Before we get started, this is not one of those posts where we are going to debate the biblical and spiritual reasons for starting (or not starting) a multi-site video campus. If you are looking for a place to vent, just Google “Multi-site Video Venue” and I assure you, there are places online for you to talk.
Now that’s out of the way…
I was discussing this issue with my Lead Pastor because we are launching our first video campus on April 17, 2011. We are already multi-site in that we have an Internet Campus.
At first, we were going to do manual delivery and we record our services with a DVD Recorder and thus, we have a Master Disc a few minutes after service.
(We later rip it and convert it for editing or web distribution, but that is another post entirely). And when I say manual delivery, that means that Joe Smith would actually drive the DVD to our multi-site campus 45 minutes away.
To do this, we will have to adjust service times and find a volunteer that would make that their biggest priority every weekend. And we would probably cover their gas, which would get pricey week after week.
But then we started talking about FTP or DropBox as a solution. We wondered if there was another way to make it happen.
Let’s crowdsource this. For real, help us reach another county through your techie mojo.
What would you do? What do you do (if you are already a multi-site church)?
Note: We are trying to do this without adding too much software or hardware. So if you answers doesn’t cost us anything and we use it, we’ll buy you Starbucks. However, if you have a cheap solution (i.e. less than $1000), we want to be your friend but if we get coffee, we are going dutch.
David Elmore says
We have a Saturday night service that we record to dvd for our campuses – we have talked about doing a week delay – but there are issues with that as well…
Blane Young says
Yeah.
I know that Mars Hill (Driscoll) talked about that as well but I don’t remember if they ever utilized it.
For us, it is not an option because we feel that it will take more work and management in terms of creating two sets of : bulletin, series invites, series trailers, etc.
Jordan Wiseman says
What WE do is the manual delivery via DVD just because our other venue is across the street and another 10 minutes away.
However in your situation, I would recommend recording a file into iMovie (or whatever you use) – export the file directly to a Dropbox upload folder, and bam. Now this could be an issue depending on what your service times are.
Blane Young says
My only question about recording into iMovie or Final Cut Pro is what hardware would we have to add. Our mixer (which has inputs for our iMac with ProPresenter and three cameras) has outputs for IMAG and the DVD Recorder but there are all BNC or RCA (i.e. no firewire).
Thanks for the input, keep it coming!
Jordan Wiseman says
Not sure about that. We used the Sony Anycast which has Firewire outputs.
Stefan Tribble says
A simple cheap RCA or BNC splitter or Distribution Amp to split the signal off the switcher. Then use a Analog to Digital converter. I recommend Grass Valley ADVC-110
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/349146-REG/Grass_Valley_602029_ADVC_110_Bidirectional_Media_Converter.html
Then you can go into FCP or iMovie via firewire. Very cheap portable and easy. Also, you could set up a Network Attached Storage or Dropbox record directly to it and the other campus could have access to it.
Sample Set up.
Switcher->splitter-> GV 110 -> FCP/iMovie->Dropbox/NAS/Server/Whatever you want
Blane Young says
Thank you so much for dropping a line!
This looks very promising!
It seems that at least one other person has the same setup and really digs it!
Stefan Tribble says
We have been very pleased with it. We don’t actually do a “Satellite” however we do have 2 services at 11a.m that happen on the same campus in two different venues.
Also, we own a TV station in our city so all we have to do is hook up cable at another venue and tune it to our station. (I think that may be overkill for your situation)
There are numerous ways to do it, but you just need to weigh the pros and cons of each one and find the best solution for your church. Everyone has made great and valid points but it’s all about finding the solutions custom tailored to your church. Hope this helps.
Matt James says
Our solution is the KiPro sneakernet (or Michelin net). We deliver our Saturday message via the drive from our KiPro to our satellite campus…
Since you’re already doing an iCampus recording why not record a second, higher bandwidth stream and send it to the second campus? It’d be a heck of a lot quicker than a DVD rip (not to mention a bit smaller I believe)
Jeff Alldridge says
Nice, the AJA KiPro (and KiPro Mini) are fantastic. Good chroma subsampling at 4:2:2.
