EP012: Living As One & Advanced Church Broadcast

Hey everybody, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast and we are kicking off today. We're having a conversation on production. Last week, Steve Kaminsky with Portable Church Industries joined us as we were talking a lot, call it basic broadcast 101. We talked a lot about smaller churches or maybe new churches that are diving in to starting broadcasting online and what it looks like to kind of put that church service online as a new church or new organization getting dirty into it. And so we've been blessed this week to have Steve Kaminsky, longtime friend, coming back on the show. Hey Steve, man, why don't you just share a little bit about yourself? Well, you probably heard a little bit last week.

I've spent a good portion of my life involved in doing church production. Large church, small church, spent a short time on the road as a touring roadie, which was a blast, but no way to have a family. And now I have actually been blessed to take both my experiences as a church tech guy and as a touring roadie and utilize it to help churches that are doing portable environments. So I'm a design consultant with Portable Church, which means I get to help folks that aren't blessed with a facility to spread the gospel inside schools, theaters. Heck, we even have a church that meets in a train station on Sunday mornings. So we get to do a lot of fun stuff in cool places. So I'm guessing a church that meets in a train station is a lot different than, what was it, Toad to Wet Sprocket?

Yes. Was that it? Yeah, I'm trying to go back. Toad to Wet Sprocket, good times. Good stuff. I was actually listening to him on the radio the other day, and every time I hear them, I'm thinking, hey, Steve used to travel with those guys. So it was Toad, right? I'm not confusing the bands. Good. So in addition to Steve joining us today, and super glad to have him back, we've got some guys from Living As One coming on the show today. And I don't know, maybe you're in multi-site world or doing church online, but I'll tell you, this product is really taking the church world by storm and redefining what video teaching and internet broadcast looks like. And so we've got Colin Jones and Paul Martel, who are a lot of the brain power behind Living As One right now joining us, and they're both coming on the show.

So hey, Colin, man, let's start with you. Just tell us a little bit about yourself and maybe give us an overview of what Living As One is. Yeah, thanks so much, Jeff. We love the podcast and love your work, and also love Steve and Portable Church and their big partner. And we actually used them when we were church tech guys as well. So when we used to be church tech guys about six years ago, we created Living As One of our own need for our church. And so before it was ever a company, and that's why the name's Living As One, it sounds like a marriage conference. And we get that a lot, but it was because it wasn't intended to be a company. And so we had three campuses at the time at Chase Oaks in Dallas, and we were trying to figure out how to do multi-site and web.

And our internet would go out randomly, and the stream would stop. And so we patented and invented a new protocol, some volunteers. And so it's the first protocol and solution that can work over public internet really well. So it eliminates things like buffering wheels and pixelation and jitters. And so previously, churches had to pay, you know, hundreds of thousand dollars for a solution. Now they just pay a couple thousand to get really, really high quality, the same quality we'd see at the CPS or a new station or whatever that is. So that's why Living As One's technology has grown so fast. And then we're all still church guys and didn't change our name, which we should have. And so that's kind of an overview.

We have solutions for both multi-site and web. And it just specializes in internet delivery. So with, and over, you know, different dedicated solutions. So if you have, you know, any type of internet connection is going to have problems. And so with a web stream, you're probably used to buffering wheels and different aspects like that. And so ours is a really simple solution that solves that. And that's why it's grown. That's awesome. And Paul, man, you were there like with the company from, from the get go, right? Like when, when you had these idea, this idea of doing something at the small, did you, did you think this would, would blow up and explode and, and become what it's become? Like, what's it been like to see this idea come to fruition?

That's been pretty cool. I mean, I remember like early on in the years, just sketching out what it would be like if churches could be able to, you know, distribute their message or share messages with other churches or just with themselves across huge spans of geography, you know, different states and different countries. And so I remember this like napkin sketch I have, it's like basically just like these little circles representing the churches and connecting the lines to them. And um, and so it's, it's been pretty amazing seeing it come from that napkin to, uh, serving, you know, 400 multi-site churches across the world really, uh, and seeing that product really come into play and making it super easy and accessible for them to do that.

It's pretty amazing. Yeah. It's, it's been quite a ride. That's, that's awesome. Well, I'll tell you as a guy who's launched a dozen multi-site campuses in my lifetime and have clients who have done, you know, far surpassed that. Um, living as one as a product to me is, is revolutionized and has saved so much money. I've literally been the guy who has not been able to sleep on a Saturday night in fear of a video teaching solution. That's not going to work Sunday morning. And to see the stability of, of some of that stuff happen, you know, just living as one, I, I cannot imagine doing a multi-site solution or even broadcasting in a church online environment with a lot of the stability of, of what you guys are offering.

And, and even the stuff that's coming down the road, uh, it's super exciting just to see kind of how your company is helping, um, bring church up into the modern sphere to be able to broadcast and reach and utilize a lot of what internet has in capacity with, with online. And we kind of glossed over portable church, but you know, I've, I've got clients who are utilizing portable church, uh, with that. And so I love, you know, the, the, the vision of, of companies like portable church who are doing things and what Steve's doing by helping organizations, um, develop systems that allow you to do church anywhere. Like, you know, we were joking earlier about doing church in a, in a train station. And honestly, I've never heard of a train station church before, but the idea of, Hey, you know, let's utilize a school.

