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HMC8403

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Sorry guys, I'm still overseas and don't have tons of time to research.

My church back home has been Live Streaming services on Facebook and YouTube with an old Laptop and a WebCam. They are about to replace the Logitech webcam and I was thinking recommending the use of a POE PTZ cam like the 29204UE-GN-W. They wouldn't have a NVR or BI.

My question, is it easy to use a live stream from a IP POE camera to stream on FB/Youtube and what does the procedure/setup consist of? I would ether remote into the church to set up or try to explain on the phone so hopefully its a simple process.

Thanks
 

radeon00

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Wrong tool for the job. They'll be stuck with the OSD display plus you still need to get audio onto the stream correctly.

Get a sling studio, feed the church sound board into it to get proper audio from the mics and any camcorder with an HDMI output will work.

Another option is the Blackmagic ATEM Mini. I've been doing video production for a minute.
 
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flynreelow

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Sorry guys, I'm still overseas and don't have tons of time to research.

My church back home has been Live Streaming services on Facebook and YouTube with an old Laptop and a WebCam. They are about to replace the Logitech webcam and I was thinking recommending the use of a POE PTZ cam like the 29204UE-GN-W. They wouldn't have a NVR or BI.

My question, is it easy to use a live stream from a IP POE camera to stream on FB/Youtube and what does the procedure/setup consist of? I would ether remote into the church to set up or try to explain on the phone so hopefully its a simple process.

Thanks
check out this vid...

 

HMC8403

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check out this vid...

Thanks!! I had already viewed this video and it was a great help.

I had a friend remove one of the IPC-T5442T-ZE from my house and install it at the church. After a good 5 hours of desktop sharing, I was able to configure everything and even a couple of test feeds to YouTube. There is one thing I can't seem to figure out. I set up the YouTube Live stream and it works great; after ending the stream and trying to start it again, YouTube keeps spinning and waiting for a feed. Only after going back into the Dahua firmware un-enabling the RTMP and re-enabling RTMP does the feed to YouTube start.
 

HMC8403

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An update on my project; I am tagging @looney2ns @Wildcat_1 @bigredfish @EMPIRETECANDY since from other post they seem to have good knowledge of PTZ IPCs. Sorry for this long post but really need some advice.

A church I support in Chicago that has a large elderly population has been going through some tough times recently. Other than COVID and a huge drop in attendance, they also suffered a roof leak and extensive water damage and is currently going under a renovation. Services are temporarily being held in the lower-level auditorium.

Over the summer, YouTube Live streaming of Sunday services were being done by college students sitting is a front pew and holding an iPhone. As the students are away back at school, I was asked for ideas how to continue streaming the services. We removed a IPC-T5442T-ZE from my house and it was mounted in the auditorium. By use of Teamview, I was able to remote in, play with the camera settings and set up RTMP. For the last few Sundays I would remote in and start the YouTube Live stream. Other than some encoding settings (church only has a 2Mbps upload) and although the sound was good from the onboard mic, there was a 3 second delay, all worked great. The only issue I have is at the beginning of each stream I would have to reboot the camera to restart the RTMP stream but later learned I could go into settings and simply turn off and on the RTMP for it to start. You can see a past stream at

Now I was asked about setting something up in the main church. Googling options I found that PTZoptics is a popular brand of cameras for churches; problem is at $2,000+, this is too much for me to donate. Plus emailing with their tech department, that camera also had to be rebooted each time to restart a RTMP stream. As a Dahua worked great the first time, I decided to stick with it. Plus it can be used with OBS later on if ever needed.

The church is very long and a good zoom is needed. I have attached pictures including possible mounting positions. Regarding the mounting options in the picture; 1) the ledge only good for the PTZoptics camera, 2) maybe too low and might cover up the artwork, 3) a bit high but because of the distance to the alter I think it would work.

Andy has PTZ cameras from @ $400 and up; I need help picking the best model for this project. I will be back in Chicago soon and since a scissor-lift is onsite for the renovations, the timing is perfect. Biggest needs: RTMP, good zoom, several presets, easy way to select presets during the service via smartphone or tablet, minimum 1080 resolution for YouTube but some room to grow. Low light, tracking, face recognition, IVS not important.

I'm hoping to place an order with Andy in the next couple days since I will be returning home soon. Thanks for the help.
 

