Professional Grade Church Livestreaming on a Budget

The only addition to this photo that wasn't mentioned in
this blog is the audio/midi interface underneath the
Ultramatch Pro which is used for video/audio editing
and is not needed for video broadcasting.

A little more than a year ago I was one of 3 pastors planting a church in Spring Lake, MI.  We started with a core team of about 50-70 people. A year and a half later we are now bursting at 300-350 on an average weekend.  God is good! With that came the fluke scenario of my sister, being the wife of one of the other pastors, being put on bed-rest because of her pregnancy. She came to me and said, "Chris, I don't want to miss church! Is there possibly a way that I could watch the service live?" I knew there were websites like livestream.com or ustream.com that accomplish this very thing, but how to do it for our church was a different story.  That next week, I simply turned my macbook backward toward the stage of our church and logged into ustream.com and posted the link on our facebook page so my sister could watch the service.  The quality was horrendous and the sound was not good, but she was able to be part of the service, in the comfort of her bed-rest situation.  Fast forward a couple weeks, a couple starts coming to our church and decides it to be their church home.  We asked, "how did you hear about us?"and they said, "we moved into the area recently and looked online for some nearby churches and found the link to your live feed on a sunday morning and decided from watching the service online that we wanted to be part of this church..."  I then had a conversation with my pastor about the possibility of putting some money into it because it could potentially be a big ministry arm of our church.  He agreed and we bought a better camera and a computer designated to this specifically.  Well, as the next year went by, we were broadcasting our services and then a women's bible study on tuesdays that then would be available throughout the rest of the week for ladies to review the material with. We went from a backward macbook to now a team of 5 using 2 cameras and a professional video switching controller.
I know what you're thinking, "well you must have an awesome budget."  Well, I don't really have a set budget right now because of our growth determining the rate and quality of things spent.  So we have put more money into this, seeing it as an important part of our ministry, however that didn't mean I wanted to go crazy and spend 10-20k on a system.  This blog is for you to benefit from as either a big or small church looking to dive into the realm of livestreaming and video recording your services. What used to cost into the 10's of thousands of dollars now can be accomplished with professional quality for under 3 thousand. Not to mention the following system that I've designed for our church is extremely user friendly and easy to learn and train people on, even though it is a multi camera setup. I hope this is helpful for anyone in a church production team looking to expand without breaking the bank.

Here is the price list of a system that when connected together correctly will achieve a live broadcast for your church of professional quality:

• 1 ATEM Television Studio (Information) (Amazon) $945
• 1 Computer with a good deal of processing and memory power (pricing varies)
•     note: the computer i use for livestreaming at our church is doubled as the video production studio computer and has an 8core processor and 12GB ram.  That much power is NOT needed for this system to work, though is helpful.  If you get a computer that ranges with 4GB ram and a faster processor, quadcore etc. will be fine. 
• 4 HDMI powered inline amplifiers. (the ATEM is finicky over long distance HDMI cables and requires a very good signal, so to have 2 amplifiers connected to each run over 15 ft will help the ATEM get signal up to 100 ft.) (Radioshack)  $80
• 2 Canon VIXIA HF R20 HD camcorders (Amazon) $600
• 1 two channel analog to digital audio converter. Behringer ULTRAMATCH PRO SRC2496
• This is needed incase your soundboard doesn't have an AES output.  Most don't, so this is a $163 solution to this problem which will allow you to connect a R L stereo output direct from your soundboard directly into the ATEM through this converter.  You could also use two separate room mics connected to this if you don't want to go direct from the board. This converts analog audio to digital AES/EBU with an XLR connection output which you will need to convert to a BNC connection with a XLR to BNC transformer $17 (Markertek)
• (B&HPhotovideo) $163
• 1 1080p tv 24" (Amazon) does not need to be fancy, just needs to have an HDMI input. $180

• this is to connect to the ATEM in the multiview hdmi port to see the multi-camera and preview and program screens. 
• 6+ HDMI cables of various lengths.  Amazon sells these cheap. I ordered a 100' HDMI cable which works only with 2 of the above inline amplifiers hooked in. The ATEM is finicky with the HDMI inputs, so the shorter the cable the better, and the longer the run, you will need to amplify it on both ends. $50-100
• 1 BNC cable to connect digital audio signal from Behringer ultramatch to ATEM $5 (Amazon) 
• 1 Professional Surge Protection rack mountable power supply (Amazon) $55

I think that about handles everything.  With the exception of maybe a few misc cables you might need like a USB cable from the ATEM to the computer, this setup has a grand total (minus computer) of $2095. If you have a budget of 3 grand you could get a fantastic computer for around the 800-900 mark. 

Connecting this all together is fairly intuitive.  Run power for everything. Connect the ATEM via USB to the computer.  Connect ATEM via ethernet to the internet (it is controlled via IP address through the computer connected to the same internet source, the software provided helps you set this up). Connect the 22"tv to the multiview HDMI output on the ATEM. Connect the cameras via HDMI cables to the HDMI inputs on the ATEM, and they will appear on the TV screens under cameras 1 and 2.  Connect the Behringer Ultramatch pro via BNC cable to the ATEM AES/EBU input.  Connect via XLR cables the Audio L R from your church soundboard into the Analog inputs on the Behringer. 

Then you can use a free service like www.Livestream.com with their program called "procaster" and it will recognize the ATEM as a certified camera and using the ATEM controller software you can freely and easily mix a professional quality video of your service and stream it live to the world. 


Please feel free to comment if you have any questions or suggestions!  I hope this helps you to be able to expand your ministry, thus expanding the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  That is what all of this technological mumbojumbo is meant to do. I hope that the name of Jesus is exalted as a result of our church broadcasts.