Let's utilize a, uh, uh, uh, uh, you know, uh, community center. Let's utilize a train house to producing some of these churches in, um, uh, you know, uh, unconventional areas to do church, uh, virally where the people are like, that's, that's a great thing. And, and we've talked in the past about pop-up churches, I think somewhere around episode four, but even doing some of this stuff to, to do church in new areas. Some of the stuff that Colin and these guys and Paul, what they're doing living as one and Steve through portable church, it's really attacking the same problem, but through two different areas. How can we get church through church online, through internet technologies to people in unconventional ways?

So go both you guys, man, thanks. Thanks for doing that. But here's what I wanted to do today. Like, so last week we talked about doing church and broadcasting church online. And it was really more of like the one-on-one. We actually, we, we call it a church broadcast one-on-one where it's, Hey, I'm just getting started into this. Maybe I'm a 150 person church, a 200 person church, maybe I'm a church plant that's coming up. Maybe I'm a 500 person church. And we've just finally caught the vision and the purpose behind broadcasting this on Facebook. And there's tons of resources, you know, that, that we talked about, hit up the church.digital, or there's probably going to be a link in the show notes that'll help you get there to listen to that and really find out what some of those smaller resources are.

But here's the reality of where we are. As of right now, there's five to 10,000 churches a week that are broadcasting some sort of, some sort of content online, whether it's, you know, Facebook or through church online platform or YouTube or Periscope, Twitter, whatever it is, they're broadcasting something. And so with this podcast, I wanted to maybe step back and, and challenge some of us that are already broadcasting on ways to do it better. As a general rule is, especially when you're starting out church online, the people who watch church online seem to be forgiving, but there's still a challenge for us to do it better. And so what better way I felt to maybe have some of these conversations about how can we do the church online broadcast better to bring in some experts who literally do church online and see church online on a regular basis, talking to living as one and how that they're utilizing their encoders for this, but also to bring in a portable church, Stephen Kaminsky, to really explore from the integration aspect, you know, some of the quality issues that maybe a church runs into, or how maybe a church that's doing just a one camera can step up to do a two camera, three camera, what's, what's involved with that?

And what questions do we need to be asking? And so just my, my limited aspect of 20 plus years doing production in a church environment, you know, there's several different areas I want to hit on. There's like, okay, video, obviously getting video and being more artistic with the video. You know, audio, getting the audio to be better is part of it. And so a lot of this is the stuff guys that I just, I want to dig into. And there's probably some other things that I'm not even thinking about, which is why I bring in the experts. So, but let's, let's start with this from, from a video perspective, if I'm going, what's the win from going from maybe like a one camera shoot, doing a wide shot of the stage, what's the win from going to that to like a two camera shoot, a three camera shoot, it becomes more, more dynamic.

Like what, why should a church spend the money or what is the advantage for the church to explore maybe some of that space? Steve, you want to speak into that? Yeah, I think the easiest way to define that is engagement. If you're going from a single wide shot, which let's be honest, there's nothing wrong with that. That gives you a perspective of sitting in the congregation somewhere and being able to see what's happening as if you were attending. But what you don't get is the emotion and connecting with the folks on stage. Those people are our worship leaders. They're the folks that are pointing us upward in engaging in worship. So by being able to have multiple shots in different ways, you can convey the emotion that you feel in the room over video to folks who are sitting watching maybe a week later, maybe a day later, who are maybe in different parts of the world.

It's a way to draw people in. And that's probably the easiest way to define the reason for doing that, my opinion. Paul, Colin, like, are there churches that you have seen who have navigated this, who have gone from doing like a one to a multiple? I'm just curious, like, does the average church just do the one who are your clients, the multiple? Kind of what's your experience there when you're looking at how people, how churches are broadcasting their services online? Yeah, I think we definitely have a mix of churches that are doing both. I can't personally think of one particular one that's done that transition. But I definitely, when I'm looking at those feeds, you know, we do a lot of proactive monitoring to make sure that the quality of experience of the viewing experience is going to be good for our viewers.

And so we monitor some of them to help make sure that that's going really well. And whenever I'm viewing between a bunch of different churches, I do see a big difference in the quality of the content of the production value when you go from a single camera shot to a multi-camera switch shot. And it's exactly what Stephen said. He's, you know, it's basically the being able to convey that engagement and that storytelling element of being able to craft an experience that you're trying to convey a message is really a lot more impactful versus having a static camera on somebody who's speaking is a lot less engaging. There's a lot less stickiness, if you call it, of somebody wanting to stay around and watch.

Because if the viewer can kind of get bored, you know, their eyes start seeking around, jumping around. If there's nothing to look at, you know, so much of our information that we receive is visual. And if it's a static shot of a talking person, somebody might tend to stick around a little bit less. And so those being able to have a better storytelling process to being able to switch cameras and make the whole viewing experience more dynamic is really going to have a lot more retention of viewer experience. Yeah. We measure watch times. So that's how, because a lot of churches, like I know that you just had Jay Crondon. He told me they don't count for a viewer unless it's longer than 30 minutes.

