I’ve been live-streaming training over at my blog for a few months now, so when YouTube lowered the number of subscribers necessary to take advantage of the service, I thought I’d take a look.
For the purposes of this article, I’m assuming that you’d want to embed the video of your stream on your church’s website along with moderated chat. Unfortunately, how YouTube live streaming works doesn’t make it easy. Soon, I’ll write about how to overcome these hurdles, but first I want to talk about what they are and why they’re a problem.
YouTube live streaming isn’t designed for regular, weekly streaming.
It’s clear to me that YouTube envisions this service for corporate, school, sporting, and other randomly scheduled events. If you stream regularly, like churches or live webcasters do, you’ll be disappointed by the fact that you need to schedule each event separately. You can’t just repeat every Sunday at 9:30 a.m. and since each event has it’s own unique embed code, you need to re-embed for each event.
YouTube live streaming isn’t designed for two or more services in a day.
To avoid re-embedding, you might think, “I’ll just start the stream at the beginning of the first service and stop it at the end of the last one.” In this case, the limit of 4 hours per session might be problematic, too.
Imagine you’ve got two services at your church, a 9:30 and 11:30. You’re under the limit as long as you end the service by 1:30. What if the 9:30 ends at 11:00, but you keep the stream running, but unfortunately, your pastor, freed by the fact that there isn’t another service after the 11:30 puts in a little more of the sermon that he didn’t really want to cut and adds an altar call at the end? Before you know it, it’s 1:15, the stream has been running for 3:45 and the announcement time and offering still need to happen before worship pastor steps up for the closing song.
YouTube doesn’t have an editor that can deal with files longer than two hours.
If you do finish in less than four hours, your next problem is that you need to edit the file so that each service is its exact length. The solution is to download the MP4, edit it, and upload the final product, but that’s more time and depending on your editor, you might need to transcode it first, too.
For files that are two hours or less, the YouTube editor can trim off the beginning and end with no problem. If you only have one service, that’s less than that time, it’s not difficult to do at all. I don’t like deciding between re-embedding multiple services in a short time in between services and doing a much more involved “download, transcode, edit, re-upload” process.
YouTube live streaming doesn’t let you encode on one machine, but monitor on another.
The other live streaming services have told me that monitoring the stream on the same machine that you’re using to encode can cause decreased performance, but I can’t seem to find a way to stream without watching the video on YouTube at the same time. Sure, you can watch the video on another machine, but YouTube’s encoding page includes a preview of what YouTube is receiving, so if the encoding machine is on the edge of being powerful enough, you might have problems.
All these problems have solutions, but…
For churches who have paid staff that do any of these steps, the additional time might be more expensive than the cost of paying for a streaming service that is built with churches in mind.
For churches that use all volunteer labor, there’s still a cost in time. Those volunteers could be doing other things, like spending time with their families or doing other tasks.
What do you think? Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?
[Image via iowa_spirit_walker via photopin cc]
Jon says
I’m looking forward to seeing your solutions. I’ve had a YouTube for nonprofits account for some time and would like to do our live steaming with it. However, due to the complicated nature of it, and having an all-volunteer staff, I’ve not made the switch. Currently we’re using Ustream free – hate the ads but love how simple it is.
Douglas Porter says
We use YouTube livestream and have used it for about a year or less. We were using Ustream free also and were annoyed with the ads. I hope I’m not going to rob you of your future post but this is something I get asked about by other churches a lot and so I think it will be helpful to share here.
To sign up for a YouTube nonprofit account go here: http://www.youtube.com/nonprofits
It took weeks, actually the whole process was about 2 months, to get approved. I assume it’s because this is when the feature first became available and they were getting hit hard with requests. Either way, be patient.
I’m not trying to battle here I just want to make points from my experience on all of your points.
