From the booth

Guides, notes,and what we shipped.

From the builders' heads to your live day — how-tos that hold up, news worth knowing, and a devlog that says what changed and why.

Getting audio right when you are not an audio person
How-to

Getting audio right when you are not an audio person

Viewers forgive a poor picture and leave over bad sound. Here is the short version of what matters, for someone who has to solve this and did not train for it.

We asked a stranger to tear it apart
Devlog

We asked a stranger to tear it apart

I gave an outside reviewer my website and three screenshots, with no context and no relationship, and asked what was wrong. The answer was harder than I wanted.

How to set up a Floor Director on an iPad
How-to

How to set up a Floor Director on an iPad

Put the camera switcher and talkback in the hands of someone on the floor. Which link to scan, the one extra step for iPads, and what they see.

Blocks or Sequence... every song in the order the band actually plays it
News

Blocks or Sequence... every song in the order the band actually plays it

Songs now play by their blocks, or in a sequence you arrange. Drag a chorus in as often as it is sung, and every screen follows that order.

How to use a phone as the microphone for a small group
How-to

How to use a phone as the microphone for a small group

A phone camera can hear a whole circle of voices, or only the person holding it. Three switches on the camera tile decide which.

DECK... design the screen your room actually needs
News

DECK... design the screen your room actually needs

Place the program, cameras, lyrics, clock, timer and messages on a canvas your way. Any display can show it, and NDI Send can pick it.

Why your Wi-Fi is fine and your cameras are not
How-to

Why your Wi-Fi is fine and your cameras are not

The network test passes, the speed is good, and the camera feed still stutters. Wireless cameras stress a network in a way nothing else does, and speed is not the property that matters.

Streaming a school event when the grandparents are overseas
How-to

Streaming a school event when the grandparents are overseas

Concerts, graduations and prize days have an audience that cannot fit in the hall... and often cannot fit in the country. Here is how a small team covers one.

Bible passages, bundled... pick a range and step through it
News

Bible passages, bundled... pick a range and step through it

Two translations included, XML Bibles supported, the reference on every output. No copying and pasting into slides on Saturday night.

Every source is a tile
Devlog

Every source is a tile

Phones, webcams, capture cards, network feeds. Once they all arrive the same way, the question stops being "what can I plug in" and becomes "what do I have.

Shipping to nobody
Devlog

Shipping to nobody

For months my production system had almost no users. That is usually called failure. It was also the only period when reality is free... and it is expiring.

A funeral, a wedding, and a baptism
How-to

A funeral, a wedding, and a baptism

The events that matter most are the ones you cannot rehearse and cannot repeat. Here is how to cover them without the technology becoming part of the day.

Good enough is a real standard
Devlog

Good enough is a real standard

Volunteer teams are told to aim for excellence and then measure themselves against productions with budgets and crews. That comparison is doing damage.

The booth should not be the barrier
Devlog

The booth should not be the barrier

Somewhere in your building is a desk that only one or two people understand. That concentration is not a technical fact... it is a design outcome, and it can be undone.

How to stream a small group from one phone
How-to

How to stream a small group from one phone

A cell group, a prayer meeting, a home Bible study. One phone as camera and microphone, your church address as the stream, and a link to it afterwards.

NDI out... your broadcast mix, in sync, on every tier
News

NDI out... your broadcast mix, in sync, on every tier

The NDI feed now carries the same audio as your stream and recording, lip-sync aligned, with the crackle gone. NDI in and out work on every tier.

It was fine for 45 minutes
Devlog

It was fine for 45 minutes

A stream that ran clean then started choking. I blamed the cloud, measured it, and found the fault was 45 minutes upstream of where it appeared.

Plan-to-Cloud... backed up before Sunday
News

Plan-to-Cloud... backed up before Sunday

Local-first means your content is on your machine. It also means backup is your job. This is the opt-in that does it for you.

Output Matrix... eight displays, each showing something different
News

Output Matrix... eight displays, each showing something different

A projector is one output. A venue needs several, showing different things. Each display now picks its own source.

A camera at the far end of town
Devlog

A camera at the far end of town

A phone can be a camera in your building. It can also be a camera somewhere else entirely... and that turns out to solve problems nobody bought it for.

Who Broadcasteer is not for
Devlog

Who Broadcasteer is not for

I built this for small teams running live days on ordinary hardware. Here are the situations where something else is the better answer, and why.

Your new volunteer has fifteen minutes
How-to

Your new volunteer has fifteen minutes

Most AV teams lose people during training rather than during the work. Here is how to bring someone onto a live production team without a course.

What you can do with one phone and a laptop
How-to

What you can do with one phone and a laptop

The smallest real setup: one phone as a camera, one laptop, and the free tier. Here is exactly what that gets you and where the limits actually are.

The volunteer who left
Devlog

The volunteer who left

Somebody ran your desk for years and then stopped. Usually it was not the work. Here is what actually drives people out, and what a team can do about it.

A live day, from setup to shutdown
How-to

A live day, from setup to shutdown

What running a live production actually looks like hour by hour, for a team that does this once a week and has other things to do.

Our own website was the slowest thing we shipped
Devlog

Our own website was the slowest thing we shipped

I build streaming software and my marketing site was sending 173 MB of video to every visitor. Here is the audit, the fix, and why I never noticed.

The gear was never the bottleneck
How-to

The gear was never the bottleneck

Most venues that cannot stream reliably do not have an equipment problem. They have a people problem wearing an equipment costume... and gear does not fix it.

FREE opens the Studio... no watermark, no timer, one camera
News

FREE opens the Studio... no watermark, no timer, one camera

A FREE account now opens the full Studio. One camera, 720p, 30 fps, with no watermark and no time limit. The pricing page promised it; now the code agrees.

How to arrange a song the way the band actually plays it
How-to

How to arrange a song the way the band actually plays it

Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus, bridge... set a song's real order once, and every screen follows it. Blocks or Sequence, explained.

Running the plan from your pocket
Devlog

Running the plan from your pocket

The desk is at the back of the room, facing away from everything that matters. Sometimes the right place to operate from is not a desk at all.

The overflow room problem
How-to

The overflow room problem

You have run out of seats and there is a hall next door. Sending the service into that room is a different problem from streaming online, and simpler than most people assume.

Nobody worships Slide 29
Devlog

Nobody worships Slide 29

Why Broadcasteer navigates songs by structure (Verse, Chorus, Bridge) instead of slides, and what I learned watching operators get lost in the grid.