What happened?
Whilst streaming the Act of Remembrance from the War Memorial, our live stream didn’t include audio.
Why did this happen?
We have a number of different sound mixes which we use for different purposes; one is used exclusively within the church building (where we don’t include things like the organ – it’s loud enough already), one provides ‘ambient’ noise for our stream, and the other provides ‘primary’ audio for our stream.
For some reason, the audio channel which we were using to return sound from our remote camera was configured so sound would be sent to the in-church mix, but not to the stream.
Why didn’t we notice it?
Since the audio from our remote camera was being played correctly in the church building our team could hear the Act of Remembrance, and believed everything was operating as normal. Although the Act of Remembrance was being relayed to the Community Centre, none of the team there raised a concern until after the service was over.
What did we to do fix it?
Since we weren’t aware of a problem during the service, we were unable to make any changes. We were able to recover a low-quality version of the audio from the Act of Remembrance using the ambient audio mix (which was included in the stream at a low level, and picked up the audio being played in the church via our ambient microphones).
The audio mix has since been returned to its correct configuration.
How are we stopping it from happening again?
It’s not feasible for our operators to double-check the entire audio mix before every service. Equally, we believe that we should be able to leave equipment in a known configuration and rely on it not being changed.
A memo will be circulated to relevant parties reminding them that adjusting settings should only be done by a member of the team who fully understands the system and the implications.
The Tech Team are also recommending as part of the planned refurbishment of in-church audio that the mixing desk be replaced with a modern digital desk where settings can be locked or easily returned to a known preset state.