And so I think measuring viewer length is really important when thinking about different cameras and what that affects. And also, you know, it's the quality of the viewing experience, quality of technology, audio quality is really big there. I'm sure that we'll touch on all of those. But measuring, I think that's a great thing to measure. And I think we have seen, because we have these statistics on a big deal. It's not like we did a study on, you know, one camera shoot moved to the others, but as people improve their production, online campus pastors do notice a big difference in viewership stickiness, as I should say. Yeah. One of my clients is, and actually, I just had coffee with this guy up in North Miami.

And I wasn't even thinking about it in context, but since we're talking about this, he is, it's this weird thing where he's doing both a wide shot, but he has access to multiple cameras. He's renting out a college theater slash classroom. And so it's got stadium seating. It's got three camera robots, you know, around. And so he really isn't using the joystick cameras as much as he is the lockdown camera that we set up for him. And he's broadcasting using a Epiphon Web X2 or something, a webcaster X2. And so like the majority of his videos are that. And so today I was actually talking to him about his Facebook videos. And we were scrolling through his videos and was looking at some of his wide shots.

His average wide shot was around 200 to 220 views. It's a small church, church plant, getting started. And so 200 to 220 views on Facebook. But then he went into a section of where he was using the robot cams to get on the tight shot. His average view on those was between 900 and 950. And so this one guy, random, not scientific, we were able to calculate three to four times more viewership. And it's not that his content got better. It's not that it's a different sermon series or a different time. It's the same philosophy. He's just much closer, much tighter, which made that content much more engaging. And so, you know, for a lot of us, you know, maybe church online is so new that we've really never considered, okay, well, we're broadcasting the services, but what's the next step after broadcasting the services?

What I would suggest is the next step is, well, let's figure out how to get that video more engaging so that it hooks people longer. Let's do things. And we've talked about it with chat hosts and others. Let's do things within the space also to make it more engaging. But, you know, keeping in mind on the broadcast side. So, you know, Steve, from just a pure technological basis, because you're in this all the time, what if I'm a 1500 person church, I'm doing a one person camera, and hey, you know what, maybe it's time to step up a little bit. Maybe I'm a 700 person venue doing two or three services. Like, what's a good model? What's something really to look at, for us to look at, how to take that next step in the broadcast to get more cameras and more engagement?

The easiest place to start, I think, is Hitachi. They make a fabulous product. It integrates with Ross Switchers, which seem to be a fan of everybody. Everybody loves that carbonite black. And they fit a very, very nice price point. That is going to be a beautiful setup for your standard ENG, shoulder cam, news gathering camera setup. It's going to look good. They have extremely nice low light response, which is important in churches, because a lot of churches are trending darker in their lighting velocity, a little bit less light on the faces of folks, less light in the room. So you're not going to have the issue of trying to pick up faces some of the Hitachi models are very LED wall friendly, which is another trend to be careful of if you want to be mindful of the fact that LED walls and cameras don't always play nicely with each other.

The trend that I think is heading upwards though right now, especially when we talk about artistic storytelling, which Colin Paul, I'm glad you guys brought that up because that's a huge piece of doing video online. So we have a lot of churches that are kind of moving towards canon cinema camps, which brings its own inherent challenge. We have a lot of cinema work that's being done on DSLR bodies, everything, most content, shouldn't say all content, but most content we're seeing online these days is shot with that cinematic feel, that shallow depth of field, that 24p frame rate, you know, the whole thing. So we have a lot of churches now that are moving that direction. They want that artistic feel as opposed to your, nothing wrong with it, but the traditional style of camera shots.

So I would say, depending on who you are, those Hitachi cameras are fabulous. But if you really are more trending artistically, the Canon cameras are another great place to start. And they both fit a similar price point in general. Awesome. So like what, who are some people who are doing the average person, you just said cinematic quality, 24p. I love my listeners. They got no clue what you just said. I totally understand what you're saying. What, what's a good example. And so either of you guys, uh, I don't know, but like who's doing 24p. Well, if, if I want to link to somebody in the show notes, who can I say, go look at what a cinematic church service looks like stylistically by watching this church.

Is there somebody that's standing out right now? Yeah. Flatirons and Red Rocks. We live by both of them. So we, we go to both, we have people on our staff that go to both of them and Flatirons. Rob is kind of the guy who pioneered that using Canon cameras. Then he actually switched to Panasonic, but Red Rocks uses Canon and they look really, really good. And it's awesome. So yeah, either watching Red Rocks or Flatirons feeds, and they're both living as one customers and they're, they're great. Flatirons is probably the one that sticks out most, mainly because Rob's pioneered it. So I got to hang out with him in an NAB and dude is just a genius when it comes to that. Some of the stuff that he's done to make it work is fantastic.

And it's probably pushed some of these manufacturers to make their, you know, their cinematic cameras, like the C300s, the C500s, more friendly to a broadcast environment. So even, even some of the options they're offering, for example, Iris control, remote Iris control used to be the biggest problem because you don't want a camera operator fidgeting the focus zoom in Iris. Well, Canon has made it possible for their remote controls now to control Iris. So now you can have an engineer in a control room helping set light levels. So even just that simple piece has changed things immensely. So it's, it's trending that direction as things get a little bit more friendly. Awesome. There you go. We'll link to some of these in the show notes and include some other examples for you as, as well.

