Broadcasting an outdoor ceremony on the web?

nixym

Hi everyone

Can anyone recommend any vendors that can film an outdoors wedding ceremony and broadcast it live on the web?  We're having ours at Springs Preserve next April but have just found out my Dad doesn't think he'll be able to make it (from New Zealand) due to his health   I know it's common in the chapels.

We have other family and many friends travelling from the UK who can't afford to get to New Zealand so we think we're going to go ahead with Vegas at this stage.  We may end up doing another ceremony/celebration in New Zealand as well (sooner) but it would be great if he is still with us to be able to watch the Vegas one live. 

Any help appreciated.

Cheers
Nic

vegasgroom

What kind of quality are you looking for?  And are you already having audio at the ceremony?  i.e. will the officiant be using a mic that is hooked into a speaker system for all three, or him/herself and you and your FI will have remote mic's, etc.?

Broadcasting live with decent quality could get pretty complicated.  For example, you have to encode both audio and video and at a ceremony that's typically not coming from the same source; i.e. it's pretty rare that the video device is also being used for audio purposes.  Typically the officiant and bride and groom have their own microphones (hand held or lapel) and a mixing board of some sort is used to combine them and send the output to the speakers for the guests to hear.  That's where the audio would be recorded as well.  The video is shot separately, and then the video editor mixes the video track from the camera with the audio from the microphones, not the audio the camera may have picked up.

If you will be having audio at the ceremony, and you don't mind something very simple, but with lower audio quality, you could place a laptop off to the side near one of the speakers with a camcorder hooked to it proving both audio and video.  Then all you need is something like Google+ Hangouts or perhaps Skype (not as nice since it requires all the watchers to create skype accounts and install the software) to stream the video from one to many.  The camera will pick up the audio and video which the laptop will stream.  If there's a rear speaker, even better, you can put the camera there and zoom it in so you get audio from the speaker and still get to see the ceremony not from a side view.

A step up from that but which would still not require more complex software or settings on the computer piece would be using the same setup but with a video camera that supports an auxiliary microphone input.  Then you'd take the clean audio from the mixing board into the camera and it would send that audio and live video to the computer.  That eliminates the whole camera listening to a speaker situation.

Much past that and you're going to get a lot more complex and expensive. 

My recommendation would be instead of trying to stream it live, put a good highdef camcorder on a tripod right in front of the ceremony, then after the ceremony have someone upload the video to youtube.  That's cheap (free) and easy and lets the guests watch from a good vantage point in high definition.  Youtube dramatically increased the upload size limit last year so you can easily upload huge multi-gigabyte video files now, you just need a fast internet connection or you'll be sitting around all day.  You could have someone start the upload during the reception, probably will take 30 or 60 minutes depending on the size of the file and speed of the connection.

nixym

Thanks vegasgroom for taking the time to write such a detailed, considered response.  Much appreciated

I'll have to ask our ceremony coordinator what the audio set up will be.  We've requested our own music be played which they were fine with so there must be at least some speakers!

If we're going to stream it ourselves through a laptop we'd have to be able to get a prepaid wireless connection for the laptop with no contract as we live in Australia.  I'm not sure how easy that is to get in the US using an Australian credit card and how much it would cost.  I'll have to look into it.

If it's not doable then I guess we can hope we have a good free internet connection in our hotel and as you say download the footage later in the day.

Regardless, it might be worth trying to get a prepaid sim card with a data allowance for my iphone or ipad so that we can use skype to connect with Dad during the day so that he feels more involved.

I will keep looking online to see if anyone offers the service, i'd be interested to see how much they charge.  I did find one http://www.idostream.com where they host the live stream for you and if required can provide the camera and a laptop with wireless broadband all set up for $600.  As you say though depending on the inputs the audio might not be very good so we'd probably be better off using our own equipment - if we can get wireless broadband.

vegasgroom

The venue may have wifi too; might want to ask about that as well.  A lot of places in the states have free or cheap wifi.

nixym

That's brilliant thanks! It didn't occur to me that the venue might have free wifi! Thanks for the mic info too Pam, that's great