Founded in 1998, South Africa’s Heritage of Faith Ministries International (HOFMI) began life under a tin roof in Witbank, but has singe grown into an auditorium that can seat up to 500 people. More recently it has added broadcast capture and playout capabilities to its in-person services, calling on Stage Audio Works for technical support. A StreamWorks end-to-end streaming solution now allows direct communication with HOFMI’s associate church in Fort Worth, Texas.

‘Our first engagement with Stage Audio Works was when we upgraded our consoles at our Johannesburg and Witbank locations to Yamaha CLs,’ says HOFMI Technical Director, Matt Ratcliffe.

‘Over the years, our relationship with SAW has developed beyond basic equipment supply to using their immense technical expertise to design and build custom solutions to help us achieve our goals. Nathan and I have worked fairly closely over the past couple of years talking through our specific needs and how we could cater to them. One of our main goals is to use the Witbank building – principally the auditorium – as a broadcast campus facilitating the capture and broadcast to several campuses simultaneously via web or TV broadcasts, with either live or post playout.’

A major part of this project was setting of a low-latency, bi-directional link with the Fort Worth church. The first stage was to transition HOFMI’s broadcast set-up from the OBS (Open Broadcast Software) platform which it used to stream directly to YouTube to the StreamWorks platform. ‘This gave us the reliability of SRT and the benefit of StreamWorks support in the event of any hiccups,’ Ratcliffe explains. ‘We then deployed a Kiloview E1 encoder that removed our reliance on Apple computing power behind OBS.’

The E1 is a compact, low-cost solution that provides easy encoding from a single SRT stream and two channels of audio.

‘Once we’d stabilised the broadcast campus stream, we built a mobile “streaming box” containing a Kiloview E1 encoder and a Kiloview DC220 decoder for sending and receiving video from a remote location, two Radial Stagebugs for connecting external devices (laptops, MP3 players etc) to the PA, and a small router for remote access via VPN should it be required.

‘All of this was packed into a 3U-high Stage Plus flightcase – designed and built by SAW’s manufacturing division – with a custom drawer to allow for easy access from the back and a properly labelled patch panel at the front for easy I/O. We then shipped the streaming box off to Fort Worth where, with the help of StreamWorks, we were able to implement the bidirectional stream between Witbank and Fort Worth – or wherever the box happens to be.

‘In essence, this system offers a plug-and-play solution for reliable, low-latency bi-directional streaming to and from remote locations using HOFMI Witbank as the production centre. Furthermore, it is capable of being scaled to multiple campuses. It’s a fantastic solution and one that we couldn’t have implemented without Nathan and the Stage Audio Works team’s help. The cherry on the cake is a great-looking Pixel Plus LED wall at the back of the stage, which brings the whole project to life in the Witbank auditorium.’

‘It’s been a pleasure working with Matt on his various projects over the years, and to see how HOFMI’s technical resources have developed as a result,’ says SAW’s Nathan Ihlenfeldt. ‘Matt’s passion and enthusiasm is infectious, and it pushes us to find solutions we may not have imagined otherwise. We’re already looking forward to his next project – whatever it may be.’

More: www.stageaudioworks.com