Rosh Hashanah begins tomorrow at sundown. For the second year, Candy and I will livestream the high holy day services for our congregation, United Hebrew Congregation in Saint Louis, MO. But oh what a difference from last year! Then, Candy and I were scrambling as hard as we could to broadcast something good in the midst of a pandemic. Now, we are supported by a whole team (nine of us), and proper equipment, and a set of processes which work like a well oiled clock (assuming you are of an age to remember clocks that had to be oiled).
Let me bring you on a journey, from September 2, 2020 to today, September 5, 2021.
Supporting Cast of Characters
First, I need to acknowledge the cast of people who have supported me. I could not possibly have done this alone.
Our livestreaming tech team has included nine of the most hard working, generous people I have ever met: Alan, Candy, Chris, David, Laura, Linda, Marilen, Murray, and Myron. Only Linda has moved on to other things; the remaining eight are still actively helping.
Our UH clergy showed ultimate courage, figuratively jumping over a cliff into a world of live video broadcasting, just days before the 2020 high holy day season began, without realizing how much it would torque their own service preparations. Rabbis Rosenberg and Bellows, and Cantor Eichaker; you have my deepest respect and gratitude.
Our UH staff did much of the thankless heavy lifting. Cori brought much needed stage management and liaison expertise. Daryl shielded us from conflicting pressures and expedited purchase after purchase. Lee jumped in mid-way through the year as our intermediary with the board and tech vendors. Elayne, Esther, Jessy, Jackie, and Gerald all cheerfully chipped in when we needed things done, often on short notice.
And, of course, there are all the people beyond that short list who also helped. The folks who advised and assisted the rest of us. Though your names are not here, you were an invaluable part of our success.
Often, I have heard, “Thank you, Art, for what you have done” but you all deserve the thanks. You all are the heroes of this story.
The Beginning
My phone rang on September 2, 2020. Could I help improve United Hebrew Congregation’s livestreaming experience? Sure, I said, let’s get together and talk about the details.
The next afternoon, I met with Rabbi Rosenberg and Cori at UH. Up til then, we had been livestreaming our services from a single wall-mounted video camera at just 720p resolution. It produced a wide shot of the entire bimah (stage) and never moved because it was completely unattended. Would it be possible, they asked, to do something with multiple cameras and multiple shots? Could we integrate both live clergy and prerecorded segments? And could it all be ready for the beginning of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish new year)?
I looked at my watch, because there wasn’t a calendar in sight. How much time did we have? Rosh Hashanah would start at sundown on September 18 so we had 15 whole days. Conceptually, I knew how livestreaming worked. I knew a fair amount about amateur videography. I knew a lot about still photography and computers. But I had never delved into the specifics of building a livestreaming rig, especially one which needed to portable so that it could operate both indoors in a sanctuary and outdoors in a parking lot. I did a little bit of figuring in my head. All I needed to do was identify what was needed, specify the equipment, purchase it, get it delivered, set it up, learn how to use it, test it in situ, and be ready to go in 15 days. Right.
“Sure,” I said while pretending not to notice as Candy shot me one of her best “are you out of your mind” death stares. I had planned to take the week of September 7 as a stay-at-home vacation from work. Now I knew what I would be doing with my time.
“Oh,” my afterthought kicked in and I asked, “budget?” Could I keep it under $2000? Sure, why not. I like a challenge.
Fortunately, my son, David, had recently researched livestreaming equipment for one of the clubs that he is in. That got me a huge head start. Between his advice and some research on the interwebs, I ended up buying a pair of small camcorders, one Canon Vixia HF R80 and one Sony. I planned to use my Nikon Z50 as a third video camera. I bought a Blackmagic Designs ATEM Mini Pro as the video switcher. I added a small Tascam microphone, as a backup in case we needed audio independent of the line feed from the sound mixer in the sanctuary. The next piece of equipment was a 7 inch video display for the ATEM Mini Pro. Then there were lots of cables, tripods, power strips, etc. etc. etc.
The ATEM Mini Pro has the ability to connect directly to a streaming service such as Youtube or Boxcast (no computer required). It also has a nice multiview display, allowing the operator to see the input from all cameras, as well as both Preview and Program panes. It can do nice transitions, including dissolves and cuts. It even has a pair of auxiliary audio inputs
September 9, six days after our meeting, I had everything set up and working on a table in my den.
The next day, I took everything down to the sanctuary. The ATEM Mini Pro has four HDMI inputs. I connected the cameras like this:
- Canon camcorder
- Sony camcorder
- Nikon Z50
- Wall-mounted camera
The Canon, Sony, and Nikon cameras looked OK. The wall-mounted camera, not so much. It displayed the brown woodwork as blue and the blue carpet as orange. I could not figure out the color problems with the wall-mounted camera so eventually gave up on using it.
