PTZOptics SALT Talk: Summer Worship, Vacation Bible Schools & More

[Music] hello and welcome to another edition of salt talk i'm julia sherwin with ptz optics joined by my fellow panelists stephen haywood and jeremy klusterman welcome hey how's it going it's going great here we are in uh what our first uh second full week of summer here and summer streaming lots happening uh in houses of worship across the country and um we're going to talk about those things today specifically what um you need to think about when it comes to the vacation bible schools that are happening right now throughout the country now until the end of the summer what does that look like for people who may be in person and remote the country is really going back to uh life as it was pre-coveted but i just wanted to take you through some interesting news stories that i found recently regarding um you know technology and and how everyone has really had to step up their games in this last you know 14 15 months since the pandemic shut everything down and um i was really struck by this uh article because you know there's different levels of entry point for houses of worship um and many uh many folks are older and did not have a lot of access to live streaming and other you know technologies they just had to start at the very ground level and what i found interesting about this article was just something simple like recording your service on a cd you know things like that helped congregants and church leaders and technologists get their their message out there and continue to be able to evangelize during this time where so many people were were isolated so there's really many levels of of that technology you can start down here and then go up here and um i think that's really what you know we like to talk about in salt talk and uh talking about that whole evolution what what have you both found uh stephen and jeremy in your houses of worship i mean i'm sure you've worked with all different types of people who are you know super high tech to those who are just like i just need it to work yeah yeah so my church specifically we um we had to pivot to outdoor services which was which was huge um as far as our elderly congregation we're not a huge congregation so we haven't we didn't have a big hurdle to cross there but with churches that i worked with a big one was a partnership with with my company rezzy and another company called phone live streaming um where where elderly congregation members can actually call in uh to a number and and listen to the live stream which was huge we saw a lot of a lot of churches adding that as a service to um to their live streaming capabilities um and we've seen a lot of creative workflows of getting live streams into retirement communities which i know you guys did i'm pretty sure ptz optics did a big story on that as well early on so just just reaching into those retirement communities where they were really locked up uh and and and protected um just being able to reach those people it was awesome yeah i think for us too is is accessing other mediums julia you mentioned about cds um that's something we've we've been doing for many many years but one thing we started getting into is making it more widely available on the web via youtube vimeo all these different places to have the service there uh and also thumb drives believe it or not people had requested to be able to bring a thumb drive they'll hook it to their keychain and then after the service we can just stick them in and in a matter of 30 seconds have the service the audio portion if that's what they want on their thumb drives and ready to go so that's been something that's uh you know kind of branching away from the cd uh side of things but i think putting your services in different mediums where before the pandemic you really never never gave it much thought yeah i i think it's a great point and and what i wanted to really illustrate which was so great in that article was that um the coming together and creating that community so live streaming and we talk about it a lot can sort of lean on that really high tech side of things but i mean at the end of the day you need to make sure that there's connection so if they have to utilize a thumb drive or a cd or just as jeremy mentioned call in to the service that may be the very bottom level you're starting there and then you can acquire knowledge as you continue with this journey and your your house of worship to get to the point where you know maybe older folks are more comfortable with live streaming yeah absolutely i love i love how you bring in the community aspect because like i said one one big part that that resi provides is a is a a decoder so we have our big multi-site platform where we do an encode to decode and so uh churches were partnering with retirement communities that they could put a decoder into and then have remote access to just play that out in the community center of of those retirement communities so it would still bring bring the community aspect into the retirement community and and then they don't they don't have to have the technological know-how to play out those services because somebody from the church is remoting into their system and just playing it out at a specific time for them so it is just simply a plug-and-play scenario at that point yep exactly yeah that's important and um you know we are looking at more and more news stories about um you know what's what's happening right now people are coming back they are re-gathering as you can see here what are some of those important things to think about though you know a lot of congregants are still going to remain remote church facilities may need to be reconfigured right um you know there's a lot of different things that are potentially happening even digital giving is going to increase by about 70 so i mean these are some exciting things that um you know even though the light the world is is getting back to normal um some of these uh technological changes uh in the very uh operating infrastructure of houses of worship are going to be forever changed what do you think yeah again um we've seen a huge uptick in in overflow spaces