But I, and I love, it's, it's like, I've loved the cinematic look. What's interesting is, as I've been working with clients, they've got so much invested in the broadcast that they haven't been able to like take that jump. But for a church that maybe hasn't made that initial investment into broadcast style cameras, which is the opposite of cinematic. Um, you know, maybe it's, it's a good opportunity to get a more artistic feel, uh, with it. And so the depth of field and some of the stuff that we're talking about here looks great. So be sure to check those examples out. One other thing that I wanted to touch on, at least before we're still in the audio and the video side, before we get to audio, I talk about a lighting for video sometimes and like the, um, or our color temperatures and like the, the, the texts that I talked to, like it's, it's, they, they just, they can't, they can't comprehend, you know, a lot of, of, of what's in involved or, you know, I talk about having the same color temperature and you can't do like the white, white and the yellow, white at the same time.

Cause the cameras, you know, freak out. It depends on how it's programmed. And all of a sudden people look like Smurfs cause they're too blue and they just, it's, it's, it's like foreign. Um, and, and if you don't know what I'm talking about, I'll link to very bad examples of, of what this looks like, cause there's some really bad church examples out there, but what are, what are some rules of thumb, uh, that you guys have, have experienced or look at, Hey, here's some things to consider when you're doing lighting for, for broadcast, you know, and, and the good news is this, this even helps if you're not doing multiple cameras, even one camera can, can benefit from this, but like lighting for, for broadcast using the backlights, how to do front light appropriately, how not to have shadows, like what are some things that, that you guys kind of consider, see what churches that are doing it well?

Uh, maybe some things that, that you've helped with Steve on your side. What does that look like? Um, living as one guys, you want to start off with something? Sure. I mean, I can start off with the basics. I mean, the, uh, I mean, it's, it's important to have adequate surrounding lighting on your, your speaker. So a good stage wash, um, is just absolutely critical because if you look at a video and, um, they're not lit properly and you know, if you're, you're going to have to gain up the camera or make that camera more sensitive to the light and you're going to introduce grain and other artifacts in that image that, uh, just are not going to produce a good looking image. So having an adequate light, um, on that speaker, um, is, is absolutely critically important to, to affecting the overall look of that.

Um, backlighting can add a ton of, uh, great, um, depth to the look of your video. So what we did, um, at my, uh, home church back at Chase Oaks, I used to do some lighting design for them. So we would have a nice solid, um, uh, stage wash across. So if he walks to the left side of the stage, there's plenty of light there. If he walks to the right side of the stage, there's plenty of light there. And then we actually had some movers that were moving lights, moving heads, um, that were mounted to the ceiling and we would point them down. They were probably about 15 feet behind the speaker for our particular setup and they angled down. So they gave him kind of a, the back of his head had some nice light and it lit up his shoulders as well.

And that gave him a lot of depth instead of him looking very flat, if he only had front lighting. So a combination of nicely balanced front light where it's nice and even as he walks across the stage and backlighting to give it that depth, they're probably two things that I would definitely recommend for at least the speaking part of when you're trying to broadcast a message or a sermon. Sure. Backlight, I know plays, plays a big part in like I've, I've, I've seen situations where black backdrop pastors wearing a black jacket, um, and his black hair. And it just, he's, it's like, it's just looking at a face in a, in an undershirt almost, uh, basically is, is because there's no real separation.

The white t-shirt he's wearing or the white shirt, uh, underneath his jacket is, is what's really driving the brightness. And everything else because it's, it's black is, is lost. So, so that, that backlight is, is key. Um, in, in, in context and in Steve, you know, like, cause I know you've got traditional fixtures, which are typically in, in like, uh, a yellow white, you've got the led and intelligent fixtures, which are typically more led blue, white, you know, what, what is that tension like when you're creating a broadcast environment for video teaching or for others? Like how, how do you use what, how do you regulate when to use what, where? Well, so I think, I think the interesting thing to note with that is that you want, you want all your light to be uniform.

So at no point should you be mixing a daylight with a warm white, um, color temperatures in the same shot, because then your cameras don't know what to do. And you're, you're going to have Smurfette on one hand, and then you're going to have a really bad spray tan on the other hand. It's just, it's not going to blend well. So you need to pick one. Um, I don't know that it really matters from a broadcast standpoint, which one you pick because your camera can be shaded and colored to adapt to that for broadcast. I think the more important question there, you have to start with the live room itself. If you've got daylight white on everything on stage, but your house lights are warm white, you're going to have a bigger issue in the room and then fighting that.

So I think, I think the decision starts with your live room and then make that uniform across the board. I think it's the easiest answer to that. Um, and then even light, um, on the stage and especially for the message and for any hosting that's done is make sure it's even, there's nothing more distracting. Again, we talk about removing distractions all the time, then some, a pastor walking across stage and getting darker and brighter as he takes each step, especially if the camera's panning along here with him. So even same color temperature light across the whole spectrum is key. Um, I perfectly, I'm personally, I'm a little bit more of a fan of the warm white because most environments, your house lighting is going to be a warm white color temperature.

Um, I will say most cameras and technology play better in daylight, uh, just a blue color spectrum is more friendly. Um, but after having seen both, I'm a warm, warm white fan. Well, I was gonna say, we spent a lot of time having the conversation around the lighting to the speaker, but let's not forget that when we're talking about worship, we're talking about clothes, close up shots. An easy trap to fall into is let's bathe them in light too. But don't forget that shadow plays well into emotion. So just because we're talking about that, we want your speaker evenly lit across the whole spectrum doesn't mean it needs to look like the sun shining on the whole stage during worship. Let shadows play to emotion.

