Streaming Worship Service on a Small Church Budget
Our small church wanted to do livestreaming of our church service during the Covid-19 pandemic. Being a small church, we didn’t have a big budget to work with but still wanted it to be easily accessible and decent quality. We have been livestreaming for several months and it is working out great and we'll continue the process even after the pandemic. So for those that might be interested in doing this for their Church I put this list together to give you an idea what equipment we used and the price.
List of Streaming equipment we are using to live stream:
* OBS Studio Streaming Software (free open source software) https://obsproject.com
* Facebook Live account (free)
* Vidlive.co website widget ($7.00/month) This is a service that allows you to set a widget on your church website that will display the livestream from Facebook live. The big advantage with this service is that it allows you to not have to add the Facebook Live embed code to your site before each livestream. You setup the Vidlive account, link it to your Facebook account and insert the html widget code into your web page and that it. This is a great service and reasonably priced.
* You will need a Windows PC to run OBS Studio and Facebook Live to stream the service. I had an old Dell desktop and monitor that I wasn’t using and dedicated it to this project. (free)
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* Bestshot Super Uni-Directional Condenser Microphones [shotgun microphone]. (from amazon) The church accustics aren't the best and there was an echo that was picked up using the mics we had on hand. The shotgun mic is uni-directional so it eliminated the echo. The mic is located on the left side of the pulpit to pickup the minister at the pulpit. We already had a microphone stand available to use with the new mic.
* Sound Professionals Mono USB High Sensitivity Microphone Model SP-USB-Mic-Model-6 (from soundprofessionals.com) Mounted in front of the Pulpit pointed toward the congregation. After trying several different microphones which did not pickup the congregation when members were speaking I purchased this mic which is designed for Court Recorders. It's small but has a built in amplifier and is designed to pickup sound as far as 100 ft away. It is by far the most sensitive microphone I have found.
* Alvoxcon Wireless USB Lapel Microphone System (from amazon) The shotgun microphone is great for when the minister is at the pulpit but is limiting on movement so we purchased this wireless USB lapel microphone so the minister is able to move around during his sermons. This mic is very sensitive and works great!
* Two HD 1080P USB Webcams with microphone (each thru amazon)
* One used to view the congregation mounted above the baptistery.
* One mounted in the baptistery to view baptisms.
* One AUSDOM AF640 Full HD 1080p/30fps Autofocus Web Camera with Microphone (from amazon) Used on tripod from the right side of the pulpit.
* SMATV Pan, Tilt, 3X Optic Zoom Streaming Webcam (from amazon) Mounted at the rear of the sanctuary pointed toward the pulpit.
* VisionTek VTWC20 HD 1080p Webcam (from Dell.com) Mounted on a tripod on the left side of the pulpit pointed toward the projector screen to stream anything shown on the overhead projector.
* Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Active Extension Cable 100 Ft (30 M), USB Extension Cord with Built-in Signal Booster Chipset Repeater (from amazon) Used to connect the SMATV Pan, Tilt 3X zoom/auto-focus webcam at the rear of the sanctuary to the PC at the pulpit.
* Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Active Extension Cable 50 Ft (30 M), USB Extension Cord with Built-in Signal Booster Chipset Repeater (from amazon) Used to connect the HD 1080P webcam mounted above the baptistery & the HD 1080P webcam mounted in the baptistery to the PC at the pulpit.
* Neekeons 15 ft USB 2.0 A Male to A Female Extension Active Repeater Extension Cable with Built-in Signal Booster Chips. (from amazon) This cable is used to connect the projector camera to the PC
* 67-Inch Selfie Stick Tripod with small footprint (from amazon) This tripod is used with one of the 7" to 27" Selfie Sticks to raise the level of the projector screen webcam to get a better view of the screen.
* Two 7” to 27” Tripod extension (from amazon) Used to raise the webcam to be at the same level as the minister.
* ORICO Powered USB Hub, 7 Ports 24W (from amazon) Used to add additional USB port capability to the PC to allow all the USB devices to be plugged in. The powered hub insured sufficient power was available to drive the USB devices with long cable runs.
* JoyReken Small USB 2.0 Hub Splitter (from amazon) Used to split the USB signal and power the Congregation and Baptistery cameras from the single 50 ft USB active extension cable.
This total does not include the cost of a Windows computer which you will need. You can purchase a small PC & monitor from Walmart from $150 to $250 that will work just fine for this purpose. If all you are using it for is livestreaming your service it doesn’t take a lot of computing power. The CPU usage during our livestreams runs about 10 to 15%.
It also does not include the Vidlive stream service ($7.00/month), which is only necessary if you would like to add the livestream to your church website. You can always just stream to the church Facebook page if you don’t have a church website. This also makes the assumption that your church already has wireless internet available, if not that will be an additional expense.
Since we located the streaming PC at the pulpit we needed a way to control the OBS Studio software as well as Facebook Live Studio during services. Since you can create different scenes using different mics and cameras that you can switch between during the broadcast you need to be able to control the OBS studio on the streaming PC. So an easy and free solution was to use my laptop pc and remote into the streaming PC using Anydesk software. Anydesk (https://anydesk.com) installed on both PC's allows you to remote in and control the streaming PC from anywhere you have an internet connection. So I usually sit on the back pew and control the live stream during services and if we cancel services the minister can still deliver his message from the pulpit and I can still control the stream from home using anydesk.
Keep in mind that the webcams and mics we are using are by far not the best quality you can purchase but the live stream via Facebook live is not super high quality either so they work really well for our small church. You could easily spend thousands of dollars for fancy audio and video equipment but for small church's that just isn't an option. I think for less than $650.00 we have setup a very functional multiple (5) camera setup that didn't brake the bank. If you have any questions on what we did just click here to shoot me an email.