because they're they're running their main auditoriums at a lower capacity but they may have other rooms at the church that they can that they can set up as overflow so we have with a lot of churches doing that and and some of those overflow spaces are more casual so they might not start the service right at the exact same time as the main auditorium so they they want the ability to time slip that and we can we can help out drastically with that but the biggest shift i think we've seen is trying to learn and wrap their head around okay i've been pre-recording these services and either posting them um premiering them on facebook or or youtube however they do that but now that shift to oh i have all this time to pre-record and produce a nice product how do i do this live with the live community and uh the in-house and and that's that's been a challenge for a lot of churches i agree i think i think separating the the pre-recorded from the live i mean you know we're coming up we're gonna we're talking about summer streaming and everything coming from outside for some churches to now back in or limited capacity where they're doing every other row and they had the time to because they weren't doing a lot of pre-service stuff or classes maybe that they were running sunday schools things like that they had the time to pre-record all that content that was going out during the week well now that stuff is back do they have the time during the week is the is that hybrid model gonna suffice is that something that you're gonna have enough staff from people to do that that's that's a huge question yeah yeah and i think um going back to the community aspects one of one of the features that we offer at resi is the ability to you know put a ptz camera in those remote facilities and bring a feed back to the main auditorium so um it although it's not in in real time it does show the pastor like hey i can see the the audience there i can see who's in this in the room um so that's that's a big thing is is how i don't want to forget those people uh in in overflow spaces even though they're live you know typically they've gotten used to uh communicating directly to the camera and the people watching on the live stream but but how do i get those people um engaged that are alive together in a community and and engage them you know um stephen you brought up a a a great point about um just the resources to get it done so i know with our church we have different committees so for instance you know um new family committee or you know if you just had a baby there's a committee for that they go out and you know help people who recently added to their family um are you noticing more and more houses of worship are starting to develop like a live streaming committee or like a production media committee that was something we started years ago when we first started streaming just like you have like your your sound engineers your guys that are doing the sound in the in the booth we have a media team that handles it it's com comprised of a lot of youth believe it or not they like to get involved and they're very creative with the video aspect of things and so it was it's it's difficult um to keep that going because obviously kids have things going on throughout the summer um but again we can get the community involved with doing that but you also have to remember is that even though vaccines are out and everything's going on people are still skeptical people are still not sure about coming back and and you still have to nurture that online audience and and even you know i think like i know we're doing a lot of different community events just to welcome people back in uh into the the doors of the church such a great point um vacation bible school specifically are catered to children and you know those under 12 cannot get the vaccine right no it's you know a little bit of a trying time like right now in our family um there's five of us i have three children two are vaccinated and one is not so you know we go out places and um our youngest is wearing the mask and the older two aren't so um it is you know some families um who have children who have underlying health conditions may say you know what like we're gonna sit this summer out as well but we can access this content in other ways right i think exactly yeah and one one thing that that we've been able to help a lot of churches with that that are doing like vacation bible school or um we've we've seen a lot of summer camps reach out to us and say hey you know with summer camp yes although families have taken a step to send their kids to summer camp some of them may you know have a fever or something that you know some concern while they're at camp and have to be quarantined or or just you know they may sit out a couple a couple of sessions just make sure that that there's nothing more going on um but they want to keep those those students engaged uh well they're in that space so being able to offer a live stream in in uh in like a you know hangout room or or something where they may have a couple of these kids quarantined uh it has been huge to so they they give a video access of live stream what's going on in other parts of the camp um you know to try and keep that engagement level there because they've they've invested a lot to go to the summer camps um but then like you said with vacation bible school it's just it's a it's one of those community outreach things that i think the communities around specific churches need uh just to to build up morel and to have fun with the kids and and it's a great way to to reach a community with the gospel is is to share that out and and do live stream events just to keep the kids active absolutely yeah and julie i think there's something to be said like we watch all these reality tv shows on tv about you know that third that third screen experience right with you know using your mobile device like if you're watching like an american idol or something like that where you get the vote and i think the church needs to adopt that as well you know there's a you know technology is progressing right so being able to engage these folks in a third screen experience