Um, and then there's, there's different points of view on that, but don't be afraid of shadows when music's playing. It actually helps creating that story. Again, we're talking about storytelling earlier. It allows story to be told in those moments. Yeah. As a vid, I agree. As a video director, I actually think that the, it's two sides of the coin and that the rules that apply for video teaching during a pastor are the direct opposite of how the video teaching rules or how the video rules apply during worship. You know, if, if I'm looking at the frame in teaching, I always want the pastor in the middle, you know, keep the camera in front of him as he's moving across. You're keeping them in the middle of your viewfinder in the crosshairs.

During worship, I would much rather have the, you know, the person that that's in focus, your, your, your primary person on the left third or the right third and using the rule of thirds. I'll, I'll put a definition of that in the show notes, but to create more negative space around the person to work with transitions and in pans and things like that, where you want that teacher to be as bright as possible. You really want the worship to be more dark, where you want it to be focused on the teaching. A lot of times in worship, you want to focus on the environment for some of that to convey some of the emotions. And so really, it's, it's two different sides of the coin and they're both necessary, A, to have cameras that are able to get some of the darkness, but can focus on, can handle, you know, the, the bright as well, that you want the encoder to be able to have stability going to both sides with that.

And having volunteers that understand, okay, during worship, you know, I need to have, you know, this, your camera operators need to have this philosophy, but teaching's a completely separate thing. What are some examples of, of like overall, and you mentioned a couple on the 24, uh, 24 frames, but either of you, all three of you, who's doing this well, who should we be looking at? And we're like, Hey, there's a really good artistic worship angle. Uh, and there's a really good, uh, teaching perspective. Uh, what churches out there for somebody who's trying to figure out how to get started? Who should they be looking at? I love the point of you. I would say, uh, man, Red Rocks is for the worship.

Um, they are just killing it. Um, I was talking with, uh, one of their technical directors the other day. Um, and I was really blown away that of, of how, of how he described it to me. He does both the lighting design and he is in charge of all the camera setup. And, um, he doesn't even have a shader, um, on their camera during worship. He sets all the lights and all the cameras at a single setting on the aperture, basically how much light is coming in on the camera. And it never changes during worship. Um, and if you look at that video that the producers, they're using, I think Canon C200s, those, those cine cameras with, uh, the nice shallow depth of field lenses. And, uh, I mean, wow, it is, it is an amazing look when you look at their video.

So if you can check out worship for Red Rocks, you'll be amazed. Um, and then I would say if I had to pick one for a message, I would probably say Life.Church, um, the Craig Groeschel, um, book that he has on that slick stage and they do lighting so well. Uh, that's, that's probably the one I would say for the messages for me. This is an intense IMAG one too, speaking directly. Yeah. He does a great job of speaking to the audience on the count of cameras too. Yeah. One, one of the things that I love and I, and I've heard this, I don't know if it's still true, but I know it was at one, point like the cameras at Life.Church are like in row three or row five, right there. They were pushed very much up because there's, and, and when I'm coaching, you know, preachers and communicators on video teaching, it's always, you got to remember past, there's more people on the other side of that lens than in the physical room.

And that's so hard for like the average pastor to really connect with because that pastor, that communicator has been trained for 20, 30 years preached to the room and, and, and you're, you're training these, these, these teachers to learn. It's not just the people in the room. There's more on the other side. And as you're looking at multiple campuses, as you're looking at church online, as you're looking at, at audio podcasts at, at, at YouTube and sermon archives and all the different distribution points. Uh, and the majority of churches, it's a fact. There are more people on the other side of that lens than, than actually physically in the room. So, so that's, that's great stuff. I've, I've liked elevation and how they do the teaching.

Uh, but what's interesting is that it breaks every rural rule, R U L E rule known to churches. Like you, you're not supposed to show the audience, you know, they do the over the shoulder shot, um, to show the audience over. Um, I mean, I'm just blanking on the pastor's name. Who's the pastor there? Steven Furtick, uh, Furtick. They're over the shoulder on Furtick to show the audience. You always want to show the pastor's face, but they're doing over the shoulder. You can't see his face. It's like all, all these preconceived norms that started with, you know, Groeschel that started with, uh, uh, North point way back in the day with North point video teaching roles, which is where I learned 12, 13 years ago on how to do video.

Like he just like trashes all of it. Yeah. He runs everywhere in the whole stadium. Oh yeah. And, and it's like, but it's, it's, it's, and maybe this is me because like I said, I'm an old fogey, but it's breaking all those roles to me that makes it so, uh, exciting and engaging. Cause I'm like, he can't do that. Oh, look, he just did. He can't do that. He can't show the audience that way. And then all of a sudden he is. And I'm like, Hey, this isn't really, isn't that bad. And so not to like separate from the way everybody else is doing it, but that almost makes it exciting because it's unique in that. And I honestly, I get that same feel when I look at the cinema, the cinema cameras and worship, because I'm like, it's so it's unique in that there's not tens of thousands of churches doing it on a major level.