I see your point of YouTube not being set up for weekly streaming. I thought that too when I first started streaming with them. It is a pain to create a new event each week but I get to the church about 3 hours before our first service starts and I have time to get it going. Plus, I am full time at my job so I can do it during the week too. It’s better actually to do it earlier, such as after the Sunday services for the next week so you can promote it on your YouTube Channel. example: http://grab.by/pXYq
You do not need to re-embed your videos for each event. You can create a playlist titled “Live” and add the new live events to the playlist as you create them. Then, you just embed the playlist once. This is what we do on our live page at http://www.saylorvillechurch.com/live Example: http://grab.by/pXZa
You can stream more than one service. We have 2 services in the morning. One at 8:30am and one at 10:15am. We start the stream at 8:00am with looping announcements and the stream runs between our services for 30 minutes. I usually have the stream stopped by 12:00pm which is 4 hours. But, the 4 hour limit you’re seeing is only for recording. You can turn recording off. Example: http://grab.by/pXYa We turn off recording because we edit down the video to just the message and upload that at a higher resolution later. You can still set your stream longer than 4 hours. Example: http://grab.by/pXY6
We record our services using Blackmagic equipment and not YouTube. We edit the first service later in Final Cut Pro X and upload it to YouTube at 720p.
We encode on one computer and monitor on another. We have a dedicated laptop that both streams the service and controls our camera switcher. Then, I set up the live stream and monitor it from my laptop at the soundboard. You can see how many viewers, stream health and a preview if you’d like. The “Control Room” is available via the web so it viewable anywhere. Example: http://grab.by/pY2Y
Maybe the problem is that you’re using a web browser to stream and not an application. We use a program called Wirecast for YouTube. There are free and paid versions: http://www.telestream.net/wirecastforyoutube/cb-landing.htm
There is one MAJOR issue still and that is copyright violations. YouTube was first detecting our background music when we would use the livestream as our recording. We then disabled recording and edit our services and uploaded them later without the music. Recently they started detecting music during the live stream even with recording off. So, we created a camera angle in Wirecast that has no audio that we select before, between and after the services. The problem is we have to remember to do this. I was once banned for 24 and another time for 7 days for copyright violation. We had to fall back to Ustream that week. My longterm goal is to create a custom audio out from our board that doesn’t include our channel that has the background music. Just waiting on Presonus to ship 🙂
Overall, YouTube works great and it’s available on many devices and in many countries. It’s very accessible. We were sick of the ads on Ustream and that it cut out the part of the message as the commercial played. We can also tell people only one place to go for both live and recorded videos. Also, when someone is watching another one of our videos and we are live streaming at that moment, they see it as an option and can watch live.
Hope that covers it all. If you have any questions I’d love to help and I’ll get back to you here. Thanks!
Paul Alan Clifford (@PaulAlanClif) says
Good points all.
If this is your full-time job, is it worth the savings from a dedicated, but paid solution to pay you to do those things? WorshipChannels (which is what I use for my live-streaming) is only $99 a month. If youtube costs you 10 hours of work at $10/hr (you’re probably paid more, but just a guess), is it worth the savings?
Now, it could be that you get more traffic than that package allows, so maybe it is worth it, but I think it’s a good question to ask.
As I write the follow-up it’s good for me to know your solutions, though. Thx.
Douglas Porter says
I’m still not sure I would pay for it if every piece was done for me. Having our video content on YouTube, whether live or recorded, makes it available to the whole world on a scale not comparable on any other service. We’re not trying to reach someone that would go to WorshipChannels.com or whatever, we’re reaching the lost. But on that note, It definitely doesn’t take me 10 hours. Before I had a volunteer who now takes it home and edit’s and uploads it, I would just drag the video into Final Cut Pro X, Trim the beginning and end, export and upload. Most all are background tasks so it didn’t eat my time.
I just see live streaming and recording two different things. I don’t trust the internet connection to capture my 720p video without jitter and lag. I want a hard, high quality recording that I can edit and upload later. Video is becoming a HUGE part of the web and YouTube is where it’s at and we want to be a part of it.