could be that glue that brings everything together potentially well you know something else that occurred to me we have a very robust vacation bible school in our area that all my children have attended and and even been counselors at and on the final day so it's you know monday through friday on the final day they they have like a performance where all the different groups sing and you know everyone comes to an outdoor amphitheater sometimes those days are really hot mid 90s and you've got elderly people who just are struggling and you know the pandemic notwithstanding this live stream or video component offers a great opportunity for elderly people to sit out you know in some place cool and be able to watch their grandchild perform yeah that's that's great and and yeah just being able to to offer that you know as as some grandparents have have moved away i know um originally being from michigan there's a lot of people who travel travel south in the summer and and and just travel generally so so being able to offer that and not have to stick to a specific schedule i have to be here for this event it's really opened up a lot of people's eyes to see like hey we can we can keep reaching our same people or or as they're traveling i can stay connected to my home church and not have to find a church on the road as we as we do summer vacation or something so are you guys prepared to talk about sort of the nitty-gritty the technical aspects as i mentioned you know for instance i'm very curious because our our local church that does this vbs every year has this amphitheater style outdoor space you know is that really tricky to try to start incorporating camera and sound technologies um out there um you know what are some of the things that um house of worship technologists and and volunteers and leaders what do they need to look for when considering something like this um i would say this because we kind of did that as a church we pivoted to outdoor space a big thing is controlled lighting uh you know a big outdoor amphitheater if it's not covered you can think oh it's great it's gonna have a lot of light but then that light is too harsh at times or whatever and and light it's it's amazing how much light affects video and being able to get a good quality uh experience for for people watching a stream um so lighting was is a big thing and and so outdoor amphitheater can be really hard to light and and so uh there's so many manufacturers out there that that provide good quality products for for lighting um a space like that but then but then again like the camera you you have to have an amazing camera with great sensors um which i know ptz optics they they do an amazing job with their cameras so so it's it's a whole combination of things like that with producing that good video yeah i know with with setting up um as jeremy said we didn't really do the outdoor services we just kind of limited how many people could actually come into the building uh but for vbs this year we're already set up within the sanctuary for uh the kids and the productions and things like that and our our theme this year is superhero training and so um i will be playing one of the superheroes i'll be doing spiderman as i've done before and so i have to rely on my tech team you know to handle that and we're gonna we're gonna stream it but then the challenge comes in julia when the kids do some outside events because obviously you can't have superhero training without obstacle courses and things like that outside maybe even a a zip line or two at least that's what i'm hoping for uh so uh so how do you do that right so i have a live use solo from the company live you and i plan on hooking that up to a um a camcorder that's gonna have like a shotgun mic on it because it's something that i can utilize uh and get the audio into and send it back to our vmix machine in the booth uh you know via rtmp and just and just do it on that because i have a server set up for that now i understand not everybody can get that technical but i've already been thinking about ways to do that because we've done tailgate parties uh at the beginning like we start out football season we do you know tailgating for jesus so we have people come out and it's a great way just again community you know bringing in people from the community so i'm not new to doing stuff like this so it this should be just run-of-the-mill i think i think we'll be able to get going but if you don't have that you carry one of these don't you so everybody does right with a lot of the technology now as long as you can reach your network or if you do happen to have a server you know there's different software out there ndi they have an ndi camera you can send that back to your sound booth if you you know i would encourage churches like if you do have an outside setting you set up a hot spot or an extender for your network maybe at your picnic area if there's a plug you can bounce off of that so you can get that video just pull it into your vmix wirecast obs whatever you're using um i mean julia that's the surefire way of doing it so if you were to you know look at this from kind of a roundup you're just starting out hey first thing you got to make sure you have that strong internet yep you have to have the internet you have to have a network infrastructure that can handle it um obviously jeremy you can't be hardwired all the time so uh well that's you saw me fidgeting around trying to find something i i was actually bringing gonna bring that up so with with the encoders that that we produce at rezzy they're super portable it's an intel nook um maybe if if we get a second or maybe we do it on another show and we we show it but it's just it's a small a small portable computer and if you have like one of these usb modems that you can plug into it um you can go totally mobile with it you just need a power source and and so like having an outdoor space with with uh just a simple camera plugged into that encoder and and running you know an lte modem you can get an amazing quality stream just just that way so yeah there you can see the ray encoder but but i actually had to do that this past sunday at my church