Behind the scenes for streaming at KCChurch

This is a behind the scenes of Kootenai Community Church's sound system and I thought I'd walk through what we have and use this time to kind of give some insight into the setup here we have at Kootenai Community Church and hopefully this might be helpful to anybody else who might be interested in broadcasting their church.

The Mevo Camera and Phone Control Setup

So first up and foremost we have the Mevo as our primary camera and that's what I'm recording from right now and hopefully that sound is coming through okay. Looks like we have I'm going to keep looking back because I got the computer over here probably angle it like that a little bit so I can look at that.

So we've got the Mevo and I can put a link to that in the description on this video and we are using it with the boost and with the tripod that comes with it. Actually it's a really well built tripod very very happy with that very stable and a lot of adjustments on it works really really well.

The only real downside that I see of the Mevo specifically for doing this type of setup is that the Mevo is required to be right up next to the event and so we actually have to put it up at the front of the church in one of the chairs and it ends up being kind of less than optimal.

The ease by which the Mevo sets up and everything really makes it a wonderful way to start and I think for smaller churches it would definitely be the way to go but as far as our church and our growth we are currently looking at buying a camera that we could put here at the back and then would zoom up into the front.

So I use a cell phone to be able to control the event so many times I have it zoomed in on the church and I'm using the Mevo app which I find to be very well done. So I bought this little holder for a drone system that I had a while ago.

It was supposed to lock into the DJI but I use that and have it sitting right here at the front of the church or at the front of the platform here. I'm just going to grab the stance real quick. Okay so if anybody wants a question or something while we're doing this backstage walkthrough I'll keep looking over and see if we have any questions.

Audio Feed, Headphones, and Avoiding App Problems

So I use this little stand to put the phone in and the thing that is important about the phone is make sure your battery is well charged and you have no other apps running. We had one incident where an issue where we started the service and I started the Mevo recording and for whatever reason it kicked on the podcast Republic app that I had installed that happened to be running but was paused and Dave Ramsey was playing in the background of our opening service and that was that was a little odd but the thing that I really recommend with it is have a set of headphones available so you can constantly be checking what your feed is.

So this is the Mevo goes to our Wi-Fi and the phone is going to our Wi-Fi so they're working together to produce the video that you're seeing now and those are the two real basic components that are Mevo specific with one exception and that is this which is the TASCAM IXZ and we use that to plug into the church's soundboard and it's got a couple of really nice settings here to be able to adapt to the soundboard.

It does take batteries which we have been a little cautious about. I wish I had one that was plugged in permanently but for what it does it does it really well. There is a USB version that we ended up getting and I'll show that here in a second but this one we've been really happy with and it's the TASCAM IXZ.

Now one of the things that I did find out the hard way was I had an adapter and I was plugging it back into itself and I inadvertently turned it on and I think it burned that unit out so definitely don't have it feed back into itself.

It does have a little input adjustment on it. We found that we basically leave that almost at zero just a little bit of gain and then we run all the sound through the sound system so that feeds into an output from our sound system and then we plug that into the phone here and I'm currently not going to do that because I don't want to mess with the Mevo settings because currently I'm using the speaker that is in the Mevo and I'm curious if anybody's in the feed how's the sound through the Mevo.

I'm going to check it when I stop here for a minute and play the video back to see how that looks. So it's the Mevo, my cell phone, and then an output from the soundboard. So one of the things that I'll show right now is our soundboard.

The Soundcraft SI Impact and Running the Church Audio

This is a sound sound craft soundboard and it's the SI impact. Apparently it's not really optimal for the setup we have but the church got it on a good deal and so it's something that we are using and making work.

It has a lot of kind of neat settings to it where it automatically adjusts and things when you hit for a specific mixer setting it'll adjust all of the sliders and then you can shut it off but it's I guess it's really kind of a monitoring board rather than a full use board like we're using it.

It has an amazing amount of features in it but it is something that there has been some struggle getting it to work right but there's a feed from the board that then comes in through here and I have this plugged into the cell phone in on the phone and that allows us to stream the video straight in or the audio straight into the phone and that is a must because this audio is okay on the mic but you can't beat straight in from the sound system.

So I really recommend using a line out and plugging it straight into the phone but you have to have some kind of adapter to get the the lines to go from the speakers to the mic and so that's essential.

Slides, Mac, and Air TV to the Projector

And then while the service is running we are using a combination of two computers here. So one is a Mac which I'm not super excited about Macs but that's what the church has and that's what they decided to go with.