Paul Alan Clifford (@PaulAlanClif) says
WorshipChannels (or any of the other church streaming services I’ve looked into) isn’t an aggregator of videos like GodTube; it’s just a streaming service that enables you to easily embed live video into your site.
“I have a volunteer who…” doesn’t solve the problem. What needs to be done that they could do with their time? Could they spend time with their family? Could they the edit something else or take your ministry up a notch?
Streaming and recording ARE different, but YouTube offers to record in the cloud, so if you depend on this, it brings up problems.
Douglas Porter says
The volunteer is bringing our ministry up, and more than a notch. This is how he serves along with playing bass, running lyrics & making videos of testimonies, baptisms, youth group & promos. If we just streamed the video to YouTube at low quality our permanent videos would look bad. So we edit them and upload them at higher quality separately. I guess I look at all of this at a different angle. I’m thankful for a free, quality service. I’m thankful for a volunteer who loves to serve by spreading the Gospel through technology. People are thankful for both a quality live stream and a catalog of services, classes, announcements, baptisms and testimonies all in one place. My goal is to share how we’ve accomplished this and allow others to do the same.
Joe G says
Thanks so much for your comments, very useful, and if you have any more insights do share. We have avoided the nonprofits program, as there was something about not using the livestream for religious instruction. Anyway, as we now have enough subscribers it doesn’t matter 🙂
We’re looking in to it soon, lots of issues but we’ll get there. Currently use livestream’s service, not bad but limited. And couldn’t agree more about the reach of youtube, just can’t compare.
Is it possible to start and stop recording during the stream when it’s live? That way we wouldn’t have to use the multiple camera workaround to avoid copyright issues.
Javier Torres says
I agree… they should be looked at as online campuses.
where people may be reached. i agree that youtube is a way wider net to catch fish than a subbrand video site. plus the SEO of google is better than any.
Javier Torres says
having the gained SEO advantage of youtube/google will pay for itself in seo cost having consistent content as long as its tagged and linked correctly
Andrey says
“You do not need to re-embed your videos for each event. You can create a playlist titled “Live” and add the new live events to the playlist as you create them. ”
Try this:
ix-show-latest-youtube – plugin for Word Press or
http://github.com/MoritzT/HOA-Static-Player – java script
Javier Torres says
i totally agree with all your points the pros and the cons… im not sure if this is new beacuse we were approved for google non profit or not. but now it dosnt give us the banned warnings for third party content.
it appears that when you do have it playing as a dvr recorded content that it does pop ups and give the owner of the copy-written material the adsense revenue.
i forget where i read that.
Paul Nye says
Thanks for the post Douglas. I embedded a playlist embed code and it works just as you said!
Q1. Do events have to be manually ‘started’ from the ‘Live Control Room’? It seems that if not the player shows ‘starting soon..’ but never does.
Q2. I created 2 events with start and end times: Event 1, (8-9am) and Event 2, (10-11am),
However, at 10:05am the embedded playlist still plays Event 1 from the beginning, even though Event 1 end time had passed and the stream was manually stopped, and even though Event 2 was now live. My workaround was to delete Event 1, only then Event 2 would play live
Thanks for your help.
Greg Miller says
We have just started live streaming within the past couple of months and I really find YouTube to be a higher quality than the churchstreaming.tv subscription we also have as we get started. I keep having problems with replays not having the audio and video synced on the churchstreaming service as well. We’ve been able to remove the recorded music feed (preservice, postservice, etc) from the live stream so YouTube isn’t catching that copyrighted content, but YouTube IS catching the worship songs that are performed during the service itself (which I think is nuts as it’s in a different key, our people playing it, etc, but that’s beside the point). We own a Stream License from CCLI, so we have the licensing we need to stream that content, but YouTube doesn’t know that, so I’ve had to dispute the claims every time. The problem is that the content owner has up to 30 days to respond to a dispute and in the meantime, ads are played on our replay videos. Have you found any workaround to this?