because there was a there was a massive internet outage in our in our area so i just i took my my usb modem here and plugged it into that front front usb port and was still able to to put out a great quality stream but it made me think of like hey those outdoor spaces you don't always have internet so how how do i get that plugged in um unfortunately apple's shut down the the ability to tether an iphone uh easily but if you have an android phone you can you can literally plug your android into one of those usb ports and and use it use it as a tether to to tether it right off your phone um so that's that's another great tool for those outdoor spaces yeah so those are some important products you mentioned rhett from rezzy you mentioned the live view steven um you know an android phone i mean these are all like kind of ways to to start and then you know would you say that once you ensure that you have an ability to stream you've got that connection then you really need to look at those things like the lighting and making sure that you know what your product is you know what you're delivering isn't completely washed out or under lit right yeah absolutely because i mean even with a cell phone cell phones i mean jeremy wouldn't you agree the cell phones do a really good job of of adding light if need be or taking away light and i think if you're watching this right now and you want a surefire toolbox to get started you've never done this before obviously you're not going to do your own servers and things like that download obs it's free the ndi input with ovs grab yourself i think even right now i think it's 9.99 for the ndi camera app right now i believe that they're still doing that sale you can get it for your phone it's normally 20 bucks so you're ultimately only spending 10 to get your vvs or your outdoor summer maybe it's a church picnic up and running i mean you really can't beat that i mean i sound like a a radio shack commercial for 9.99 you know well explain explain what that for the people who may not know what does that ndi app do basically so the ndi application on your phone allows the um camera to talk to pieces of software like obs if you're not familiar with what obs is it's a it's a camera switching application to add graphics kind of like what you're seeing now uh with us here um you know you can use other softwares there's paid solutions out there but to get started obs being the free solution you can just put that app on your phone and or your tablet if you have an ipad you don't want to use your phone connect to the wi-fi network at the church and send it to your obs and you'll have that feed not only in the church but then you'll have it outside the church and you know the kids are playing or there's a volleyball game going on something that you want to share with the community and to let them see what your church is about jeremy would you agree yeah and and and using a tool like that makes it a more polished it gives you the ability to polish it a little bit more make it make it nicer than just streaming you know right off your phone going going straight to facebook so you can put on graphics and things things like that that that really spice it up and and help create that engagement so like um you know uh steven was was talking about that third screen experience and how to how to do that so for my church we've implemented a lot of qr codes so you scan on scanning that qr code to say hey it's my first time here or first time watching and and then they can engage in service that way so so giving that polished and polished look with graphics you know it's it's huge for for not just putting content out but having people engage back in with that with that live stream yeah you have to make it easy for them right exactly and julia you mentioned about in that one article about uh during that news about online giving right and i think jeremy's idea of the qr code set that up for your paypal your your online giving whatever you're using that's ideal yeah online giving um you know connection cards so if it is your first time visiting a church or you want to learn more it's just it's just a hey whip on my phone open the camera and scan that qr code and i'm immediately connected to the website or the giving giving link for the church or ministry yeah i mean that that's just become so um such a part of our everyday life now when i go to a restaurant anymore there's there's no menus it's it's the qr code well and during the pandemic i remember going to a restaurant when they first started opening the restaurants and they had a little card in the center where you have your napkins and everything and it says please scan me for the menu and it comes up on your phone and you sit there that's the first i ever seen that especially in a small town that i'm in where they're not hate to say they're not really technically savvy i thought that was really ingenious are we saying you need to get out a little bit more stephen i'm thinking so because like it's funny because i went to the local mcdonald's on this topic and i wanted to use apple pay i'd never used apple pay before and i said to the girl and she told me the price and i said sorry i'm going to use apple pay she looked at me like i was from mars and it says it right on the window we now accept apple pay so that's what i'm dealing with in the area that i'm at so that's awesome well as as the mother of a teenage daughter i'm uh well aware of apple pay well yeah now now it's more readily available but i think when it first came out mcdonald's was doubting that so i was like oh i gotta try it i gotta try it yeah they had they had no clue no i mean that that's fantastic and um it's so easy too for uh for anyone to create those qr codes so um you know it also helps on um when it comes to like lots of printed materials that cost a lot of money and um you know i've i've been in this communications industry for a long time and you know papers very expensive so well julia from a non-technical standpoint what what do you think the most challenging thing has been for you as a church go or attender what's been the most difficult way for you to connect i mean from outside that