It's a very small percentage getting into that space that really makes it powerful stuff. All right. So let's, let's talk about audio because audio is, is one of these areas where people have patience when it comes to video. Uh, there's a miscue, there's a miscut. Um, something doesn't look quite good. They're going to give it patience because they, they can hear it and they can understand it. But if it doesn't sound good, if you've got a bad worship mix, if you've got a teacher who's cutting in and out, uh, the mics dropping out, like they're not sticking around. Um, and so an online mix is, is so important. So I'm a church that I've been doing an ox out of the board or a matrix out of my soundboard straight to the camera.

The house mix has been broadcasted out and there's nothing. We talked about this earlier. We talked about it last week. There's nothing wrong with that. However, there's an opportunity to expand and to get better. So Steve, just kind of like, let's define it. If we wanted to go from a one mix to like a two mix where now I've got a separate board, got a separate engineer, like what's a two minute explanation of how to do that? A split honestly is, is the easy answer. So you need to have some kind of split that allows you to have a second console to access all the audio inputs that are available to your console for your house. Um, that can take one or two ways. That's an analog split going completely old school where you've got something that's giving doubling all your inputs or so you have one for each console or today's day in the world.

You have a lot of digital snakes that allow one console to have access, um, to the inputs and then another console to access those inputs as well. Uh, so it just kind of depends on which console you have and which console you want to utilize for your broadcast mix. Um, but being able to split audio out is the key. If you're a podcast console. Yeah. I know, I know I've, I've had this conversation before and I always get a different opinion back. Is it important that both consoles for online and house are the same? Like, do they need to be identical or can it be separate? What are some of the pros and cons of that? Uh, so the pros of them being identical is if you're running volunteers or you're hiring in audio engineers, um, they can then either run the house mix or run the broadcast mix.

So you have one set of training principles in existence. And if it's a console, like a Yamaha, like a, uh, Digico where they can do, uh, gain sharing off the, um, stage box, then it's extremely crucial and money saving at the same time. Um, so it's, it's extremely important. Now, if that's not your goal, um, then it's not as important. If you're paying folks and you're paying guys always do broadcast and you're paying guys always doing front of house, it's very different. Um, if you've got a volunteer, that's a recording engineer, it might be easier to stick him on pro tools and he might be able to do it quicker, um, off that. And then you actually have to buy another console surface. You're just buying a digital input box.

So my opinion, it's extremely important, but it's not a one size fits all either. So what kind of space do we need if, if we're trying to set up like a studio to mix from, are we mixing from like in-ear or not in-ear headphones over ear? Are we mixing from near field monitors? Like, like, what do you recommend kind of conceptually if we're really creating a separate mix desk for this, what types of tools does a volunteer or a paid person need to actually mix in this area? What do you think, Steve? So I would say a standard size office. So you're talking maybe 200 square feet. Um, that gives you enough space to add some acoustic. 200 square feet. What kind of office are you working in? Holy cow.

That's awesome. Good for you, man. I'm kidding. All right. Keep going. 200 square feet. Go for it. Keep talking to me. And then the near field monitors is honestly the easiest way to do it. Um, you can get really tricky and have a couple of different types of monitors. So that way you can kind of average your mix out. You can simulate, you know, computer monitors or you can simulate car stereo. Um, but you just want to find yourself a decent pair of near field monitors to mix to, um, get them tuned for the room acoustic treatment for the room and then rock and roll. So tell me this and let's just open this up to everybody. What is the difference? Because some of these people, you know, what, listening to this broadcast are probably saying, but it's the same service they're mixing.

Like, how's it, how's it different? So how does a mix for the house differ to the mix that we're hearing online? Wow. So that, that is a, that is a bit of a loaded question. Um, because in this day and age with digital consoles, um, you have a lot of churches that don't have a separate broadcast booth because let me caveat that they've dialed in the sound of their rooms so tightly and had the PA tuned so nicely that the mix that they're sending the PA is good enough for broadcast. So watermark, um, they are sending the house mix to broadcast these days. They have a full broadcast suite. Um, but they are utilizing what's coming off the front of house console because it is fabulous. Uh, Andrew Stone, um, church on the move.

Uh, they run a, uh, program called mix you. Um, they actually are big proponents of get your, get your house mix set up really well, get your PA tuned really well. And then you don't need a separate broadcast suite. Um, so it's, it's kind of a loaded question on how it's different because if you're doing it right, it shouldn't be, uh, in theory, you should be able to mix one place and it's the same as the other. Um, all right. So you, you just, you just, uh, you just threw something back at me. Let me throw it back at you. This is great. I love it. So give me three things to improve to do it right. So we're not doing it right. I have to have a separate mix. What are three things I need to improve on?

What are the top three things to work on so that my front of house mix can work for broadcast? Tune your PA, get your PA tuned extremely well. So that way what you're sending out of your console, if you were to record that on a CD mix, and if you were going to listen through with the PA, you would not be able to tell the difference between what you're listening to in your car and what you're listening to in the room. Now we can all agree that's never going to happen because I've got bigger subs in my worship center than I have in my car. Uh, most of us don't have subs in our car anymore. Um, this isn't the nineties. Um, now tuning, tuning is a big piece of it. And then it is having someone consistently mixing in that room that has a good feel for what's happening.

