A weekly livestream kit for a small congregation

I help run the livestream for a small congregation. The goal was a stream any volunteer could run the same way every week, whether or not I’m there.

That last part is the whole design. A livestream that only works when one particular person is in the booth isn’t really the community’s; it’s that person’s, on loan. Plenty of small churches, clubs and neighbourhood groups have lived through it: the one person who knows how the stream works moves away or gets sick, and the people at home who depended on it, often the oldest and least mobile members, are suddenly cut off. Making the setup simple, documented and repeatable is a way of looking after them.

The setup

Cameras. Mevo cameras on the network, sending video as NDI sources. NDI carries video over the ordinary network, so there are no long video cables to run.
OBS Studio with an NDI plugin picks up each camera as a source. The plugin is now called DistroAV; it was renamed from obs-ndi in 2024.
Audio comes from the sound board into the computer’s line-in, so the stream gets the same mix as the room.
Facebook Live is where it goes out.

Everything here except the cameras is free. OBS Studio is open-source and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, so the stream can run on whatever computer the congregation already has rather than a dedicated, expensive box.

Why audio matters most

People at home will forgive a shaky picture. They won’t sit through a sermon they can’t hear. Taking audio straight from the sound board, rather than from a camera’s built-in microphone, means the stream gets the same balanced mix the room hears: the speaker’s microphone, the music, without the coughing and the air conditioning. If you only fix one thing in a small livestream, fix this.

Making it repeatable

Two OBS features do most of the work:

Scene collections hold the scenes you switch between during a service: the cameras and other sources you’ve added, plus the global audio sources.
Profiles hold the output settings: destination, bitrate, encoder and recording settings.

With both saved, a volunteer opens OBS, picks the collection and the profile, and everything is where it was last week.

It’s also worth naming scenes in plain language that matches the service, not the hardware: “Welcome,” “Sermon,” “Music,” “Prayer,” “Closing card.” A volunteer who has never touched OBS can follow a service order if the buttons match it.

Back up the scene collection and profile once everything works. Copying them to a USB stick or a shared folder means a dead computer is a short delay, not a rebuild.

A one-page checklist

Print it and tape it next to the computer.

Cameras on and on the network.
Open OBS and load the scene collection and profile.
Check every camera shows a picture and the audio meter moves when someone speaks.
Start streaming a few minutes early.
When it’s over, stop streaming, then close OBS.

Training a new volunteer

The best training is a quiet run on a weekday. Load everything, stream to a private or test destination, and let the new volunteer switch scenes while someone talks into the microphone. Then let them run a real service with an experienced person sitting beside them, hands off. After that, they’re ready. Write down anything they get stuck on and add it to the checklist.

The same kit, other uses

Nothing about this is specific to a congregation. The same setup can stream a town council meeting, a school concert, a community workshop or a memorial service for people who can’t travel. If your group has a camera, a sound board and an old laptop, it has most of a livestream already.