technical point maybe that would help folks you know gonna turn the table on you a little bit here yeah i would say there's um you know there's still there hasn't been at least in our area enough like adoption of the whole like zoom rooms and and groups like i i think there's so much more that can be done where you know like-minded people are interacting more on like those committee topics for instance and um you know um many of the people who attend my church you know we have students who go um children who go to the same catholic school which is like right across the street so you know parents of those students like may want to have a group and i would just like to see um more um kind of um integration of that being part of the weekly service like hey you know after service like this is where this group will meet on zoom to talk about this so um i don't i don't know that it's a challenge more so than just uh you know instead of everybody waiting out like the oh the pandemic is going to end the pandemic's going to end everything's going to go back to normal let's like start to adopt some of these things as part of our because they part of our everyday practice because there's just so much value to it like i just think about how many um even like telehealth visits for instance it's just easier if you have a quick visit or you you know you need to talk to someone it's just easier to do it on zoom than it is to go and make an appointment and drive 25 minutes yeah and and one thing we've we've seen a lot of our customers reaching out to us uh saying is is hey how do i how do i help my church engage in watch parties because you know they may be part of a smaller cohort or community where where they've been around each other just for that community support side of it so they feel comfortable engaging and and being together as as a as kind of like a cohort we want to do a family watch party so maybe four or five families get together at somebody's house and watch um so so being able to stream you know not just on on like facebook or something like that but having roku channels built out so you know like hey i just go to this roku channel and engage um but but i think one of the biggest asks we get is hey what about live chat we want the ability to to engage with other other congregation members through chatting and um and so we always point to like the church online platform i don't know um how many how many people on on here are familiar with the church online platform but it's a huge tool a free tool uh put out by life church where you can you just embed your video there for for the church and you have a chat functionality you can take notes there and and it's super engaging so we have a lot of a lot of people who who like that aspect to be able to to chat there and and and engage with other congregation members with church online i think that's a great point too because there's there's always going to be certain audiences who don't equate youtube with with worship right you know where they think well wait a minute you know there might be some hesitancy there um and and that engagement in that chat is so important because why do we go to worship in the first place we're praying for people who are sick we're we're trying to you know help people through tough times we're also there to celebrate all the happy milestones in life too but i mean by its very nature um worship is about engagement and chatting yep yeah it's it's that community and and i know steven put that graphic up pretty quickly but but you do have the ability with that too to do um you know individual prayer requests so if you have an online pastor who's who's engaged that way you can do a sideline chat and be able to to have anonymous or or one-on-one prayer requests and and engagement that way where it's not public so you can how you can chat publicly but then you can kind of take it take it off to the side chat and and help out that way it's it's amazing that a tool like this is is free but i know you know life church they they put out the youversion bible which is on just about every smartphone in the world um but but they just they love being able to serve communities like this with with free tools yeah that's that private chat feature that is great because that's not something that you would you would get on youtube unless you were pointing people to an unpublished page right you'd really have it would be a struggle well the thing the thing with youtube that i think a lot of people forget is unless you have a following on youtube or you've really built a following you just become another number in the sea of other content out there and it's really hard to get found uh on on youtube and up until the pandemic we really didn't stream to youtube because of that uh we we went to other platforms we've we've had more success on roku and and platforms like that but more and more now it's it's really good for leaving your content in a place where people can go and see past services because you mentioned jeremy earlier about the elderly the elderly understand youtube because they have an app on their phone that says youtube or their ipad so they know to look up the church name and they can go that's what we found and also facebook facebook has been a tremendous tool for us uh because everybody and their grandmother is on facebook so you're just not gonna get quality on facebook that's you know that's the unfortunate part yep and and a big part um a big part of that too is that our customers we see a lot of concern around this is hey my my my viewers are getting bombarded with other ads or post role video suggestions on facebook or youtube where or they're like yeah i don't i don't want that so they want more of a private experience and and so there's a there's a huge advantage of of doing a a privately hosted stream versus being on those social media uh platforms but the way i love i love my pastor's philosophy on it he's like you know we're gonna we're gonna have a uh a space where our church congregation can gather but we're still gonna put those billboards out to try and get people's attention and that's facebook and youtube so as people are scrolling