I prefer h.264’s 4:2:0 over “chunky” looking DV at 4:1:1 (if we want to get picky)
Blane Young says
That looks sweet but could we come out of our Edirol 4 Channel Mixer to one of those.
We can’t just take a camera shot because we have videos and lower thirds.
Love the tip, please hit me back on that – sounds promising.
In terms of our Internet Campus, it is all sim-live on a two day delay.
DVD Recorder -> Ripped -> Converted -> Uploaded.
Jeff Alldridge says
We used the Grass Valley ADVC-110 ($219.95) to record video. It takes analog composite (or S-Video) and can looks like a DV device over firewire to the computer capturing.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/349146-REG/Grass_Valley_602029_ADVC_110_Bidirectional_Media_Converter.html
This works very well for streaming too as most streaming solutions can take DV footage over firewire very well.
Of course DV footage will be LARGE, great for editing in post —hard to upload and download in a timely manner due to size.
I would encode in h.264 or some other compressed format.
Blackmagic makes the Blackmagic Video Recorder ($149) that can live record h.264 videos. That might be better. Then upload to an FTP or something to download.
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/videorecorder/
If you are using Macs, I would suggest using Courier to help the workflow uploading the file.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/courier/id402452048?mt=12
Blane Young says
Sweet pointers.
The Grass Valley device says this on the product page but I am not sure what it means:
“Note: For use with 4-Pin Firewire port an optional power supply is needed.
Note! A video capture card or OHCI FireWire connection is required to capture DV. IEEE 1934 FW800 connectors are not supported.”
I am slobbering over the Blackmagic Video Recorder + FTP Solution. Hallelujah!
Courier looks cool, I am big into Cyberduck right now.
So I guess we would go from the Mixer to the Blackmagic to Mac. Hmm… Interesting.
Do you know how long it takes from the end of the live event until the file is ready to move?
Jeff Alldridge says
I think the Blackmagic Video Recorder would be the best for your setup.
With the Grass Valley —there are many types of firewire interfaces. This has the “fat” firewire 400 (like most computer firewire ports [8-circuit]) and the small boxy-shaped firewire 400 (like on DV/HDV camcorders [4-circuit]).
If you use the fatter plug, it will power the device. The smaller plug requires power.
The new MacBooks do not have firewire 400 ports (just 800) —so they require a 400 to 800 cable (not included).
Blane Young says
Thanks for the explanation.
If I used the Grass Valley into Final Cut Pro (or Express), could it be encoded to h.264 (for instance) upon capture or would I have to capture and then compress?
Jeff Alldridge says
Oh, and I would definitely use FTP over a Dropbox solution. Dropbox is great for collaboration, but it’s not the fastest. And a “free” account has a 2gb max vs. virtually “unlimited” with most hosting solutions.
FTP would be MUCH faster (up and down).
Setup a subdomain for the files and post them there.
Like:
http://remote.churchname.org/2011-01-16.mp4
My two cents 😉
Blane Young says
I figured FTP would be better, I wasn’t sure how much better and Dropbox seems to more “volunteer friendly”.
Maybe Courier would help with that issue…
Fred McKinnon says
Blane,
How big are these files going to be? I use Dropbox for a TON of stuff, and it works great – but if upload speed (and size) is an issue, it could be a problem. that’s great news – as a fellow “local” – where’s the new campus gonna be?
Blane Young says
I am not sure but I am estimating anywhere from 200 MB to 400 MB.
I am thinking Cyberduck as it is a simple and pretty (i.e. it is designed like a Mac App) FTP Program. Far easier to use thatn FileZilla.
The new campus is launching on Palm Sunday for the public and is in Brantley County. We are stoked!
Eric J says
I would do what mars hill does record the sermon, edit the sermon, burn a blu-ray image and put it indropbox. The extension campuses are on a one week delay so that they can get the sermons in HD via blu-ray.
http://techartsnetwork.com/updates/church-tech-weekly-16-we-dont-use-satellites/
Blane Young says
I had read about that and in my first comment, reference the idea of a delay (I should’ve read your comment first).