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jmcu

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I have finished up a church streaming project and am working on another, I couldn't see buying the PTZoptics for the price either.
I used a SD-49225xa with xsplit broadcaster in place of OBS for the ease of learning for the user.

The main trouble came when trying to get the audio feed into the RTSP.
If you ever used a mic into a PTZ input, the audio is not the greatest.
I ended up using Behringer UMC202HD USB interface. I started with a shotgun mic then tested a studio mic, but ended up coming out of the churches mixer board for great audio results.
You select the audio input via the software program

It is a old mixer and it didn't have any outputs, so I use the headphone jack port with a RTS cable and split it before the 202 to have stereo into the PC.
There was a delay in the audio but with the broadcaster program you can set the delay in the settings to match the video.

I was able to then use a wireless PC remote control for 12 bucks and the EASYptz program to use the presets.

The camera was a bit tricky getting the correct settings because the church has a large skylight with yellow walls and is dimly lit.
It occasionally gets a WB tweek but no one notices.
It also has Tilt: -15° so I was able to get a preset up to the balcony ++

All the project equipment cost less than the PTZoptics camera would of been.
They have been using it for about 6 weeks and are very happy with the results.

The only downside is you would have to have someone onsite to start the broadcaster program and check audio or have remote access to the PC to start it.

The current stream project, I am using a SD29204UE. Only a small zoom but it is up close and a much smaller church.

c2.jpg c4.jpg C0.png
 

brianegge

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I setup the live stream at our church. We have three PTZ Optics 30x cameras.

I single ipcam may be ok, but if you want to plug the outputs into a mixer, you want the video uncompressed and NTSC.

It seems like an IP cam could output NDI, but I haven’t seen one which does.
 

TheWaterbug

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If you want to use a camera that doesn't have the RTMP feature, you also can use any old cheap computer lying around, or even a $35 Raspberry Pi, running ffmpeg to pull an RTSP stream from the camera and push it to YouTube. I have a collection of cameras running this way on 3 different YT channels. If you don't transcode, it uses very, very little CPU (about 10% on the Raspberry Pi), so just about any computer will do.

It works very well, although I have the same problem as everyone else here, having to manually fiddle with the YT interface on a daily basis. I used to be able to just run it every day on a loop with a watchdog, but YT changed the way the streams work about 6 months ago, and I haven't figured it out yet. So I'm fiddling every day, but it works.
 

HMC8403

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What do you think of using the PTZ1A225-HNR-XA, I know it’s a 2MP but I like the design and how it could be sat on the ledge at the choir loft?

The audio is now a problem, I didn’t know that PTZs didn’t have onboard mics. I was planning on streaming directly to YouTube from the camera without a PC so now clueless on how to proceed. The church has a very old sound system and the equipment is behind the alter; running wire all the way to the back is not an easy task. There is a powered speaker up in the choir loft (see previous picture) but don’t know if there isan easy way to tap into it. TheBehringer UMC202HD USB interface mentioned by @jmcu , does that feed into the camera or is a pc required?
 

jmcu

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The audio was the biggest challenge for me as well.. I have not seen any IP cameras that had great audio.

The Behringer 202 is a USB interface for going into a PC. You can not come out of a speaker to the input of this device. You can use XLR or 1/4 microphone connection or line in to it.
 

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the audio sync will always be a problem, and it needs to be dynamically adjusted depending on the speaker (speech or music) . As radeon00 mentioned, better stick with the Atem Mini, but better use the PRO version. It will free your PC from the OBS streaming platform, add preview of all your hdmi cameras, while both units adds a parametric equalizer to manage your audio line input. That is a must for a good quality presentation
 

HMC8403

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I have finished up a church streaming project and am working on another, I couldn't see buying the PTZoptics for the price either.
I used a SD-49225xa with xsplit broadcaster in place of OBS for the ease of learning for the user.

The main trouble came when trying to get the audio feed into the RTSP.
If you ever used a mic into a PTZ input, the audio is not the greatest.
I ended up using Behringer UMC202HD USB interface. I started with a shotgun mic then tested a studio mic, but ended up coming out of the churches mixer board for great audio results.
You select the audio input via the software program

It is a old mixer and it didn't have any outputs, so I use the headphone jack port with a RTS cable and split it before the 202 to have stereo into the PC.
There was a delay in the audio but with the broadcaster program you can set the delay in the settings to match the video.

I was able to then use a wireless PC remote control for 12 bucks and the EASYptz program to use the presets.