I will never buy a Mac after my experience with this. I've been so unhappy with trying to make it do what I need it to do but for those people who love Macs, hey power on power to you. I know that there is a lot of benefits for doing graphics editing and stuff like that.

I'm not sure what the size of this is as far as its processor or anything but we predominantly just use it for the slides and what you'll notice is the slides right now are up and they show through the Mac and we have a Apple TV box, an Air TV box from Apple that then takes the signal from any device that can connect to Air TV and sends that through an HDMI over TCP IP connection that's going through the one of these cat 5x and then that goes up to our projector.

So as we're in the middle of service either streaming the slides before service announcement slides and stuff like that or the actual slides for the presentation on the songs. So that's my primary job is to run the songs make sure the slides are in advance enough as people are singing so they can know what the next and make sure that those all get shut off and everything when the service starts with the pastor actually giving his exposition no that's not right it's not exposition it's expository is expository exposition maybe it is that right word anyways that's where I shut it off and then we have to turn it back on again so at the point I shut it off is when I'm freed up to look at the twitch feed and then throughout the service when he's actually going through his his exposition of the scripture that's when I can interact from the back here and be able to answer questions and a lot of times I'm putting in scripture so I'll drop in for example when he's referring to Hebrews so for example he's going through Hebrews right now and that's where I'm dropping that in so as you guys are watching the feed I'm hoping that having the scripture come in aligns with the pastors referencing those scriptures that's helpful for you guys to watch it this happens he refers to stuff fast so I'm always trying to make sure I'm grabbing the right scripture at the right time and there is a I think a five to ten second delay so sometimes I get in there a little fast sometimes a little slow but I find I have to run two computers the screen I need a windows machine to be able to keep up with the chat and be able to monitor it answer any questions that you guys might have but this is all happening from the back of the church during the service you can kind of see my my point of view pastors way up there you guys kind of get that view during the service and that's because this mevo is literally sitting right up in the front of the service so here's a pastor right now coming in and I was just giving them a walkthrough of the background here and everything we have going on this is pastor Jim Osmond you got five people or four people in now you can say hey four people watching what.

Pastor Jim Osmond on Expository Teaching and the Kids' Timeline Class

Hey yeah is it is it you're giving an expository discussion or is it actually an exposition. Both it is an exposition. Yeah okay.

Expository is the adjective exposition would be the noun okay so we give an expository exposition.

An expository exposition. Right. Okay. Well I was just walking them through the setup doing a little behind the scenes walk through so they can see what happens on Sundays. Excellent. Yeah.

Thank you. How you doing. Watching. Very good. Stop cruising around see what's going on. Yeah you.

Should uh step into the classes and especially when they first start they kind of get through their initial thing right now but they do a um all the kids get up and they walk them through the timeline and oh yeah uh how God connects all these things.

Really neat to watch these little kids so you can go ahead and step in and just hang out for me. I'm just going to glance around take care. Well so if you guys have any questions about our setup I'm happy to answer anything you might have.

I'll post some links to the different pieces of equipment we have and where you can find them online. And then if you have any specific things that you're curious about happy to talk to you about this.

So this was just a short little video stream to kind of talk about what's going on behind the scenes and if you have anything specific as questions I'll kind of wait for a minute see if anybody has anything in the stream and if not we'll go ahead and shut this down.

Let's see anybody got anything doesn't look like it. There's always that delay so I never really know. Okay. Well if nobody has any questions we're going to go ahead and shut this stream down. This is the Kootenai community church behind the scenes walkthrough.

Thank you for joining us today. I hope you will join us. Sunday we have adult Sunday school starting at 9 30 pacific standard time I'm on mountain standard time so I always have to do the math and then we have the actual full service starts at about 10 45 sometimes 10 50 depending upon how things goes and usually runs until about noon.

So we'd love to have you join us. Feel free to say hi in the chat and if you have any questions while we're going to the service most of the times I can't ask the questions to the pastor or to anybody really while the service is happening.

But if you have a specific question I'll be happy to ask it afterwards and try to get you those the answers straight from the pastor or from one of the elders. But overall it's a very fluid environment.

So while it's happening the best I can kind of do is keep the scripture in there and answer any anything that's really easy like what passages are we going through. But if you have a specific question for the pastor I'm happy to write that down and then get that to you later.

So thank you for joining us. Nobody has any questions. We're going to go ahead and wrap it up. I hope you have a very blessed day.