How we stream to mobile devices

The last two weeks we have tested out Ustream.tv for streaming to mobile devices. Every week we get the request from at least a few people who want to view our live feed on their iPhone or Android device. On a side note, we have yet to hear from someone on a Blackberry or other mobile device ask if we are going to stream to their hardware type. Let’s be honest, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Palm users don’t do much more than email and basic social networking on their devices…these devices are behind the curve in terms of rich media and as a church we can’t put a lot of time and money into such a small demand.

The reality is that streaming to mobile devices is a no brainer with Ustream.tv. There is nothing to build or code, just plug and play. So there are not secret recipes here, I’ll just list out the work flow we have going and you can tweak it to your needs.

Here’s the signal flow:

Auditorium a/v feed > TriCaster Studio (switcher) > Canopus ADVC 110 > iMac > Flash Media Live Encoder > Ustream broadcast interface > Ustream Viewer

Our main feed for the live page of our internet campus gets encoded and fed to Limelight Networks from the TriCaster. There are two analogue outputs on the unit and we send one of them to the ADVC 110 which converts it to digital and interfaces with the iMac via firewire.

Flash Media Live Encoder is a free download and will recognize a camera or in this case the ADVC 110 hooked up via firewire. If you were going to livestream with one camera or come straight out of your IMAG switcher this would be the same setup you would use.

If you have livestreamed using FMLE with Livestream.com or other SMSP there is a slightly different workflow with Ustream in that you have to also use the Ustream broadcast control panel. To do this, you go into the advanced settings for your show and download the XML file for it. Then open this file in FMLE. This is nice because you don’t have to worry about getting long RTMP URLs correct. We tweak the settings to make it widescreen at this point. Once you’re set, fire off the feed and then launch the Ustream broadcast control panel. iPhone note: encode h.264 using AAC audio otherwise iPhones won’t work.

UPDATE: Here’s a screen shot of the FMLE settings we use. Except the source is the ADVC 110 rather than the iSight.

This is important, FMLE must be up and running before launching the Ustream controls (which you launch by clicking the ‘broadcast now’ button). At that point you click the button to make it live.

Like I said before this is counter intuitive if you have used FMLE before, because in most cases it’s all you need. I believe Ustream does this for monetization since the control panel contains ads.

That’s it on your end. Users need to install the Ustream Viewer app from the Android Market or the iPhone App Store. From there, they can search for your feed to watch it. Not the best workflow for discoverability …but it’s FREE!

Let us know how that works out for you.

iPhone vs. Android on Our Website

Click on the graphic to see it full size.

Looking at the stats for May of 2010 you can see that iPhone represents the overwhelming majority of mobile phone connections to Gateway Church’s website st 6 to 1 over Android. Blackberry also ran at just below 200 visits. I’m interested to see how this changes over the rest of the year as Android continues to rise in adoption and sales.

Serving on demand video archives

I’ll be honest, I want the best solution ever! Seriously though, serving archives of the messages/sermons on church websites is an exercise in heavy lifting; video files are clunky, especially when they’re 20-40 minutes long. On average our messages when encoded for web are between 600 and 800 Mb each. Ouch! that’ll eat up some storage and bandwidth fast.

I put this poll up over at ChurchCrunch.com to see what other churches are doing, I’ll break down the results in a day or so. Head over to ChurchCrunch, vote and leave a comment while you’re at it.

Internet Campus Update

Chat Highlights:

I miss my church (Gateway ) sooo much. Thank you for having this service for those of us that can’t be there. Without Gateway I feel so lost. Thanks for keeping me grounded and having this service online for us.

what a powerful message…I know the Lord is working in so many lives (mine included) thanks to the love and acceptance offered at Gateway!

Man, sometimes you hear messsges that just cut right to the bone. Thank you, God!

This is my first time attending the internet campus as I’m usually there, I must admit, it speaks volumes to the great ministries this church offers for wherever you are in Christ

I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect lesson for me today and I’m sure I’m not the only one

just back from “in person” service…gonna watch the live stream again…awesome message

Chat Highlights | 1.31.2010

“Wow, I have been living abroad for the past few years, and using that as an excuse to lose my faith. This is great that I can hear such a useful message in my own language. Thank you! From Helsinki, Finland.”

“Man this is so great! I feel like im right there in the middle of it all! And I;m singing along right here in my house!”

“This is an awesome idea… I am not feeling well and was sad that i was going to miss church then I remembered this live feed had started and I rejoiced”

“I like my home church and love my church family, but it looks like I will forever be a part of Gateway. Today our church is closed because of icy roads. I thank you for your ministry online”

“I’ve let anger and hurt to take over lately and boy have I gone astray. Thank you LORD for showing me clearly what I have been doing.”

Launch Day Update

We had some great chat going on during the internet campus inaugural experience. Here are some highlights:

“awesome, awesome, awesome! yet another way you guys are reaching out to ensure the relationship with God. it not about where you are, but that He is with you where you’re at.
YES!”