You can see the four camera inputs in the middle row of images in the multiview display. The two large panes in the top row are Preview (on the left) and Program (on the right). Program is what is being broadcast. Preview is what comes next, when you press one of the transition buttons on the ATEM Mini Pro. The panes on the bottom row are, from left to right,
- Currently selected media file. The ATEM Mini Pro can hold up to 20 JPEG images. It is black in this photo because I had not loaded any media files.
- Streaming status. It says OFF because the ATEM Mini Pro was not streaming during this test.
- Recording status. It says STOP because there are no disks connected to the ATEM Mini Pro’s USB port and it is not recording the video.
- Audio status. The lower right corner displays audio from each of the four cameras, each of the two auxiliary inputs, and the master audio output (to the livestream and to the recording).
Selichot – The First Broadcast
Rosh Hashanah began on Friday, September 18 but the first service that we wanted to livestream was actually a week sooner. Selichot was on Saturday evening, September 12. I earned another of Candy’s death stares when I agreed to livestream it using the new gear. Instead of trying the gear for the first time indoors, we would be hauling it all outside for a service which would begin well after sunset.
Adding to the technical challenge of all the new video equipment, the clergy had to torque their planning process. The three of them worked so closely together that they had very little written documentation. Candy and I needed at least a rudimentary stage plot (where things would be happening on the “stage” so that we could plan our shots) and a script. Thankfully, Cori had some professional theater experience. She stepped in as mediator at an essential time.
Saturday night came and not only was it almost moonless dark but it was super humid. Once the sun went down, condensation started forming on every surface. We made the mistake of putting a piece of paper down on our table and it was instantly soaked. Short of actual rain, I do not think we could have picked a more challenging night.
But guess what. It all worked! We successfully livestreamed the outdoor selichot service to Boxcast at full 1080p resolution. Candy ran the ATEM Mini Pro, selecting the camera with the best angle for each part of the service. I danced between the three cameras, re-aiming them and adjusting the zoom lenses as required.
The Nikon Z50 gave us the best images in the low light so we used it as our primary camera.
The other two cameras were softer but still acceptable. We used them for close-ups. Lighting was a real challenge for these low-end, consumer grade camcorders.
The audio worked pretty well, too. I pulled a line from the portable sound mixer and hooked it up to the “MIC 2” auxiliary audio input on the ATEM Mini Pro. I configured that input for line-level instead of microphone-level and the results were quite good.
The big question that you probably still have is, how did the ATEM Mini Pro connect to Boxcast? It has a wired Ethernet port and Blackmagic Design provides an ATEM Software Control program. I hooked an Ethernet cable between my laptop and the ATEM Mini Pro. With that done, I was able to use the ATEM Software Control to configure the RTMP server and the stream key for our Boxcast account. Then I configured my laptop to share its WiFi network with the ATEM Mini Pro. And then all we had to do was press the ON AIR button on the ATEM Mini Pro to start broadcasting.
The last piece of the puzzle was to create a local recording, as a backup in case the network went wonky and we were unable to livestream. I made the recording by plugging a USB thumb drive into the ATEM Mini Pro’s USB port. Pressing the REC button made a high quality recording.
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur 2020
Rosh hashanah was easier because we were indoors but harder for several other reasons. First, the three cameras were pretty far apart and I was the only camera operator. We set up a table a few rows behind the organ, on the left side of the sanctuary. Cameras 1 and 2 were on tripods in the center aisle. We had one 50 foot HDMI cable, which I used for camera 1, but I had underestimated the distance from the left aisle to the center aisle and a 25 foot HDMI cable was barely adequate for camera 2. Camera 3 was on a tripod next to the table. There were times when I was, literally, jogging from camera to camera.
This is what the table looked like while broadcasting and recording for one of the services.
Did I mention that, just to complicate things a bit more, the A/C decided to kick into overdrive? Here is Candy, trying to stay warm in September in Saint Louis.
All in all, I think it worked well. I got my exercise running from camera to camera. Candy ran the ATEM Mini Pro. The clergy did masterful jobs of leading Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services to a “congregation” of four: David C on the organ, David M. on the sound board, Candy, and me.
One of the problems that I did not anticipate was the difficulty matching the imagery between the three cameras. The Nikon was by far and away the best, with the sharpest image and the best color rendition. The Canon was second, with good color although the image lacked detail. By setting the Canon for incandescent light, I got a consistent image that I could match with the Nikon. The Sony was noticeably off and I was unable to get it to match the Canon’s exposure or color balance. Shortly after the high holy days, I bought a second Canon Vixia and sold the Sony.