through their feed or something like that they may they may see our stream that way and then we try and engage them in uh to the community more which is our private private watch page no that makes a lot of sense um i wanted to if we have time i want to go back to something that you mentioned about um about the ease of use because that's something we see too especially coming into the summer months and and people are feeling more comfortable to go out on vacation and uh and i'm actually going on vacation next week i'll be gone from my from my church where i run the live stream and so having the ability to automate something is is huge where you're not having to go in and click live like go live um so as i was working with one of our volunteers and telling her like hey you know the live stream is all set up you don't have to do anything it's going to go live so that's that's one huge aspect where we might be seeing volunteer drop-off or people going on summer vacations and and less people being around to help and services but automation has has been a huge help um for for some of our customers and and what what we see them them loving the most is hey i don't i don't have to click go live tell me more about this i don't have to i don't have to go out and get stream keys and and post in stream urls anymore i love that fact so uh so ease of use we're seeing um a huge a huge ask for as well for for a lot of the communities and is that something uh jeremy that your your company can actually do like just really make it complete one-stop shopping yeah we get a calendar view of you know you i can set up a calendar view of hey my service goes live at at 10 30 in the in the morning but but we do a rehearsal at 9 30 and i want to capture that so um so i start in like for my church specifically we start encoding at 9 30 i can go in and and look at that make sure it looks good and sounds good and then at 10 10 30 when we go live it automatically starts streaming to facebook youtube and in our embedded uh video on church online platform so so my all my volunteers i don't have to think about that anymore on a sunday morning i just know that it works and before the pandemic happened before lockdown happened we had so many churches that they they didn't even think about their live stream they went live every sunday but they never thought about it so it was it was extremely uh painless for them and then uh and then when lockdown happened they're like how do we go live like how do we do this they had to rethink that whole process because they were so used to it just being automated and we're seeing that more going back into live services like hey i don't i don't want to have to think about this how do i how do i do that yeah and when you don't have to think about the technology you know again you can focus more on the content and you know that's something that you know that that's so important you know focusing on that music ministry side of things or you know focusing on um you know some some parishes have to you know the pastor may do everything right i have to come up with a sermon and do the like it's too it's too much right yep yeah i was actually talking to a worship leader um or actually a band member recently and he's like man the worst feeling in the world is is when i'm up on stage playing drums and i feel my phone vibrating in my pocket and i see like hey the live stream didn't work and i'm sitting back there he's like can you help me fix that i'm like yes definitely yep um so so for him to think hey i'm i'm up here playing my instrument i'm playing drums or playing guitar i don't want to have to think about the live stream well let's go one step further what about if you're short-handed uh yeah prime example yesterday my buddy he goes to a different church um and he put out a picture on facebook where he's playing bass he plays just about every instrument but he was short-handed he was playing bass for one of the servers and running sound so he was literally standing with a wireless system on his base in the back of the church so he could easily access uh and hear the sound uh from the house by just pulling an earphone off and and mixing on an ipad while he's playing in the service so that's you know that's the technology that that we have here but i mean churches run into that you julie you mentioned about the pastor doing everything there's a local church here that we've been uh helping out and uh the pastor he's god bless him he's like in his 70s um and his grandson run he ran most of the their live stream and their video and audio production but sometimes like he just graduated so he's gonna be going off to college and sometimes he's not there so the pastor has to know how to do everything so we kind of been setting it up to where he can make it work he might not get all the fancy switches and things like that but at least get the message out there right right and and you know the bottom line that something that we strive to do anyway you know this stephen at ptz optics is you know we want to we want to bring that level of learning so that people are confident doing their live streams and and feel really good about it and they're not just you know kind of uh you know clunking it together so to speak and um you know it it takes time and effort but um with technology and with um with new innovations there are sort of these like one-button scenarios well and it's funny you bring that up because of the huddlecam hdr one of our sister companies uh the the the simple track 2 camera i believe paul's going to be talking about that uh july 1st i want to say uh the new feature in there where you can actually trigger macros and other types of commands uh from inside of the camera and through the eye through yeah through ndi through over the network and and that's something i do here in my studio even for some of the the shows that i do where i can set a hot spot where i walk in front of that and it might drop my lower third it might take out my graphic bring up my my uh outro and then fade the black and stop the recording and that's a lot that's a mouthful but it's automated like jeremy's saying and you could set it up to do