use at my church plant, including all this live stream
gear, then you should download my worship ministry toolkit
linked below this video.
Click the link, complete the from,
I'll send you instant access.
Thank you so much for watching this video.
If you found it helpful, please hit that thumbs-up button
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