Streaming Video for House of Worship Customers

The internet and technology have made changes to nearly all aspects of modern life.  They have even transformed how our house of worship customers reach their congregations.  Let’s take a quick look at why houses of worship stream video, what that streaming looks like, and how it is accomplished. 

 

Why do House of Worship organizations stream video?

House of worship customers of Tulix come to us for a variety of reasons and motivations.  The house of worship clients we have are all about service, serving their members, and the world at large.  Streaming video is one more tool that they can use to accomplish their service. 

 

Live church services, or other content, can be made available through streaming in other geographic locations all over the world.  We have clients who have expanded their congregations to other continents through streaming video.  Streaming live services can make them available when viewers are able to watch them if they are provided on demand.  While most parishioners can make regular weekly services, sometimes they are not able due to travel, other commitments, or illness.  COVID has provided us with an excellent example and case study for why streaming house of worship services and other content is invaluable.  After COVID restrictions have listed, there will still be people who are generally unable to attend live events.  Streaming services, and video on demand content can make a huge impact on their lives and be a real spiritual lifeline.

 

We typically think first of live services when we think of streaming for house of worship organizations.  However, video streaming can also be used for Bible studies, Bible courses, fellowship programs, and much more.  Streaming video can also be a part of multisite house of worship solutions.  Many churches have additional locations or are part of affiliations.  Connecting different sites, aggregating content from multiple locations in the cloud, and working with an OVP or Online Video Platform is all possible with today’s technology. 

 

Investments in streaming live services and other house of worship content typically pay for themselves at a minimum. Often, they pay for themselves many times over, based on the ability to expand the reach for donations geographically, or because of the increased availability of video content. 

 

What does streaming house of worship video require?

Onsite the requirements for to start streaming live services are basic.  A camera to capture events, a video encoder to digitize and compress video is needed (sometimes these can be the same device), and a data connection to upload content to a CDN / Content Delivery Network or OVP / Online Video Platform is all that is needed. Many churches are already skilled with audio and video production.  Adding a camera and uploading content to that mix is usually not over burdening. 

 

Once video is captured it can be directed to social media if desired.  It can also be directed to an OVP for more comprehensive streaming video solutions.  Most OVP providers operate in the cloud.  A few, like Tulix, operate in their own data, or infrastructures, centers.  An OVP will provide video processing for record, capture, and playback of video at any time.  They can also create VOD (video on demand) catalogs and live channel creation.  Live channels can be all live events or a mix of live events and stored content that is played out on a schedule to create a channel.  An OVP will enable live linear and the ability to pause live TV.  They can also provide 7 days (or more) of stored content and the viewer capability to rewind and fast forward through content.  When streaming live channels or VOD content from an OVP, a house of worship streaming customer will need a CDN.  It is important to note here that Tulix is both a CDN and an OVP and can offer advice and assistance with all of this. 

 

How to get started … Is streaming video an option for your House of Worship?

If you think you might want to explore house of worship video, there are many options.  If you think you might want to speak to a house of worship OVP or a house of worship CDN, Tulix as mentioned earlier, offers both services. 

 

Sometimes it is easy to get caught up in, or even lost in the technology.  In our experience it is best for our house of worship customers to capture their video, get it to our data center, … and then let us do the rest.  The rest can be different based on the needs of the customer.  We will work with you to define that.  Tulix can help make your content available globally, and at any time.  We can help create channels and libraries for on demand content.  We can also manage the publishing to multiple social media platforms. 

 

Tulix is a fully managed streaming service provider with its own infrastructure.  This makes our solutions flexible and cost effective.  Our services include; channel origination, live 24/7 streaming, encoding/transcoding, CDN, security, monetization, distribution, and custom streaming offers.  With Tulix there is no additional hidden charge for cloud platforms like AWS or Azure.  We have our own cloud!  We work with broadcasters, content owners, startups and just about everybody who needs streaming.  Please reach out to us here for further information.  http://tulix.com/contact.php