multiple automations to where that camera basically if you only need one camera it's following you it's doing everything you need to do and it does it so that's actually the camera that the church purchased that's up the road from me that i've been working with and they they love the fact that it follows them and does all that stuff with them it's old-school tv production that's you know can be done with just one person or automated like you mentioned yep absolutely yeah it's super super exciting to see how that technology really took off because i i'd uh tested some cameras with auto tracking and things like that a few years ago and it just wasn't there um but it's like i think i think that's one of the one of those things that came out of the pandemic and the lockdown is is really the investment in technology like that where uh you know they they dumped a ton of resources in hey how do i simplify this one-man shoot experience where things are so automated so having those tracking cameras do so much is super exciting to see anything else that you too would like to add on this whole like summer streaming vacation bible school scenario as i mentioned you know children participating in singing are there things that we need to pay attention to specifically from an audio perspective in those spaces do you like to see a certain kind of microphone being utilized for um you know performances and things like that any other tips that you could maybe recommend yeah that's a that gets into a probably a touchy subject because audio people i'm you know i kind of i kind of joke as being you know audio and video so i ride that line of both but um audio of people get so particular about their mics and and things but but for for an environment like that where it's a lot of outdoor space or or even a lot of kids together it's getting a good um you know ambient mic that can pick up all the kids but then having a couple of key shotguns uh shotgun microphones that that really focuses in on on you know if if kids are singing solos you can focus in on that but having an ambient microphone to pick up all that energy of the of the kids is i think a key importance so so you get that energy in the live stream you hear all the kids talking and excitement but then having the ability to switch audio so having a little mixer uh audio mixer and and dial in shotgun mic that's focused on one person but having having you know a headset on on kids is is really challenging we we tried that at a performance at a previous church and i think we broke man probably half of them doing something like that yeah i kind of that's not easy i kind of agree with uh jeremy on that what you can you can get in like i have my favorite mics he has his favorite mics but um the one thing i try to do to keep it simple too like you were saying about a mixer i step back even a little bit i kind of use an audio interface just to make it because i don't need any kind of auxiliary send outside because all i need is headphones to be able to listen to them if they're you know talking or whatever but the shotgun mic ideas is phenomenal or having some kind of ambient mic to get that room so it doesn't sound like it's studio um a lot of times like i said i mentioned before with the camcorder streaming outside i put like a road shotgun mic on the top i have two different wind screens i have a dead cat which looks like a fluffy uh cover for it i know it's a weird name but that's what it's called and then you have your traditional styrofoam uh windsock that goes over top of it and you just gotta switch be you know between them because if it's windy outside you want the dead cat on there otherwise you're just gonna hear on the on the microphone so i think understanding what you need outside and what you're doing i think that's the big thing but honestly i think keeping it simple uh you know and i i'm again i go back to the cell phone the cell phone has pretty decent audio for what you're trying to accomplish capture the moment uh going forward i think uh julia unless you're doing like a really high-end concert or something really you know elaborate um i think just going forward with using your cell phone at least right now you're a couple weeks in or you know i know our vacation bible school starts in three weeks so you know we're we're going with what we got yep exactly and and would you recommend that you know for people who are are performing this very vital function for for schools and and houses of worship have a dedicated person for audio and a dedicated person for video yes yeah if if they're if it's at all possible if they have the resources to do that um audio and video are so such different animals so to speak where where it's like you can you can ruin things real quick when you when your video looks bad or if your audio sounds bad so being able to focus strategically on each is hugely important um but again it's all about resources if you don't have it make sure make sure your audio sounds good because people will be willing to suffer through less quality video if it sounds good to them so that's that's a big key is is make sure make sure you you're paying attention to that it's not clipping it's you know easy to hear things like that that that make it make it uh where people can engage i agree totally i'm not even gonna touch that one he hit the nail on the head with that one yeah that's perfect well i mean we've all learned that from video conferencing right i mean even if somebody's camera doesn't connect if we can hear the person on the far end then it all works yep yeah absolutely i think i think that's the the big takeaway get your audio dialed in and i like the idea of having somebody separate to run it we have a guy that i've kind of worked with so i can focus on the video side he focuses on the audio neither of us proclaim to be audio professionals but we know enough to be dangerous and and make it sound good so that's all that matters and then if we get into real trouble we call my buddy who does know a lot about audio and we're like take a listen to this on a facebook page we created a um not listed page maybe this is a good tip to have uh before services that