According to a recent survey from AT&T, only about one in five houses of worship offer online services. Video streaming is permeating society, and if your church is among those that has embraced it, congratulations. However, for those that do, about 80% of survey respondents said they'd attended online, suggesting there is a lot of value for your congregation in helping them stay connected even when they can't attend in person.
Whether you're using older technology or just encountering a few challenges with a more current solution, chances are good that you can take your streaming to a higher level with a few changes. Although new cameras and video gear can be fun, you may not need to invest a lot of money in hardware to make some impressive user-experience upgrades. Features and options that were on the cutting edge of streaming technology a few years ago are now mainstream, simple, and cost-effective.
With that context, here are five recommendations on how to optimize your existing live video streaming program.
1.Change to standard codecs.
If you got into streaming early, you might be encoding all of your content with legacy RealVideo, Windows Media, or Flash codecs. Many such vendor-driven or proprietary codecs have been effectively retired in favor of a common pair of codecs: H.264 for video and AAC for audio. For today's streaming, these are the codecs you should be using. Chances are pretty good that your encoder already supports H.264 and AAC, and you’ll just need to make a configuration change.
If you're using old or proprietary encoding technology that doesn't support these, consider live encoding software (e.g., Telestream Wirecast, vMix) and appliances (e.g., Teradek VidiU Pro, Epiphan Pearl) that do. (If you need a new computer for your video switching and encoding, you can buy a powerful, compact computer with graphics acceleration to do the heavy processing for as little as a few hundred dollars.)
2. Go HD.
On today’s high-definition screens and high-bandwidth connections, low-resolution video is becoming less acceptable as we move from streaming-as-science-project to streaming becoming the primary way of watching video for many consumers. If your top streaming resolution is less than 1080p, but your cameras and other video workflow components are already 1080p-ready, make the switch to 1080p. (At a minimum, raise your streaming resolution to the highest resolution your video workflow supports, ideally 720p or higher.)
“But wait,” you say, “what about my viewers on low-bitrate connections?” That brings us to the next point.…
3. Reach more devices.
Not everyone has a high-bandwidth connection, and your mobile users probably have bandwidth that fluctuates–sometimes wildly—from one moment to the next. This is where adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming comes in, dynamically changing the resolution and bitrate of the stream as needed to adapt to changing network and playback conditions on each viewer’s device. There are a number of ABR formats, but arguably the most widely adopted right now is Apple HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). The reason? It’s the only ABR format officially supported on those ubiquitous iOS devices, plus it works natively on most Android phones and in many set-top boxes. Switch to ABR streaming, and use HLS as the format. You’ll only need to encode a single HD stream at the church; we’ll convert it to ABR in step 5.
4. Ensure browser compatibility.
Maybe you’ve read this far because your viewers have started complaining that your video streams don't play since a recent update to their browser. Support for browser plug-ins (e.g., Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight) is in severe decline, and HTML5 has long been touted as the successor. Only recently, however, has there been robust support for HTML5 across browsers, and especially for media delivery, where HTML5 extensions now allow plug-in-free ABR streaming in most browsers. Upgrade now to a free or low-cost HTML5 media player (e.g., JW Player, Flowplayer, etc.) that provides high-quality playback experiences across browsers, whether on a desktop or a mobile device.
5. Scale up using the cloud.
While reading the first four points, you might have started wondering how all that dynamic ABR stream switching happens if you're creating only one 1080p stream, and how you'll scale up your media server and Internet connectivity to support a higher bitrate and more viewers. The good news is that you won’t need to. Use cloud-based streaming media server and transcoding software (if you like to control the servers) or a cloud-hosted streaming service for greater ease of use to ingest the high-resolution stream from your encoder. The server or service can then transcode your single HD stream into multiple lower bit rates, creating the streams needed for the dynamic ABR switching mentioned above. Cloud infrastructures and services usually also provide a content delivery network (CDN) that can seamlessly scale to distribute your content to an audience of any size. Some cloud services also provide countdown clocks for viewers until your service or event starts, automatic live stream recording for later on-demand playback, and scheduling features that can automatically start and stop your streams (and cloud processing charges) at predetermined times. Unlike on-site DIY streaming, there are usually no up-front cloud costs and only low pay-for-what-you-use operating costs, making cloud-based streaming ideal for churches of all sizes.
One or more of these recommendations should help you optimize streaming at your church by improving viewer playback, simplifying the workflow, or lowering your costs. There are many new streaming technologies and options on the market helping online video become more ubiquitous every day. With a little research and some specific streaming upgrades, you can create a better streaming experience for both yourself and your congregation.
