This weekend we did a primitive first attempt at a live streaming webcast of our Sunday Morning service. It went okay... some learning curve and things to improve, but great feedback from the 39 people who logged in to watch our beta test.
It's available at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/windward-worship-live if you are interested.
Since the webcast I have had several people ask how hard it was to do. It is pretty simple, actually:
• You'll need a digital video camera: what we did for our beta test was done with a small, simple, consumer mini-DV camera, like the kind used to shoot pictures of the kids playing sports.
• A FireWire (Digital Video) cable connection to a computer.
• A computer. (That seems obvious, but then again...) This is the place where I would I would normally inject a fanboy argument for the superiority of Mac OSX and Apple products in general, but since that also seems so obvious...
• A reliable broadband connection to the internet at the church or meeting venue.
• A FREE account with ustream.tv or another similar service... if you can find another free one.
• A carbon-based life form with intelligence above a rutabega. (Our tech guys set up the camera and logged in, and then my dear old dependable Deacon launched the live webcast and archive recording and monitored the whole thing. It's not rocket science.)
• We patched the sound directly from the sound board to the laptop mic input instead of using the built in mic on the camera to avoid picking up extraneous noise and conversational noise by the tech guys.
That's about it: plug it all in, turn on the camera, log in to ustream.tv and hit the "GO LIVE" button and you're webcasting live.
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