And that requires a lot of effort and a lot of craft and a lot of work. Um, and, and that's what's going to be required to achieve that. Uh, so tuning, um, a lot of effort by the engineer into listening to his mix, uh, and playing it back. And then I would say the third thing is, is output processing. Uh, today's age, almost everybody has some form of plugin, whether it's waves, whether it's the Allen Keith consoles that have their indoor processing. And a lot of what you're doing there is just setting broadcast safe levels. 90% of issues in audio online usually come from clipping. You know, someone blowing out the audio and it just fuzzing out on you. Yeah. Two other things that I, I was thinking about loudness.

There's something called loudness that is actually a standard, um, in TV that, um, basically the history of it was, uh, commercials would come on and they'd be way louder than the TV program. And it's because they wanted to get their attention. They, they didn't want you to tune out. And so they would come on and they crank up the volume as much as they could that they were allowed to, to get it to the broadcast network. And then whenever it transitioned, it was just like, whoa, why is that commercial so loud? So the FCC put out a new law about loudness and it's a, it's basically a metering of volume or the average volume over time. And, um, so monitoring that for your online audience, making sure that your worship is about the same as your speaker.

When it comes to overall loudness is really important, especially when you're talking about playing on smaller TVs with smaller speakers, huge changes in volume are going to be really inconvenient for them because they're going to constantly have to, um, adjust their volumes. That's probably one of the other things to really think about is monitor the overall loudness of your feed going through online stream. And so let me, I'll, I'll, I'll tag off that all by saying, here's the pro tip. Um, if, if you're in a situation where you have to use one console, um, and you don't have the space, resource, whatever to do a whole separate broadcast mix by a waves LV one mixer, bus out your worship mix, your pastor mix, and your audience mics mix, and then use that LV one simply as a matrix mixer to do that loudness metering, to do that shaping, to set your levels and you will be a happy camper.

That is probably the easiest and most cost effective way to do it. Um, it can live in a rack in the control room. You can have someone over there that can just monitor and check those levels. It's probably the easiest way to accomplish that. Um, and then keep your audio engineer in the house, focused on the mix in the house. Hey, so this has been a great conversation. Um, I, I love the the production aspect. I love the video aspect of what, of what church online does and the ability for us to step up to maybe improve some things. Um, this is, this has been a great conversation in the show notes. We'll have, you know, lots of, lots of these resources. We've talked a lot about a lot of different churches that are doing some of this stuff, which is good.

I've often wondered this. So somebody mentioned, and I forget if it was Steve or, or Colin, but we talked about mixed you, which is a resource for the audio side of the equation. And by the way, that's a phenomenal resource. Definitely check them out. If you haven't great for churches, great for volunteers, you know, dive all into that on the video. Is there a mixed you equivalent on the video side? Has somebody doing something? Are they exploring that space? Not that I know of. I second the recommendation for mixed you. Do you know one? No, there needs to be. Yeah. There you go. Some opportunity. Yeah. You know, like part of me in the back of my mind, I'll say this on podcast. I don't care. Part of me is like, why don't we just do that?

But I don't have time. Anybody out there who's wanting to do like a mixed you thing for video, I have several churches right now who will sign up for that in a heartbeat to, to be some of your first customers to, to make that happen. Because as the church continues to grow and expand more multi-site, more church online, more churches are going to be wrestling with this. They're going to look for that. So, hey, podcast listener out there who's struggling to find what, what you need and where God's leading you and calling you and you're good in video. Hey, I just gave you a business. I will, I will charge you 5% commission. So you can feel free to write that check to the church digital, mail it to me.

And I thank you in advance for that. Hey, so this has been a great show, man. Thanks, thanks for this. Steve, we'll just, you know, wrap up any, any closing thoughts, 20, 30 seconds as we're landing this plane. Yeah. We've talked about a lot of stuff that can seem intimidating. So if you were the church that is wanting to get into this, it's, it's, it's not that intimidating, be thoughtful about it, be intentional about it and take your time getting into it. The reach that your church will have by doing this is going to be amazing. The impact that you're going to have long-term is going to be amazing. You're opening the front door for so many people. Um, so do it, take a step at a time, um, and then partner with folks that have done it.

Um, don't operate in a vacuum. Don't do it yourself. Uh, lean on resources and people who are available to help you. That's awesome. Was that a cat or was that your kid? That was your 18 month old. I was about to say, I was like, Steve doesn't have a cat. So I'm not sure what's going on over there. That's awesome. I miss your kids, man. Steve and I have gone way, way back. So that's good. Colin, Paul, hey, as, as we're landing the plane, any, any thoughts? Yeah. So we've thought a lot about, um, the audio and the video part, but not on the experience side in terms of what is the quality of the video, like in the actual, you know, buffering, et cetera. And I think is like your church online grows up as you get to the next level.

Um, oftentimes church tech directors, we were, we were in that position. Um, you know, they get emails from people having problems, um, but they're so busy that it's so hard to deal with. Um, and so one, I second Steve's encouragement that if you're putting content out there, it's better than nothing. People are coming to Christ through it. My family came to Christ through your church online, big believer in it. So it's better than nothing. But on average, like 29% of people leave when they see their first buffering wheel. Um, and so I would really think about, Hey, what's, what's, what's the best technology, adaptive bitrate streaming, et cetera, stack that you can use because that like, um, and that's that 29% of people that leave is a significant buffering wheel of like five to 10 seconds, whatever.