Ben Russell says
I found no workaround for the youtube disputes. In fact that’s why I finally left Youtube. It became so annoying that it wasn’t worth the trouble. (We still upload the podcasts though…)
We had one service where a b-name musician from Nashville sang a big hit at our church. Yes, it was a hit, but it was his song and he had the rights. Youtube almost cut off our broadcast that morning… I just happened to notice the warning on the admin page of the youtube account. So we had to stop broadcasting the segment and throw up a generic screen that said “Sorry, we’ll be back in a moment.”.
It just isn’t worth the hassle. Youtube is convenient for viewers, but it’s not convenient for broadcasters unless your only broadcasting content that you create from scratch.
Greg Miller says
Thanks for the reply, Ben. I was going to try getting back to our churchstreaming.tv service this past week as I was finally able to get some of our replays to sync audio and video, but when I was testing the stream, it was super jumpy – skipping frames every few seconds. I played around with the quality and even came all the way down to sending one 720 stream at just 1500 kbps (our upload speed is around 19mbps) and we still had problems. I switched back to youtube, sending a 1080 feed at 5000kbps and no issues. Sure enough, three out of six songs were tagged by YouTube even though they weren’t pre-recorded content, just us playing them. It seems I can’t win – even trying to use a service that costs $99/month, we still had issues. I’m hoping they maybe just had issues on their end for the one weekend or something.
Ben Russell says
Tell you what Greg, I’ve considered churchstreaming.tv before, but we aren’t there yet (not ready to spend $100 monthly). I’ve been streaming with sermon.net before and after youtube for the past 2 years. Their service has been great for us. It took some time to figure out how to setup with our higher end equipment though.
Sermon.net starts as low as $25 or $50 a month and has a sliding scale based on bandwidth and storage use. (So we store video elsewhere.) They also don’t help with a roku channel. But I’ve had good video quality, good steaming service, and they’re usually ready to help when needed.
Willy says
Instead of “disputing…” just “acknowledge” the copyright claim…
You will then get a note by the video in the creator studio that says: “Acknowledged Third Party Content”
The videos will play without any problem… YouTube will run advertisements over a segment of the video (which can be minimized…) and they send royalties to the “Third Party Content” copyright owners…
Even if you pay CCLI licensing fees… you probably don’t have the rights to “synchronization” licensing fees… I have found this to be a “win-win…” as YouTube deals with the royalties… and we just say “yes…” someone else wrote and owns the music we are performing…
Ryan says
Does acknowledging the 3rd party content avoid a copyright strike?
Darryl Schoeman says
Hey Paul.
Thanks for this post.
I have never required to investigate any form of live streaming options and so have personally never tried YouTube’s live streaming. I recently stumbled upon Google Hangouts and it’s integrated live broadcast feature which “streams” to a user’s YouTube profile. Quality of the image aside, there is a slight delay between your “live” and the streamed “live”, but it still gives the “impression” of a live streaming event.
What are your thoughts on using Google Hangouts for live streaming?
God bless
Darryl
Paul Alan Clifford (@PaulAlanClif) says
Hangouts on air (aka HOA) will work, but it’s much more limited than the live streaming. Since YouTube allows nonprofits to use their streaming service for free, I’d go that route unless you want multiple people to participate in the hangout, but that’s less of a service and more an interview or round table kind of thing.
Paul
Darryl Schoeman says
Thanks Paul.
Forgive my ignorance, but from what I saw on the hangouts the other day, I can host a hangout with ten other people AS WELL AS broadcast the hangout live to my YouTube profile. When I tested it, it streamed my test event, save for a slight delay. And what’s more, I have zero subscribers to my YouTube profile. Does this “live broadcast” using hangouts not overcome the YouTube subscriber’s issue?
Darryl
Ron says
I agree with Douglas, the benefit of being on YouTube out weighs the quirks of YouTube preparation to stream. We also had the copyright problem but it was only during moments when we would use purchased content. After clarification we have the legal right to play purchased content “LIVE” but not to stream. We are discussing creating our own mini-movies that relate to each series to play during the times we use purchased content.
