Were can I find guidelines and procedures for streaming worship services?

I had started looking into this a few years ago, but dropped it when other items came up. I had written a note to a neighboring church who does a healthy amount of media work and asked him about how they have their media streaming service set up. He sent me an e-mail which I have pulled pieces from and list below.

The basics seem to be if you want to host this yourself, or use a service. You will need an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to make you basic connection, and the ISP may be able to do the hosting of the web site, or help set up the streaming. Any way, here is a part of my neighbors response:

Live streaming is really not all that difficult. Here are the basics:

·You must have a source. Audio is easy since most churches have some sort of PA system already. Just tap an output from it and plug it into your computer. If you want to do video as well, that requires at least one video camera that can connect to the computer. Most modern digital video cameras have a usb connection that will send the live picture to the computer.
·You will need a computer capable of audio (and video if you do video) input(s) and a high speed connection to the internet. For audio, the computer need not be especially fast. For video, the faster the better.
·You need software to receive the inputs and compress them and send them streaming. Here are two choices, RealNetworks program called RealProducer or the Windows counterpart. More information on this can be found at RealNetworks program at www.realnetworks.com .
·Finally, you need to contract with a service that will receive your compressed upload and rebroadcast it to your subscribers. There are a bunch of folks offering this service, for example, www.streamguys.com.

The alternative to using a contracted service is to load the Helix broadcast server software on your server. Helix is another RealNetworks product.

As far as archiving, the RealProducer software can be configured to not only broadcast, but to also save a file to the hard drive, at the same time. This file can then be used on your website for streaming recordings. The easiest way is to just provide the file as a link and it will download and play on your user’s computers.

Now, if you do not have your very own server with administrative rights for the website, but are contracting with an ISP or something, you may not have the option of loading Helix on the server. In this case, I think you can contract with the ISP or your streaming service to stream your files for you. Having your own server is cheaper and better and just a matter of setting up a computer with Apache and Helix and maybe a mail server like Mercury and your all set.

I am checking with both the web hosting company and my ISP to see what services they can provide or recommend. I'll post what I find!