Um, and that's in all industries, um, including sports, which is most of the online live viewership. So it's probably, it's probably greater than that if in the church world. And then 54% of people leave in the second buffering wheel. So you'll see that, um, when you look at your analytics of people dropping and, um, they can tolerate local quality, like with a lower, um, bitrate. Um, and if you don't know what I mean by that, it's like, you know, you have 1080p and then all the way down to 140 with most providers. So having, having those options is very, very important for your viewers. Um, and we'll generate a lot more repeat views so that your analytics doesn't tank over time and it actually grows and it's not a frustrating experience for them.

So that could be a whole podcast in itself on quality of experience and how to make that, um, the best experience it can so that you have repeat viewers and people that aren't annoyed with your stream. Cause if they can't watch it audio and video quality doesn't matter, you know, it's, it's the, and it's still audio and video quality, but how many cameras you have doesn't matter if they're getting a buffering wheel. Um, so I would, um, and that technical term for it is QOE, which is quality of experience. And that's a great thing to research. Well, I think for me, uh, I would just say, uh, just to, to tag on a little bit additional to what Steven said, you know, or encourage them is, is you focus on, you know, incremental growth, you know, pace yourself, uh, don't try to do everything at once.

Cause that could just become overwhelming and not enjoyable. And you could make, you know, way more mistakes than you would need to. Um, so, you know, most, most healthy growing paces, you have periods of growth and then you have periods of stability, making sure and ironing out all the, all the bugs and the tweaks you, um, have encountered. So I would, I would, uh, just encourage you to definitely pursue, um, improving what you want to do, but don't try to do it all at once. Just make sure that incremental and plan for the longterm, you know, partner with people who are, um, who are not going to go away, you know, quickly. And, um, and if you, when you're trying to climb a mountain, you do it one step at a time.

So just be, you have that mindset. Don't try to jump up in one giant leap. So. Yeah. We had on, uh, in episode five, we had on, uh, David Erzy, who's man, I'm blanking at the church. He's at, he was formerly with Seacoast came in. Um, I'm, I'm going to fail at the church right now cause I don't have it in front of me, but when he came in, he, he was evaluating the online environment and they were doing all sorts of stuff and they were all over the place and there wasn't an infrastructure in place at all. And one of the things that he talked about in the podcast is, is he stopped everything and said, I'm just broadcasting one service, even like Facebook, multiple chops, you know, social, different social media networks.

He's like, let's, let's start with what's reset. Let's start with one and let's build from there. And he talks about how resetting really allowed him to, to build a healthy infrastructure instead of feeling like he was drowning all the time with information and stats and not really funneling them into a discipleship pathway or, or, or what you have on, have for you on, on that line. So that's, that's very good feedback by, by the way. And we didn't, we didn't really park on this much at all, but in context of, uh, living as one, uh, of how they're providing a solution from a broadcast perspective, portable church, uh, and, and how they're like these guys, both of these, all three of these, but both of these companies, both of these individuals are phenomenal in how they're resourcing church, the big C church and helping them do ministry, uh, in today's modern era.

So if you're looking for plug, if you're looking for insight direction, if you need help understanding this stuff, um, I cannot think of a better company to connect you with on the encoder and the decoder side than living as one. And when I work with churches, uh, especially ones that are doing multi-site and, and even as they're growing and expanding more, uh, more product, I cannot think of a better company to partner you with than, than living as one. And, and those of you that are, oh, I've got a client who's launching a multi-site in 2019 in the fall. And I picked up the phone and called the only person I knew how to speak to in context of this. And it was, it was, uh, Steve over at portable church.

So yeah, I don't do a lot of endorsements. I don't do a lot of, of commercials. And I don't even think if I can legally do this, it's my own podcast. They can't arrest me. Right. So at the end of this, the people you want to talk to, if you're in these areas are definitely these guys. Hey, uh, living as one skies, where can they find you on social media? Yeah. We're on Instagram and Facebook. We're not on Twitter. Um, but yeah, website's great too, or just email us living as one dot. Living is one streaming on Instagram. And, and we are not confusing that with a marriage seminar, although that's the best line I've heard. No, we're not a marriage seminar. We're actually a streaming service. Hey, Steve, how can people connect with you online?

Uh, you know, the easiest way to connect with portable churches, uh, check out portable church on Instagram and on Facebook. We have a lot of content out there as well as some pretty cool new products that we're rolling out. Uh, easiest place to connect there. And then I'm on Facebook at Steven, facebook.com/stevekaminski. Uh, feel free to hit me up and, uh, reach out to us, uh, through our website. Awesome. Hey, uh, so for Colin, for Paul, for Steve, my name is Jeff Reed with the church digital. If you've not subscribed to this podcast, subscribe now, write a review, say something nice, share it with a friend, check out the show notes, hit me up on social media at dear fed, which is weird, but it's Jeffrey backwards.

D E R F F E J. Like I said, it's weird. Just get used to it. Hey, so for all of us here at the podcast, thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time or hear you or you hear us. I think that's better. You'll hear us next time on the church digital podcast. Thanks everybody.