Paul Alan Clifford (@PaulAlanClif) says
Question. What advantage (today, not in the future) is there to live streaming your service to YouTube vs. uploading the recorded service after it’s done (assuming live-to-hard drive)?
Let’s say, that you record the service and upload it directly after it’s done (chopping off the beginning and end in Quicktime player or something), you loose an hour or two of it being online, but is that a huge spike in traffic?
I don’t think YouTube is yet featuring all their live streams, are they? I saw that there is a live section but the videos I saw had issues (like that they weren’t currently live), so I don’t know that it’s helpful yet.
Paul
Paul G says
Hello Paul
thanks for this article, very informative!
Currently my church is looking into buying an enterprise account with Ustream and it’s gonna be expensive. I have also been approve to broadcast live on youtube. So I am brainstorming my options.
While it might be a pain embedding and typing details every week, we do that every week to re upload our edited services anyways. So I think this “disadvantage,” could be actually kill two birds with one stone. If you put all the sermon info, scripture, pastor preaching ahead of time. People will not only see it before and during but also after. And the information was only put once! Give me your thoughts, and thanks again
Paul Alan Clifford (@PaulAlanClif) says
“we do that every week to re upload our edited services anyways. So I think this “disadvantage,” could be actually kill two birds with one stone.”
If you’re still going to reupload and edited video, it won’t kill two birds with one stone. It will just add work, in fact the same work, twice — once for the stream and once for the edited video. Now, if you don’t edit the video and just leave the steam up as is or trim it in YouTube, you should be fine (assuming your video isn’t too long).
With that said, I’m a big fan of ChurchStreaming.tv. They’ve been very responsive to me (some of my suggestions have become features). They can also automatically put your show on YouTube for you, so it actually saves you work. It’s not free, but it’s worth looking at.
David Plappert says
UCstreaming offers ad-free, live hd video streaming accounts for free.
Paul Alan Clifford (@PaulAlanClif) says
@David, thanks for the resource. It’s pretty limited, though. According to their pricing page, it’s only 8 hours of viewing a month for free. In 4 week months (not all are), a 1-hour service would eat through that with only 2 viewers.
For some that might be enough, but the moment a third person shows up and the first two stay, too, it quits being free.
Churches with longer services would eat through it much faster.
Joe says
Our web developer, a church member, wrote some code which queries our youtube channel to see if anything is currently streaming, and embeds it if it is. If there isn’t anything streaming there is a list of past and upcoming video ‘events’. It’s a very customised solution but it works well.
We have found that sometimes our worship group’s music is picked up by youtube as third party copyright (which it obviously isn’t as they’re playing it live). Despite this we have not received any penalties. Obviously as soon as we trim the beginning and end of services, thereby creating a new ‘sermon only’ video, this is not an issue.
Take a look. The only downside we have at the moment is we have lost the chat/live comments section on our site (it is part of the livestream embed), but this is still available by clicking through to the youtube video page. The youtube analytics are great, you can’t beat it for sharing ability and being featured in youtube search results is a huge plus!
Andrey says
Hi Joe,
I tried the plugin ix-show-latest-youtube for Word Press and
http://github.com/MoritzT/HOA-Static-Player – java script – both work. I would be interested to try your code. Is it possible to send it to me?
My email: [email protected]
Thank you in advance.
God bless you
Ben Russell says
I have to admit, I’m getting a little burned by youtube. I REALLY like the youtube benefits:
-more than one video quality
-streaming & podcasting
-embeds in facebook (I really like this and I don’t know anybody else that does it)
-everybody uses youtube..
-it’s free
BUT, nearly every live stream gets tagged with “Your video may include content that is owned by a third party.” because a background track is played during worship or something simple like that.
