Posts by Nick Jackson

Oops: Streaming interruptions on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday

Those of you joining the Watch on Maundy Thursday may have noticed our stream abruptly cut out, and those of you hoping to watch the Liturgy of Good Friday will have noticed we didn’t stream it at all.

Read more: Oops: Streaming interruptions on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday

What happened?

Partway through streaming the Watch on Maundy Thursday, we lost all internet connectivity to the church building, which meant we were unable to stream the final half of the Watch. This disruption continued through most of Good Friday, meaning we weren’t able to stream the Liturgy of Good Friday as planned.

Why did this happen?

Our internet connection in the church building is provided by a radio link to the neighbouring Community Centre. For some unknown reason, the side of the link on the Community Centre stopped responding to both its counterpart on the church, and all control signals. Recovering this required a complete restart of the link.

How are we making sure it doesn’t happen again?

The radio link is one of our oldest parts of network equipment, and is due for replacement soon. For that reason we’re not rushing to replace it out-of-schedule unless we start experiencing these failures more frequently. However, we’ve taken this opportunity to make sure all our firmware is up to date, to make sure our configuration is optimised, and to remove some barriers which made it harder to troubleshoot.

To help make this problem easier to solve in future if it reoccurs we’ve also updated our Handbook to include some error recovery steps in our streaming playbook, and we’ve added a new troubleshooting section to the physical operations manual which is kept on our tech desk.

Review: Lessons and Carols 2025

After all of our big services and events, we like to review how things went and identify areas for improvement, even if we felt that nothing went wrong. For our reviews we follow a format called The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, where we identify things which went well, things which shouldn’t have happened, and things which we could have done better.

The Good

  • Having two operators meant that streaming was less stressful, and gave a more dynamic mix of both sound and video.

The Bad

  • The soloist for the beginning of Once in Royal David’s City wasn’t mic’d correctly, meaning the sound wasn’t as clear as it should be.
    • In future, a member of the Tech Team should perform a mic check beforehand.
    • Microphone users who are unfamiliar with them should be told to always leave microphones switched on; the audio operator will manage levels.
  • Changes had been made to the configuration of the sound desk at an unknown point in the past which affected our baseline mix, leading to a small amount of feedback.
    • Although this was quickly addressed by the sound operator, it shouldn’t have been an issue in the first place.
    • Replacement of the current mixing desk with a digital desk which can be locked or which has automatic feedback suppression should be made a higher priority.

The Ugly

  • The microphone arrangement for the choir and organ is starting to show its weaknesses compared to the quality of the performance, and should be reviewed to provide a better mix.
    • This will likely require consultation with an acoustic engineer to ensure the best placement.
    • It is likely that this will also require engagement with the faculty process if anything more than the bare minimum is done, as microphones and cabling will need placing at high levels.
    • This will likely need either the inclusion of a submixer, or the replacement of the mixing desk, to allow for sufficient number of microphones.
  • An incorrect expander configuration in our streaming pipeline meant that particularly quiet parts of singing or organ were being lost on the stream.
    • This configuration has now been changed to be less aggressive.
  • A shortage of members of the Tech Team meant that we weren’t able to install the usual number of supplementary cameras, leading to a less engaging visual mix.
    • We should consider permanent installation of additional cameras in key positions, and potentially replacement of our video mixer with one supporting more inputs. This will provide a wider and more engaging range of shots for all services, not just ones where the Tech Team are able to install temporary supplementary ones.

Oops: Extended silence during Act of Remembrance

Those of you who tuned in to our Act of Remembrance this week may have noticed that the two minutes silence lasted somewhat longer than expected.

What happened?

Whenever we can’t get a live bugler to play at our Act of Remembrance, we play a pre-recorded audio file which contains the Last Post, two minutes silence, and Reveille as a single audio track. Unfortunately, playback was stopped immediately after the end of the Last Post and we didn’t have either the capability to resume playback from the same point, nor the ability to signal to the president that a technical problem had occurred and they should continue with the prayer at the end of the silence instead of expecting the Reveille.

Why did this happen?

An unexpected artefact in the audio caused our technician at the War Memorial to stop playback early, suspecting a technical fault which would have disrupted the two minutes silence. Unfortunately they did not anticipate being unable to resume the playback.

Since we have never experienced this particular problem before, we didn’t have a procedure in place for signalling to the president that the Reveille wasn’t going to play, and that they were safe to continue with the service without interruption.

How are we making sure it doesn’t happen again?

We’re going to try prevent any recurrence in a number of ways:

  • Trying to source a live bugler for future services
  • Re-cutting our pre-recorded audio to make sure it doesn’t have any unexpected artefacts
  • Having a ‘backup’ audio file of just the Reveille, allowing our technicians to manually resume playback at the appropriate point

Weeknotes: Saturday 29 June

It’s been a while since we did weeknotes! Here’s what’s happening:

We mixed up our prayers

If you subscribe to our weekly notices you’ll know they (usually) include a list of names to pray for. In the past these have always been sorted alphabetically, but we’ve made a change so they’re randomised on a week-by-week basis. This way helps prevent intercessions from being something you do ‘by rote’, encouraging more engagement with the act of praying for the individual.

We’re planning some audio improvements in the church

The audio equipment in the church is getting a bit long in the tooth, and we’re growing increasingly worried about its reliability. To address this we’re putting together a five-year plan for rolling repairs, replacements and upgrades.

We fixed timezones on whitkirk.com

The website for our Community Centre wasn’t properly understanding timezones and daylight savings, so we reminded it that we live in the Europe/London timezone and not UTC.

We started writing a handbook

We love openness, and we love documentation, so we started combining the two into our (work in progress) St Mary’s Church Handbook. The grand plan is that this will become the go-to source of “how do I do this thing” information for anyone on the entire St Mary’s team, not just the Technical Team.

We sped up some website behaviour

We were able to make some optimisations to how we serve images on our website which makes it snappier and more responsive for users.

Announcing the Revd Claire Honess

St Mary’s Church is delighted to share the news that the next Vicar of Whitkirk will be the Revd Dr Claire Honess.

Claire joins us from the Benefice of Barnoldswick with Bracewell, where she has been Assistant Curate since 2021. Before her ordination she was Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Leeds. She will be moving to Whitkirk with her husband over the summer, and a date for her induction and collation will be announced in due course.

We’d like to offer our thanks to those who applied for the position, as well as to our congregation, our patron the Society for the Maintenance of the Faith, the Diocese of Leeds, and all who have offered their prayers, support and guidance through this time of vacancy.

Feeling sunny

It’s been a while in the making, but St Mary’s Church Whitkirk Community Centre is thrilled to share the news that it’s now (at least partially) powered by the sun.

Thanks to the combination of a generous legacy left to the Church, combined with grant funding, the new solar panels will generate an estimated 6,900kWh of electricity every year – that’s enough to fully recharge 150 electric cars, completely meet the electricity needs of two and a half houses, or make a whopping 200,000 cups of tea!

The system – installed by local firm Leeds Solar – also includes a battery which will soak up any excess power generated during the day and then release it at night.

By combining the solar panels and battery with information from the National Grid, the Community Centre is also helping to build a more resilient and lower-carbon electricity supply for the whole area. 

All together it’s estimated that the system will not only save the Church around £2,500 a year which can be put back into the local community, but will also prevent over a tonne of carbon being added to the atmosphere.