Updated 4 July 2012
The Episcopal Ordination (Consecration) of Bishop-Elect Reverend Justin Duckworth and his Installation (Enthronement) as 11th Bishop of Wellington took place in the Wellington Cathedral of St Paul, on Saturday 30 June 2012 at 1.30pm.
It was streamed live on the internet. You can see recordings of the service here:
Part 1 – the Ordination 83 mins
Part 2 – the Installation 85 mins
Order of Service
For a copy of Saturday’s Order of Service click here:
Ordination Order of Service
pdf 1MB
Ordination Order of Service – web copy
Here is an Episcopal ordination bulletin courtesy Diocese of Wellington.
I hope this positive use of contemporary technology by at least one diocese may mark a new step up into the new millennium for our church. For example, since the meeting of General Synod Te Hinota Whanui next week, is open to the public, why not web stream the important discussions that will happen there. Light a virtual candle and pray for the events around today here.
Here is an interview with Justin Duckworth for those of you who have not yet seen it:
How technically difficult was it to do the live-streaming? Presumably this was a professional film company who would set up cameras from different angles, etc.
how intrusive did people feel the cameras were?
This is of interest because others may hope to copy this – and the idea of filming Synod is appealing too – and would find it helpful to know what was involved
Good questions, Bene. I think the actual live-streaming is not technically difficult. A priest-friend of mine does it for funerals (when, say, friends & family are unable to attend) from his (free) website that he set up following my instructions. You need a camera. The number & complexity of the cameras you could make as complex as you desire. At a synod, what more would be required than one unobtrusive camera pointed at the front? Blessings.
I’m the producer of the ordination webcast.
The webcast wasn’t too hard, but we are set up to deliver this sort of event.
The ordination used 6 cameras. 5 inside and one outside at the Canterbury door. There was a crew of 2. The director operated the 5 robotic cameras and an operator manned the outside camera. It took a crew of 3 all of friday afternoon to rig. It was shot in 1080i HD.
We didn’t add any lights for budget and safety reasons. We didn’t add any stands as aisles were going to be used for seating and refreshment tables. Two robots were strapped to pillars to avoid stands. As a result the video gets dark as the sun sets. Lighting would have added over $10k to the budget, which was well under $3k.
We used the Cathedral sound feed, which was not great. We had some extra mics hidden inside to pick up the choir and as a back-up measure. They were used extensively Also done by the director.
We delivered the streams (there were 4 streams for different bit rates) via a global content delivery network. The Live audience as just below 3000, but the recordings have had over 25,000 viewers from 20+ countries in 3 days.
While anyone can connect a camera to a PC and stream, eventually they get a big bill and learn how to do it properly. I have seen folks get bills as high as $145,000 for 5 days work. I narrowly avoided one last year when a job grew from 600 viewers to 425,000.
For the ordination, we arranged a fiberoptic connection in a building along the road and ran a temporary VDSL link 200 meters to the van. Its the quality of this link that determines the success of your webcast.
There were two multi-session encoders running in the van, with one as backup. There were 3 HD recorders running.
As you may have seen, where possible, we keyed captions identifying major “players”.
For synod, while 1 camera may seem adequate, you need to conside how you handle powerpoint slides, questions from the floor and also remote participation, via videoconference, Skype, telephone, email and interactive chat. We also integrate Twitter feeds for events. And of course, you need decent sound.
We have done work for both the Catholic Church (including a Bishop’s ordination) and the Elim Church – including sending a live sermon to a service in Brisbane. And many funerals and weddings.
I’m happy to give links to some of these and talk about other opportunities for you to consider.
Richard
Thanks so much, Richard, for your points. Blessings.
Hi, I’ve used UStream Producer to good effect at virtually no cost, aside from the set up of purchasing software and camera. We’ve used a very simple approach to streaming funerals and weddings etc as Bosco has mentioned, in HD. There is the possibility to set up with several cameras, but we haven’t had the need or the capacity of cameras to do this yet. The quality seems fine and our audio link from our sound desk has proved to be quite adequate. Granted it is not on the scale of St Paul’s Cathedral, but it is very achievable for local parish churches who are looking for a way to stream funerals to family members overseas.
Here is a sample of an SD recording we made while we were trialling a basic setup.
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/8340919
Andrew
Thanks so much, Andrew, for presenting your actual example. I fear that people may get put off and even use rumours of costs as an excuse to not be drawn into the wonderful possibilities of the 21st century. Blessings.
I have updated the ordination web pages so that you can now download the files. Some churches want to use segments tomorrow.