We purchased a “Podcasting & Streaming” license through CCLI and I’ve attempted to dispute the rights claims with youtube, but the disputes are coming back negative. I’ve seen forum threads that suggest getting whitelisted by music rights companies, but I have yet to figure out how that is possible. And unfortunately it seems impossible to talk with a youtube representative unless you have had A TON of youtube viewers.
I have tried breaking from the live stream with a message saying “sorry, we can’t broadcast this portion…” to cover up songs or videos that I assume will cause problems, but often times youtube finds something that it claims as owned by somebody else. It’s a bit frustrating.
Up till now I’ve lived with the tagged videos… It doesn’t seem to affect the playback. People can still watch the programs. But I cannot edit the programs down… in other words if I record a couple minutes of empty space before the church service starts, I cannot go back and edit it down on youtube because the video is tagged with copyrights.
So, I’ve been shopping around. Our church had used sermon.net prior to youtube. It’s a good all-in-one service but was sometimes buggy.
Any other suggestions?
Ben
Paul Alan Clifford (@PaulAlanClif) says
Take a look at the service I use. http://trinitydigitalmedia.com/churchstreaming They have good, reliable service and offer a one month trial to see if it’s right for you.
Ben Russell says
Thank you Paul. That looks like a very good service. I may work towards that. We don’t have enough viewers yet to justify the $99 monthly, but we’re getting there…
Ben Russell says
Hey Paul, I noticed that a year ago you recommended WorshipChannels and now you’re recommending ChurchStreaming.tv. Can you tell me the difference between the 2?
Thanks!
Paul Alan Clifford (@PaulAlanClif) says
I have a good relationship with both. I still recommend both. ChurchStreaming.tv made iOS streaming easier for me. I also love the Roku channel (which I need to tweak b/c the design isn’t my best work). Finally, ChurchStreaming.tv gives me a direct link to a download file which I use for my video podcasts.
I haven’t logged into my worshipchannels account in a while to see the improvements they’ve made. They might be even again in features.
CJ says
So much to learn and this was a great primer with plenty of buzz words. As a web designer with several projects in process streaming services are a natural desire of the small local church. You articles have birthed a mental framework so to speak . Thank you!
Paul Alan Clifford says
Thanks.
Don’t hesitate to ask questions. I’d love to define some of the jargon for you more.
Paul
Gef says
Hello, thanks for your very helpful blog. Is there anyway to stream two four hours weekly services on youtube or via hangout without the hangout logo and embedded to the church website? I appreciate your response.
Paul Alan Clifford (@PaulAlanClif) says
I don’t think so. The 4-hour limit is a hard one. So I suppose you could stream for 4 hours and be fine. The issue is if you went one minute over, it would just stop.
Willy says
Youtube is a fab platform for streaming live video for church now!
A way to overcome re-embedding every week is to create a youtube playlist and load the new “live” link into the playlist on youtube weekly… the nice part is its free… and widely used!
Check out our site for how we are using this.
We use Wirecast Pro to stream to YouTube and stream live weekly.
http://avianobaptist.church
if you have questions on how we do this – or want to learn move email me at : video @ avianobaptist.church
Paul Alan Clifford (@PaulAlanClif) says
Here are two reasons why I’d avoid that approach. First, there’s no guarantee that they’ll put ads on your video. They have other options, including pulling your video altogether, but if they do, the ads may not be appropriate to the subject. For example, your pastor talks about stewardship and there’s an add for a luxury car. That’s not horrible, but there’s worse situations like a series on relationships that gets a trailer for “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
Secondly, if you have the right license (there is a CCLI streaming license), you’re wasting the church’s money in buying a license you’re not using and instead giving money to the artist with commercials instead.
If you’re not using the CCLI streaming license (or the CCA streaming license, which both cover the sync as it relates to the stream), that’s a problem too. In effect, it’s saying, “If they don’t catch us, we don’t pay.” It doesn’t really jive with Romans 13’s command to obey the governing authorities.