Fall and Winter 2020/2021
After the high holy days, I relocated the ATEM Mini Pro to the right side of the sanctuary. I was able to pull an audio feed from a sound mixer in the A/V closet. I also pulled an Ethernet cable, which allowed us to run the ATEM Mini Pro without a laptop and without relying on WiFi. I took a couple of hours and ran cables from where the cameras would be set up to the ATEM Mini Pro. The cables (100 foot long HDMI cables and an extension cord for power) ran under the seats and I secured them with Velcro ties so that no one would trip.
I set up two tripods with the two Canon cameras near the back of the sanctuary. By extending the tripods as high as they would go, we were able to get the cameras almost up to the clergy’s eye level. Getting the cameras at the subject’s eye level feels much better to the viewers, much more intimate than the old camera which was mounted high on the wall and looked down on the clergy.
With two cameras next to each other, we kept one for a “wide shot” of the whole bimah and used the other for close-ups. We had imagery like this, which was head and shoulders above what we had before the high holy days.
It was sure weird to be in a virtually empty 800 seat sanctuary. In this photo, you can see Chris at the cameras in the back of the sanctuary. Laura and Candy are at the equipment table in the foreground. Audio and Ethernet cables are running out of the window in the A/V closet at the left side of the picture. And congregants? All at home due to the pandemic.
We had a thoroughly entertaining outdoor service where we found the low light limits of what a Nikon Z50 can do. The sukkot service started well, just before sunset and we had natural colors like this.
But by the end of the service, it was full dark and our images glowed with an alien green cast. No one complained so perhaps they thought it was some holy light from on high. Ya just gotta love tech when it burps like this!
Once the high holy days were behind us, Candy and I started recruiting helpers. We found plenty of generous souls who were willing to both learn to use our gear and also put up with changes in our processes almost weekly. I kept trying new features of the ATEM Mini Pro, new camera angles, and whatever else I could think of to enhance the at-home experience of our congregants.
We had our silly moments, too, of course. Like the time that several of us showed up for shabbat services with our hair dyed red. Just because.
Spring 2021
By February, the clergy and I wanted to do more than we could achieve with our equipment. We wanted to be able to pan the cameras while broadcasting. The current tripods could not pan smoothly so we never moved a camera while it was live. This limited our ability to adjust a shot if the camera was not perfectly aligned when the ATEM Mini operator switched to it. It also hampered us if we had a close-up of a clergy and they took a couple of steps.
We wanted to add intro and outro slides, with text that we could update weekly.
We wanted to overlay the text of some of the prayers on the video.
We wanted to scroll the list of yahrzeit names before the kaddish.
I was hesitant to make the changes necessary to support these new features. What we had been doing so far was pretty simple to operate. It was even practical to take someone with virtually no training and quickly teach them to turn on a single camera, press the right buttons on the ATEM Mini Pro, and livestream a service. If we upped our game, the equipment and its operation was going to get more complex. We would need someone specifically trained to handle the intro/outro slides, text overlays, etc. We would need more skilled camera operators. It would take more money. Was this the direction that UH wanted to go? Ultimately, the answer was unequivocal; yes.
My first acquisition was a pair of Manfrotto video tripods with fluid damped heads. Compared to the tripods we had been using, these tripods were sturdy enough to not shake (win #1). The heads could be easily leveled, even when the floor was not level, so a panning camera would stay aligned with the horizon (win #2). They fluid dampening would keep the motion smooth when panning and tilting a camera, no more herky-jerky motion (win #3). Here is the top of one of the tripods. How do you like our tiny camcorder perched on top of this beast of a tripod?
My next change was to introduce a computer running OBS to handle the more complex video effects. The ATEM Mini Pro can livestream static graphics for intro slides and it can do video effects for overlays for prayer text but it cannot create either the graphics or the overlays. It relies on additional hardware such as a HyperDeck or a computer. Every workflow that I designed was more complex and more costly than using the ATEM Mini Pro as a video switcher, feeding the ATEM Mini’s program output to OBS, using OBS to add static graphics and overlays, and then using OBS to both livestream to Boxcast and to create a local recording. Consequently, I decided to go with OBS.
Here is a test at my desk at home, using OBS to overlay a scrolling list of yahrzeit names. You can see OBS on the screen on the left with the preview and program panes. The large screen in the middle is the program output (the broadcast). The multiview on the right is displaying seven different scenes that OBS has queued up, along with the preview and program panes.
