Bitrates, buffering, frame rates and resolution scales; thats what my day consisted of. My goal today was to finally fix some big lingering issues with the video side of things at my church. This didn’t happen. In fact the opposite occurred. I am no closer tonight to fixing anything then I was this morning. That’s a big bummer.
To get you up to speed, recently I completely revamped my church’s live streaming and video production operations. This was something I started at our church back in Connecticut. From the ground up, I was the guy. CT’s streaming setup and operations were pretty smooth for the most part. Of course your usual hiccups here and there, but for the majority of the time, it was an easy and rewarding situation.
When Lindsey and I first moved to GA, I starting helping with the streaming and video side of things. The people who were in charge understood what a big change the move was and allowed me to ease my way into it. Slowly but surely I grew more and more involved. Fast forward to today and the operation is basically mine.
When I took it over, the equipment we were using was simply outdated. And as is true with mostly every church situation, the money was tight. So I decided to take it all on myself. My opinion and vision was, we needed to rid of everything SD and make the plunge for HD. We also needed to change our broadcasting software and where people actually could watch our services. So to say this was a big turn around is an understatement. But to me, these were things that just needed to be done. Sure it would be expensive and sure it would be time consuming, but I really wanted to help move this thing forward.
This is were some headaches were introduced. You see, what a lot of people don’t understand is how many moving parts there are when it comes to this amount of technology all working together. Undo this and it effects that. Switch the setting on that and you’ll ruin a preset over there. Long story short, this was and is a massive undertaking and Comcast and their falsely advertised upload speeds hasn’t made things any easier, but I digress…..
I’m not complaining, far from it. I enjoy every second of it actually. There’s just something about helping people who are at home for whatever reason and experience church and receive something that may help them. Call me corny or whatever, but I genuinely feel that the streaming ministry is important and I feel privileged to be a part of it.
So ya, today was rough. I spent the majority of it away from my family talking with Comcast people and staring at screens, and we’re not any closer to figuring out the biggest issues that have plagued us for the past few months. But I will continue on. Do the research, change settings and bitrates. Rescale resolutions and frame rates. That’s what I do and I feel its important. It’s my place in the church and I enjoy it.
*ddileo 