Paul
jesse says
1. You can turn off ads entirely! Our’s have 0 ads ever!
2. You can actually use your CCLI (there’s a specific one for livestreaming LIVE content) to “dispute” copyright claims and takedowns (just keep in mind that at times youtube will side with the content creator regadless, just don’t use that artist’s music in your services anymore!)
Side note: Youtube now has a feature “in beta” (it’s not really beta imo) where you don’t set up scheduling and it just goes live as soon as you start your transcoding (instead of starting your transcoding AND pushing the start button on youtube). The interface is very nice overall, and if you’re currently live people can go to a static link to view it ( youtube.com/*yourchannelname*/live)
Ben Russell says
From Jesse – “2. You can actually use your CCLI (there’s a specific one for livestreaming LIVE content) to “dispute” copyright claims and takedowns”
I disagree Jesse. I tried disputing takedowns and copyright disputes with our specific CCLI livestreaming license. When a dispute rose up, I’d share our license number with Youtube and tell them we had the right to use the music. It didn’t matter. There is nobody to talk with. Youtube still kept their advertising banners on our video, despite our license and right to use the content. We even had a live performer, the same artist that wrote and recorded a Nashville song, perform at our church during a church service. I had to fade the live feed to black during the broadcast because Youtube was threatening to cut the broadcast.
I finally gave up the fight and went somewhere else. Now we broadcast on sermon.net and I upload an edited sermon to Youtube.
Paul Clifford says
Ben is right. This isn’t a copyright issue (I’m assuming that you’ve got either the WorshipCast or CCLI streaming license). It’s a customer service issue. YouTube doesn’t have anyone I’ve yet found that I can tell to whitelist my church because we have the appropriate license.
Also, this article is 3 years or so old, so some stuff has changed, but it’s still worrisome to me that churches default to free and problematic over moderately priced and working.
Agustín says
I made a script to avoid “re-embedding” the live broadcast every time you start an event. It’s made in Javascript. I put this here in case someone finds it useful. Let me know if you have any questions. Blessings. http://github.com/agustinaliagac/youtube-live-stream-checker
Paul Alan Clifford (@PaulAlanClif) says
Thanks for that resource.
Nathan says
Do you know of any churches using Facebook Live to stream services? We stumbled upon it at our church plant in NYC last Sunday and I think we will do it again. I wrote about the experience at nathancreitz.net/facebook-live-for-churches/. Would love to get your thoughts.
Paul Alan Clifford says
If you’d asked before last Sunday, my answer would have been different. Sunday afternoon, I took my 9 year old to our church’s “Princess and King Ball.” During one point, there was dancing, not slow dancing, but silly dancing, so I decided to act like a fool to make my little girl happy. My wife had hidden herself so that she could watch and shoot video of the spectacle that is my dancing ability. She promptly uploaded it to facebook. When I got home, I got a message that the video was taken down for copyright violations.
They were right, copyrighted music was playing in the background, but I’m not quite sure yet if there’s anyone to talk to had it been a violation based on playing copyrighted music live. That’s the problem. Companies that are big targets are incentivized to pull their users video and disincentivized from making it possible to complain.
There’s also the problem of creating a good live-stream when the only way to do it is through a phone.
Russ says
My solution is to use a free embeded ustream live broadcast, plus I record it locally. Then I upload it to youtube..
http://www.trfsda.com/article/32/media/video-feed-and-archive
Jarib says
I was able to just insert my live stream code into the xml file for the Flash Media Live Encoder. Now, every Sunday, the tech just opens FMLE and clicks “Start.” Viola! Very simple streaming.
Ben says
Hey Paul, this article and it’s comments have been a tremendous resource for me. I thought I’d check back in with you. We’ve been having problems more frequently with our current streaming provider so we’re thinking about changing. Do you still use churchstreaming.tv or have you found another service?
Thanks so much!
Paul Alan Clifford says
Ben, so sorry I missed this comment (it went into my spam folder, so even though I get emails about each comment, I missed yours).
That said, I use ChurchStreaming.tv and Boxcast now. My church uses Vimeo’s live-steaming service. They’re all great.