Thanks for the link and thoughts I just don’t think that is an option for us (I mentioned why in a comment earlier).
I wish it were, it would be dead simple.
Gabe Hoffman says
We are one week delayed, so we get someone to edit down the video, touch it up if need be, compress it (1.5G HD), and stick in the dropbox. I make sure I have it on my laptop too, just in case. While I’ll agree that FTP might be more reliable/faster (dropbox takes an hour or so to download that), a week is a long time, and the magic of it just being there when the guy turns the computer on is pretty cool. Getting a file to remote computers is what dropbox is good at, well, that and sharing files, and backing up files, and…
Blane Young says
I dig DropBox in your setup.
Unfortunately, I don’t think we are going to be able to do a week delay although that seems like the best way to produce quality video because editing is an option.
How do you guys manage promotional material. bulletins, and series trailers with a delayed start? Would love to hear how that is managed…
Alex says
The easiest solution is to export the video file to a FTP drive. Have volunteer or staff member grab the video from the FTP drive. You can also make the folder on the FTP server a dropbox folder so it goes on there to.
Or if you have a vimeo pro account you can upload the video to vimeo pro and have the remote campus play the vimeo version off the internet, or have the remote campus download the compressed vimeo video from vimeo’s website so its not playing off the internet.
Blane Young says
I like the twist with Vimeo.
Maybe we will incorporate that as a fail-safe.
I think I need to test how long the compression, upload and download will be since all of our services are on Sunday. Hopefully we won’t have to adjust service times…
Jason Curlee says
At Bay Area Fellowship we have been one week delay at our campuses for about 2 years. Originally we used DVD’s, now we play files straight out of ProPresenter.
Video is recorded on Sunday. Then it is converted to h.264 during week and then uploaded to Dropbox. At my campus I have dropbox software on our iMac which auto sync’s it as soon as it’s uploaded then all we have to do is put it in ProPresenter. Some other campuses download it off the dropbox website.
Blane Young says
It seems that h.264 is the way for us to go after hearing everyone’s comment.
I think playing straight out of ProPresener is how we want to do it, but maybe we will have a DVD as a last option backup.
I would love to hear more about what it looks like to do a week delay…
Are your campuses in the same region?
Miles says
Has anyone looked into using BitTorrent, instead of FTP/Dropbox, for this?
Potential Pros:
– No hard size limits (speed and total file size will have an effect, YMMV)
– Very reliable in the case of an issue at either the seeding or leeching end
– Scales with the number of campuses, as each campus can seed anything they have already recieved
– Free (outside of Bandwith costs, most clients are free)
Blane Young says
Miles,
I like the “hacker-ish” approach.
I am not sure I know of a client that would be friendly enough for non-techies but this is an interesting solution.
Christian Hage says
I was looking into StreamBox a while back, it allow live back & forth between campuses with a 1.5 second delay. It’s what news vans use. It’s a more expensive option. If you have a high enough bandwith you could also try a streaming service like 316 Networks, schedule alternate service time a few min later to allow buffer time and pump it in live. Just some other thoughts outside of recording a whole service and then dropboxing, FTP or DVD.
Blane Young says
Tempting but the price tag will certainly keep us away at this point.
316 is too expensive for what we do, but we do use LightCast Media for our Internet Campus so we could push an alternative service like that if we could record directly to a computer for one of our earlier services.
I would be so nervous though, the whole time they were streaming as opposed to a download.
Brent says
I go to a satellite campus that has live worship and a recorded sermon. If you are just doing the sermon as a video stream and live worship our method might work well for you. Our pastor records the sermon earlier in the week(for all of our satellite campuses) and then it is posted to an ftp server to transfer to our campuses as well as sent out on a backup dvd.
it’s been a great system for us.
Blane Young says
Brent, thanks for joining the convo.
We plan to do live music but video sermon as well.
This plan would certainly not cost any money in terms of equipment it would just mean that our Lead Pastor would be preaching his message again and we would have to gather a crowd (for noise response) as well as pitch the vision to our tech volunteers.
Hmmm…
Great thoughts, I never would have thought of this solution.