Stepping up Your Stream

​The benefits of adding a broadcast room

We recently completed similar upgrades for both Village Seven Presbyterian Church (V7) and Austin Bluffs Evangelical Free Church (ABEF). Both churches asked Lambda to help them create Broadcast rooms for them. We’ve talked about broadcast rooms before, but what exactly is a broadcast room for and why would you need one? 

For V7 and ABEF, essentially, we took any staffed positions related to video and the stream audio mixer and moved them to a separate room. Now why would we do that? There are positions in the video world that require a lot of communication, specifically the video director to camera operators. The Director needs to make sure their cameramen know when they are live or different shots they would like to see. They are also communicating with whomever is running graphics so they know when to make sure particular slides or videos are live on stream or in the room. 

The other huge reason to have a broadcast room is for your stream audio. For both ABEF and V7 we installed a 2nd sound board in the broadcast room to be used to remix the audio inputs specifically for the stream. If you have questions on why you should mix your stream audio separately, you can contact us at [email protected].

Now, that we talked about what the room is for, let’s talk about the nuts and bolts of how we were able to accomplish the transitions for these churches. For each church we did the transition a little differently, so let’s talk about V7 first. For V7 we moved the video switcher and the camera control panel for their PTZ cameras from their main room to the newly designated broadcast room. We then extended the video lines that were running to the FOH booth where the video switcher was and added a few video lines to where their new Ursa Broadcast Mini was being installed. 

For the audio, we ran a digital audio cable that forwarded all the channels from the FOH board, a Midas M32, down to the new broadcast board, also an M32. One of the thoughts with adding the new board and making it the same as the old board was just to add a level of backup into their system. While the old M32 was only a few years old, if something were to happen to it, they would be able to swap in the new broadcast room board and have a functioning FOH with little to no problem! In the broadcast room along with the new audio board, we installed two small high-quality speakers and a subwoofer for monitoring and mixing the stream audio. 

A crucial aspect of this setup was creating a way for the camera operator, FOH, and the broadcast room to talk to each other. This is where a Pro Intercom system came into play for us. We set up 3 channels of intercom for them to use to communicate between FOH, the camera positions and the broadcast room. In addition to the wired intercom, we installed a wireless com system from ListenTalk so that they could have wireless coms for their camera operator and other director or producer positions.

For Austin Bluffs Evangelical Free (ABEF), because of the equipment they had already installed from Lambda a few years earlier, we took a slightly different approach to move their video switching from the FOH booth to a stream room. Because of the switcher they already had, and it being a rack unit (the Blackmagic TV Studio HD), we decided to add a control surface. Specifically, the 1 M/E advance panel. With this, we just needed run a control cable and Multiview to the new broadcast room. 

The ABEF audio was a similar concept as V7 as they also had a Midas M32 as their FOH board. The only difference was, due to the space limitations in their new broadcast room, we got them the M32 Compact. It has the same channel count, but with half the footprint. We also added a Pro Intercom set up for them so that the video director and stream audio mixer could talk with the ProPresenter operator and the FOH audio mixing from the stream room. 

Having or adding a broadcast room can help you take your video and streaming to the next level. Since both V7 and ABEF worked with Lambda in the past, it was relatively simple to help them move to this next step in streaming. At lambda we love to give you equipment you can grow with and continue to improve your production. Broadcast rooms are a great way to step up your stream and may be easier to set up than it may seem.