This worked well enough that I took it down to United Hebrew and set up a desktop computer with OBS.
This was the beginning of a several week period that was both exciting and extraordinarily frustrating. We gained a lot of functionality. We also lost a lot of reliability. We were tearing down and storing a lot of the equipment every Friday night, then setting it up again the following Friday afternoon. It seemed like every time we set the equipment up again, something which had worked the week before would be broken. I had hair-tearing evenings trying to get sound working. We had multiple broadcasts where the audio and video were out of sync. I will be honest; there were times when I doubted myself and seriously wondered whether I had bitten off more than I could chew, whether this project could not be done on a shoestring budget with a staff of unpaid volunteers.
Thankfully, I was wrong. Alan and Marilen jumped in and learned OBS, including all of its quirks. David, Murray, and Myron learned the cameras. Everybody learned how to use the ATEM Mini Pro. I ultimately found all of the settings to tame OBS. We learned to leave the equipment set up all of the time. The risk that someone would mess with it during the week was less than the risk we would break something during the weekly set-up/tear-down cycles.
Spring/Summer 2021
April saw a United Hebrew decision to make a serious hardware investment to level up our livestreaming game for the approaching high holy days. In September 2020, we had wanted to provide an interim livestreaming experience during the pandemic. By April, we realized that livestreaming would be a permanent, first class part of our worship experience. We ordered three Vaddio RoboShot 30E HDMI PTZ cameras. We also ordered a Vaddio PCC Premier IP camera joystick controller.
On May 22, we test ran the system with our two tripod mounted Canon cameras and two of the new Vaddio PTZ cameras, temporarily mounted on two more tripods. In this photo, you can see the Vaddio camera controller at the left end of the table. The large screen in the middle is the ATEM Mini Pro’s multiview. The middle row of panes is the inputs from the four cameras. OBS is running on the screen at the right. This was the first time that the camera operator could sit next to the person running the ATEM Mini Pro and OBS. The two could actually talk to each other, instead of waving arms at each other or racing across the sanctuary for a quick whisper.
By June 18, we had the Vaddio cameras permanently mounted on the sanctuary walls. We had multiple people able to operate OBS. We had multiple people able to run the cameras. Here are David and Marilen running a shabbat service.
Here is a photo of the ATEM Mini Pro multiview from June. You can see the three camera views in in the three panes in the middle of the screen. Having the cameras mounted in three distinct positions opened up a world of visual possibilities for us since the camera controller lets the operator pan, tilt, and zoom each camera.
For example, camera 3 lets us get shots like this.
The Vaddio RoboShot cameras produce better images than the Canon Vixia camcorders. Here is a typical close-up.
Here is a typical wide shot. Not only is the quality better than we had before, but the colors from all three cameras match each other. This screenshot also exemplifies our text overlays.
The Last Pieces
Over the last few weeks, I have added a few finishing touches. We now display the program output on a full-size computer monitor. We send it to the projector in the auditorium. And we send it via a pair of wireless HDMI transmitters to small confidence monitors on the clergies’ desks.
This is what our tech booth looks like today, with Myron manning the Vaddio camera controller and the ATEM Mini Pro.
From left to right, you are seeing,
- The Vaddio PCC Premier camera controller. Camera 2 is active (the red button) so the monitor is displaying the output of camera 2.
- The Blackmagic Design ATEM Mini Pro. The Preview pane on its monitor (top left) is displaying camera 2. The Program pane (top right) is displaying camera 3, which is what is being sent to OBS.
- The third monitor is OBS running on the computer under the table. The OBS Preview pane (top left) has a text overlay queued up for the next prayer. The OBS Program pane (top right) is the actual image which is being broadcast and recorded.
- The fourth monitor is a larger version of the Program pane. The HDMI signal for that image is being split and also being sent to the confidence monitors on the clergies’ desks and to the projector in the auditorium
It has been quite a journey. I am looking forward to the high holy days this year, especially to being part of a team instead of the Candy-n-Art act for every service.
If you want to see some of our work, take a look at the recordings on United Hebrew Congregation’s livestreaming page.
I now have greater respect for the process. I’ll be watching Barrett and Alyssa’s urfruf(?) the weekend of 9/18, via zoom from MN. MN.
Shana Tova to you and your family. J
Can Catholics watch this, too? Jesus was a Jew! How would a tech-disable person do this?
Luv ur posts, Cuz
Ruthie Seeman
? Hi Ruth! Of course you can watch. Just click through to the UH livestreaming page and click to watch any of the services. No sign-up required. You can also watch on the UH Youtube channel.
Shanah tovah um’tukah!