Digital Church during the pandemic: A (technical) HowTo

At the Dingli parish (Malta) a small team of volunteers has grouped our resources to address the social distancing and be close to our parishioners as much as possible. It was a sharp learning curve for us, albeit coming from a technical background. The tools here are all free to use, and this tutorial is inspired to help other parishes, far and wide, to up their efforts online. The idea is that in our efforts, prayer remain the focus of our activities.

When one prays, the first thing they need to do is prepare an environment which conduces prayer. Removes as far as possible distractions. Unfortunately, with half baked technological responses, we are very often increasing such distractions. Thus, this tutorial is intend to help our fellow ministers to up their game so as to help our church communities to focus on what matters most: prayer and the rooting of our relationship in Christ.

This tutorial will be based on using OBS Streaming (available on all platforms) and Facebook live (but can be easily adapted to other streaming platforms)

OBS is essentially a virtual mixer for visual inputs which allows you live mix multiple sources and stream the output to Facebook Live / Youtube Live etc. It allows you to record as well.

After installing OBS, hit the settings button, and match these:

· Obtain stream key by pressing Get Stream Key, choose the platform (in our case Facebook). Use a persistent streaming key, so once it is set up, you do not need to change it every time. Scheduled streams need to be configured from the https://www.facebook.com/live/create interface. Remember to choose the good destination for the particular stream (i.e. which page/group etc). The stream key remains the same irrespective from the destination.

Output tab — Streaming:

Encoder: x264

Checked: Enforce streaming encoder

Rate control: VBR / 2000 kbps bitrate / Buffer size 3000 / CRF 23 / CPU usage: veryfast

Video (for FB live — considering max is 720)

Base and Output both: 1280 x 720

Downscale filter: Lanczos

FPS: 30

Advanced:

Priority: above normal

Renderer: Direct3D 11. Color Format NV112

*IMP* Stream delay: Enabled / Duration 10s / Check: Preserve cutoff point

Check enabled for Automatically Reconnect

The streaming computer needs to have at least:

i5 CPU

8GB RAM

A graphics card which has .H264 encoding:

— Intel UHD 620

— GTX 1640

— RX 560.. etc.. ideally aim for CUDA cores + .H264

USB3 port onto which you’ll connect the HDMI capture card

To give you an idea: with an Intel UHD 620 / i5 / 8RAM we are currently streaming a mix from 2 DSLRs and a mobile phone.

Scenario #1: You want to stream a live event using two or more cameras?

1. At Dingli parish we are currently streaming our masses using 2x DSLR cameras and 1x Action camera. If need be, we also add 1 or 2 smartphones. The setup is so:

a. 1 of the DSLR is connected via HDMI out to an HDMI USB3 capture card and added to OBS as Video capture device. (A good HDMI capture car would cost EUR 100–200 new. Avoid the cheaper options)

b. The other DSLR is a Canon 80D. A couple of weeks ago Canon started offering a small utility which transforms a selected group of cameras (check link) into a webcam, so one can connect it with a < 3m USB2 cable and add it to OBS as a Video capture device

c. Actioncam (for a fisheye angle) added as a Video capture device

2. Image for pre/post streaming added as ‘Image’ on OBS

3. Audio feed from the church’s mixer (make sure to switch off the output to the church’s speakers to avoid feedback/echo) and add it on OBS (connecting to either the line-in or microphone-in) as Audio input capture

4. When we use the smartphones, one can install #LiveDroid app on them which gives you an RTSP connection. Make sure the smartphone and the streaming computer are on the same internal network and can ping each other and add to OBS as ‘Media source’ adding the RTSP link instead of the local file. #LiveDroid allows you to zoom in/out remotely from a web browser, if your smartphone camera supports it. Do NOT attempt any digital zooms.

5. If you need to add a video, add it as a VLC Video source (only becomes available if you install VLC on your machine — which btw, I highly recommend) which gives you some additional commands more than Media and locate the file. The file will play once it is sent to live

6. If you need to stream the input of a web conference — look at scenario 2

One can use different scenes to prepare when one needs some sources so as to have a clearer and cleaner interface.

Scenario #2: Streaming a web conference conversation?

In this scenario we had the parish priest videoed by 2 cameras and welcoming prayers from conversation with a group on web-conferencing. The easiest / best method we found was:

1. Priest enters the conversation with his smartphone

2. Streamer enters the conversation (no camera / no microphone — audio only)

3. The browser is used as an input in OBS (Browser source)

4. Live mix between the 2 physical cameras and the Browser source. Audio used only from the browser

5. Remember that on your Live feed there would be a 1minute delay, so the conversation has to be followed only via the priest’s mobile!

Scenario #3: What if you want multiple sources to appear in your web conference?

OBS comes to the rescue too. Sharing your desktop while playing a video causes lag and lip-sync issues. Screen sharing shall be used only when there is no syncing between audio/visuals. OBS has a better solution:

1. Download OBS Webcam plugin and while installing install it in the default directory it gives you (do not enter into the plugin directory as I did — it breaks everything!!)

2. Installing it as 1 webcam is enough

3. In your web conference app/browser use OBS Webcam as your webcam

4. In OBS no need to hit the start streaming

5. Use OBS like in the previous scenarios

Scenario #4: Do a quiz but you still want your face to remain visible while putting your PowerPoint full screen / or your browser:

1. In Scene 1: choose the input source depending on your needs (Slide or Browser)

2. Add another input from your webcam and resize it to a small corner

3. In Scene 2: add as only source your webcam so when you need to have just yourself visible you can swap

4. In your web-conferencing app, use OBS as the webcam (Scenario #3) and from OBS swap between the sources

These are the four scenarios which we are currently using in Dingli (or a mix of thereof). Please let me know in comments if I can be of further help.