we're unsure of or if the audio is just not right or maybe we're having problems with video we'll stream it to a private page that only a few of us have and we'll all watch it and see what's going on and see if we can isolate the problem uh so that might be a a tip for somebody out there to do that especially with facebook giving you that opportunity to do that that's probably one of the most important tips that i've learned through this process you know and i'm very new to the whole live streaming industry relatively speaking i came from radio prior to this but is test test test right you know keep testing and try it out and you know it doesn't have to be live to the world just test it among a few people and 100 yeah and what i what i i shared it earlier but but like how i have my encoder turn on about an hour before our service goes live that gives me i'm i think i mentioned previously i was i'm part of a portable church so it's load in loadout every sunday we're setting everything up tearing everything down so it gives me the opportunity in my busy morning to sit down and see look look at the rehearsal video and listen to it so i can make sure the camera is connected properly i can make sure the light looks right i can do that so so even though i have volunteers in those specific areas doing each thing i is kind of the like the the manager so to speak i i have the ability to trust trust what they've done but verify it and make sure it looks good so then i don't have to stream that out anywhere it gives me the opportunity prior pre-service to monitor that in in right just before we go live yeah providing that layer of like quality assurance so to speak it's it's it's important and then um you know you're you're continually evolving and refining your processes based on on what you learn yeah so is there anything else that you guys would like to share um we're winding up on we've been together for just about an hour anything else you'd like to share about you know summer streaming specifically or any sounding and lighting technologies that are kind of uh on the on the horizon of your radar screens well again um being being a a smaller church we're constantly looking for new options so i'm excited um af we're ramping up for this fall and i think video switching is is really our next big step adding multiple cameras to our our space getting a a professional production switcher uh we're looking at the ross video switchers i know um i know steven really is enjoyed the the tricasters those are those are great video switchers um software software solutions like obs wirecast vmix all all those they've been great for what we've done to some degree although we've we have it it's burned us a few times so we're we're looking for you know constantly increasing like like you mentioned julia and and making that production better and better so um that's that's what we're focused on and just seeing what happens and is rolled out at nab this year yeah it should be it should be pretty interesting uh i guess my tip that i have for outside uh don't set your subject in front of the sun and point your camera at it please just just that's that's a this is a half joke but i've seen people do that and yeah it just doesn't come out right so don't do that that's called a silhouette yeah don't do that uh and and i think that you know with what jeremy was saying be aware of your surroundings be aware of what you're shooting at so to give you the best quality because obviously you're not taking a ton of lights outside you know you probably don't have the equipment to do that so but like jeremy i'm really interested to see what nav is going to bring especially since we didn't have it last year and it's kind of late this year so it'll be interesting to see the the technologies and i'm also interested in the automation uh technologies to make life easier as a solo producer host of my shows uh anything that i can do to make my job a little bit easier rather than pressing buttons i'm all for it julia now that makes sense and and nab for those who don't know it's the national association of broadcasters um they have a a meeting a large-scale trade show i guess you would say every year twice a year actually and this one is happening in early october in las vegas that's um their mainstay they also do one in in new york in the spring so um yeah there it is uh october 9th to the 13th and sounds like both of you will be there i'm still waiting on confirmation on that i'm i'm hoping to go although um although i know it's a it's a busy busy time so uh it's it's a fun fun show i i always my my wife always jokes with me it's like the biggest nerd fest uh in the world because of all the technology in one place i i've said that uh julia and uh jeremy i've said that it's like my super bowl you know everybody looks forward to the super bowl i look forward to nab because it's all your toys it's christmas morning you get to go there and see everything that you want and it's going to cost you and you've got to explain to your wife when you get home as to why you need that particular item yep i've already started my speech this is the reason why we need this right yeah hey i try you know well you know that it's so great having the two of you who are educators of others in this industry because um you know as i alluded to in the beginning um of of today's show with that article um is that you know people come in at all different levels and you know even if you're just starting with a cell phone it's possible and you can do a lot especially with the power of some of these um these tools that are just recently released like ndi so um thank you both so much for being with me again for our second edition of salt talk we will join you every month the last tuesday of the month so um feel free to send us any ideas for future shows any burning questions that you may have um you can reach me at julia at ptzoptics.com thanks everyone

Channel: PTZOptics

Views: 338

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Live Streaming Camera, PTZOptics, Broadcast Camera

Id: e3-7KYtPU0g

Length: 55min 19sec (3319 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 29 2021