“LOVE the online experience!! Thanks Vince and team for getting this going and offering yet another way to experience God’s word and the great leadership of Gateway.”

“I wouldn’t have attended any service this morning. Thank-you.”

“joining online because i just had foot surgery and can’t make it in today. perfect timing for this launching if you ask me”

“I sense something profound has happened today! This could not have been easy, all the work that went into this was worth it.”

“Glad to see the whole Gateway experience go to the net. I have moved a little over 1 hour north and rarely get there, but going to gateway makes it hard to go to other churches.”

“there is an amazing anointing with this church model – a true sense of community, which is so difficult to truly get, virtually. i really felt like I was standing in a room bumping shoulders with bunch of people. thank you guys!”

“Ironic: I just shushed my 3 year old so I could hear John talking about not paying attention to his 3 year old. Whoops!”

Our first live stream was a success!

We streamed three of the five Christmas Eve services live to the web this last week and it was a big win! For the most part we were using the Christmas eve services as a test run for our streaming setup. We didn’t do a whole lot in terms of promotion and marketing, mainly because we didn’t want to get slammed with too many people and have a problem with our gear or our stream service provider.

With that said, it was a huge success. We saw visitor from seven countries outside of North America and we had some great chat going on during the experience.

I can’t wait to launch on January 17th!

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Keeping Tabs on the Web #1

Google Wave

Foursquare

Big Picture

Why Social Media is Critical to Your Success as a Leader…Right Now

Social media is dominating communication, leadership and marketing right now, if you don’t have a social media presence your influence will begin to shrink, if it isn’t shrinking already. As more and more of communications on the web begin to take hold in real life, almost exclusively because of social media and user-generated content, the sphere of influence that ‘real life only’ leaders have will begin to dwindle or at the very least require more and more resources to keep alive.

Rather than rattle off the statistics on the size and scope of social media, watch this video.

Here’s why social media is critical to your success:

Presence

How many people can you sustain one to one presence with in real life as a leader. For most leaders, that falls somewhere between 30 and 100. These are the people that stop by your office, have coffee with you, you talk on the phone with and you interact with on a personal level. A big misconception about social media is that it is only a medium for mass communication; this may be true, but it isn’t the point and if you view it this way you will fail. People that are active in social media are looking for that one to one interaction. With social media you can have quick but meaningful one to one interactions with people whom you otherwise wouldn’t have a chance to.

Influence

I don’t need to convince leaders that influence is something you need to value. You work hard to build a savings account of influence so that when it’s time to act on vision, you have people to carry out that vision. Influence builds on presence in that you need to have presence to build influence. It takes a lot of resources to have influence in real life, and it is rarely one to one.

Social media will give you influence into more peoples lives in a more personal way. Which is hard to comprehend because we don’t normally associate efficiency with quality relationships.

Networking

I can speak from my own experience. I have ‘people’ in every major city in America, and a few around the world. These are people I have a relationship with and we have presence and influence in each other’s lives. We help each other make decisions, starting small and as our relationships grow the trust does too. I have connections with people in similar leadership roles to mine, some farther along in their career that I learn from and some newer who look to me for advice.

Learning

As a leader you know that you need to never stop learning. Social media interactions will connect you to people and content to learn from that you at the least would be well behind the curve on or at worst, miss all together. The beauty of social networking is that as you develop more relationships and people in your networks get to know you, the content starts to literally find YOU. Daily I receive tweets and other messages from my networks with content that is very specific to my field and my leadership. When it comes to a new resource or book hitting the market, I don’t have to take a chance investing time in it that I might not get back if it turns out to be a dud, I can get a summary from a lot of people who know me before I invest my precious time.

Artists share inspiration, writers share stories, communicators share ideas and technologies, theologians sharpen each other and administrative leaders share techniques and resources.

Current Events and Culture

One hundred years ago when we only had newspapers, news got to the public that was a week or so old and as circulation and printing improved we were getting news that was only a day old. When television came on the scene we were now getting news that happened today. Blogs took news delivery to a whole new level and now we are getting news that is only a few hours old. Taking it even farther, social media delivers news that is happening NOW. Let me give you an example. I lived in Southern California and they have plenty of earthquakes there. When we had one, with in a couple minutes, because of social media, I knew where the quake was, how big it was and if my friends and family were okay. The ‘news cycle’ on social media comes and goes before CNN can even get a camera in front of a reporter.

The Leadership Web Presence Trinity

Twitter | your coffee shop
Twitter is the coffee shop, town center, library, park, water cooler of the web. It is the starting place for relationships. For most of us, this is our biggest network.

Facebook | your living room
Facebook is your living room, you  will most likely only connect with people whom you have already established a relationship with. Whether these are people you know in real life or you first connected with on Twitter or because they read your blog.

Blog | your podium
This is your platform for sharing more in depth content that is very specific to your leadership role and to give people a deeper look into your mind and life.

Now get on it!

Google your name. Do you even exist on the web? If you do, is it content that you control that shows up? If you don’t, you’re missing out on the future of leadership.