The camera was a bit tricky getting the correct settings because the church has a large skylight with yellow walls and is dimly lit.
It occasionally gets a WB tweek but no one notices.
It also has Tilt: -15° so I was able to get a preset up to the balcony ++

All the project equipment cost less than the PTZoptics camera would of been.
They have been using it for about 6 weeks and are very happy with the results.

The only downside is you would have to have someone onsite to start the broadcaster program and check audio or have remote access to the PC to start it.

The current stream project, I am using a SD29204UE. Only a small zoom but it is up close and a much smaller church.

View attachment 82912 View attachment 82913 View attachment 82918
@jmcu thanks for the info. I ordered a SD49425XB from Andy and i will start setup when i return to Chicago next week. How powerful of a computer will I need?
Originally i was planing to to RSMP stream directly from the camera; I guess I will need a PC if I take sound from the audio equipment. Hopefully i have a used PC sitting around the house that can be used. I attached a photo of the church's audio setup that someone sent me.
 

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HMC8403

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This should be my final update on this subject. To start, a HUGE shout-out to @jmcu for all the help; he shared all his knowledge and I don't think that I would have finished on time without him. Greek Orthodox Easter is today and I have been able to successfully stream all the Holy Week services on YouTube with the new setup.

Equipment: Dahua SD49425XB, Behringer UMC202HD and a HP Pavillion Gaming Laptop. Software: Xsplit Broadcaster and EasyPTZ. Total cost was less than just the cost of a PTZoptics camera. All I need to do now is write up a picture tutorial for volunteers to know how to run the stream each week. The only other enhancement I am considering at the moment is obtaining a Surface Pro to run EasyPTZ wirelessly.

This has been a stressful but fun project and a great learning experience that I would not have been able to complete without this forum and its members; Thank You all!

 

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Did you get the cam working so you didn't have to enable/disable RTMP before every streaming session ?
 

HMC8403

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Did you get the cam working so you didn't have to enable/disable RTMP before every streaming session ?
YouTube has changed; even if you stop the livestream, YouTube will start it again if it senses a feed. Two easy solutions: 1. On the camera change to h265 which isn’t supported by YouTube or 2. Create a second stream key on YouTube and switch to it when you want to stop the feed.

Luckily Xsplit starts and stops the feed so none of the above is required.
 

Y2K38

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The audio is now a problem, I didn’t know that PTZs didn’t have onboard mics. I was planning on streaming directly to YouTube from the camera without a PC so now clueless on how to proceed.
I don't think you'll be able to stream directly without a computer to add the audio, with the proper delay so that it is synced, and stream it again.

An IP camera is a great cheap way to stream something since the h264 / h264+ / h265 encoding is done on the camera's hardware. Without that, a powerful computer that can encode h264 in real time, or modern hardware with a video card or CPU supporting hardware encoding would be needed. IP cameras generally provide both an HD stream and a SD stream too.

You can just configure VLC media player as a streaming server, with the camera's stream as the video input and the computer sound card as the audio source. It can take a lot of time to tweak everything to get all the settings right, such as the audio delay, and configuring the video codec to just copy, and setting up the correct settings for the streaming server, but eventuall it works usually. Then you just have to forward the port on your NAT router and give people the IP address so that they can connect. If you have a fast connection with a 100mb upload then it should have no trouble supporting 25 viewers (at 4mbps peak each). 4mbps h264 will have sufficient quality for a 1080p30 stream where it mostly consists of someone talking and camera isn't moving.

If someone has a fast fiber connection, they can run VLC as an intermediate server to stream it again through the fast connection. Typically with a church everyone is in the same geographical area anyway, so this is the most efficient way to do things, in the grand scheme of how the Internet works. The data may even remain on the same ISP's network for many of the viewers!

Or it could probably be streamed from there to youtube. But if possible, I like to do things without involving a free service from a company that has now started censoring many things. We can't really complain about censorship or whatever other problems they cause if there was a perfectly fine alternative that we just decided to not use. It wouldn't surprise me if Google / Youtube starts putting restrictions on what religious content allowed.
 

HMC8403

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I don't think you'll be able to stream directly without a computer to add the audio, with the proper delay so that it is synced, and stream it again.
i was able to successfully stream with a 5442 and its onboard mic for several months while the church was going through construction. It helped that the auditorium had a good P.A. system that was easily picked up by the camera. When we moved back upstairs there was too much of an echo so had to pull audio from the sound board.

 
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