Live streaming equipment!

We just had our ceremony, & we live streamed it. We just used our phones (had one for the ceremony, set up another for a selfie photo booth & another for music). We had a tripod for the live stream that could swivel. We also got a mic from Amazon so the sound was better. We also had a clip thing that attached the other phone to the counter for photobooth pics. Thankfully my BIL & his GF are techy (they design VR stuff) so they took over that stuff as they know more. It turned out amazing, although we probably could've benefited from a handheld mic. Make sure you do a test run as you'll be able to spot things you need before hand & also see the quality/sound so you know what to expect.
Good luck!

Zoom has a microphone on it so everyone can hear. Though it would be good to test the mic with family over zoom for quality purposes so you know when it moves it will not effect your surrounding. Zoom chats with family a few times has given a good sound given the mic can be turned on from everyone's end so they can hear and being close enough to hear the ceremony. Just ask them to avoid texting or any media since everyone can hear the typing sound to avoid any sound covering what is being said.

Hello Terra,

my church is currently live streaming the weekly mass so I will tell you what we are doing and what we tried to do.

What is working for us is using Facebook Live from a phone. The phone (Samsung Galaxy S9) is on a tripod that gets moved around by a community member. We found that older phones had bad sound quality but that the phones from the last 3 years are picking up sound with no mics as long as it is withing 2 feet of the person speaking.

What we tried to do but didn't have the right equipment for was using Facebook Live Producer and OBS (free). What you would need for this is a computer, mics, a mixing board, and the cords from the mics to the mixing board and a cord to go from the output of the mixing board to the computer mic input (all rent-able). Things that are cool with OBS is that you could have multiple video feeds by linking the computer to many webcams and multiple mics. There are lots of videos on YouTube on how to use OBS. The thing that didn't work for us was that we didn't have a computer with enough processing power. The last thing you want is the computer dying on you because its processing too much. We think a gaming computer would work best for this.

Hey Tarra, Jarrod has provided some great feedback on this. What's your video source? I assume it's a phone or ipad but here's the caveat: phones cannot take external mic connections natively. You need an adapter of some kind, like a TRS to TRRS cable so that your phone's headphone jack can be used as a microphone jack.

For mics, you can pin a wireless lav on you or use a -V75-Digital-Wireless-14-Channel-Handheld-Mic-System.htm">wireless omni-directional condenser that you pass around to each speaker. You can rent them at Long & McQuade and there are multiple locations all over Southern Ontario so it's pretty convenient. It's also usually under $20 to rent these. If you don't mind being seen holding a mic, I suggest going that route. The omni-directional will focus on your voice and block out a lot of environment sound like wind. If you prefer to look "hands free" then you should ask them about getting more than one lav. You could try to use one between all three of you but I find that can be very hit and miss, especially if one of you are more soft spoken than the other.

Just curious, are you using Zoom because you want to interact with the guests as well? If you only need them to see you and don't need to see them, I HIGHLY recommend using a different platform. Zoom is VERY laggy and video quality is not the best. I've had great experiences with EventLive. You can broadcast without anyone downloading an app - all they need is the link and they can leave comments for you to read. YouTube Live is also a great option.

I'll preface this with the fact that I have never done this specifically, but am just providing advice based off of my own experiences in the live event AV world.

Outdoors it's really going to depend on what you want to capture, and how visible the mic is. You'll almost definitely want a microphone, phone mics are pretty good but aren't great. If you're able to, I would recommend going to your venue (or somewhere a lot like it) and doing some prelim sound tests. If you're happy with how it sounds, then perfect, just go for it!

Depending on how far away the camera (your phone) is, you may very well be able to get away with using a simple plug in mic for your phone. I say "may be able to get away with it" as these mics are designed to pick up pretty much everything, and the further away you are, the wider that pickup cone is going to be, and the more background/environmental sound it's going to detect and pickup. I love the ones that Rode makes, but they can get expensive. This is definitely the most affordable way to do it, as it won't require any additional equipment, other than your phone, the mic, and the tripod! With this method, or really any method involving a microphone, make sure you use a wind sock.

The most ideal solution would be to have a mic right near you and your officiant. You could go for the much loved classic SM58 mic on a stand. While this is a more obviously visible solution, it's affordable, easy, and almost guaranteed to do exactly what you want it to do. Heck you could even use it to smack down some loose floorboards right before you use it.

You could also use a wireless lav and hide it somewhere on one of you.

Either of these solutions will need a bit more equipment, though. You'll need to receive the audio input and convert it in order for your phone to be able to connect to it. This is where it gets a lot more difficult. While there are some companies that make wireless mics for smartphones, they are, of course, expensive. I have personally never connected a wireless or external mic to a cellphone (other than ones that plug directly in), and therefore can't in good faith provide specific product recommendations for it.

Hopefully someone else might have done this personally. If not, any using the phone mic doesn't do what you'd like specifically, converting an XLR connection to USB to connect to a laptop is much much easier, if that option is available.

Best of luck getting this done, I would love to hear how you end up doing it! If you do have any questions about what I've said or how to use another method, please feel free to shoot me a message.