Steeple Cast

Steeple Cast turns a few iPhones and an iPad into a live production system for your church. Volunteers point the phones. One person runs the whole service from the iPad. It mixes the audio from your sound board for the people watching at home, and streams to YouTube.

It was built for one church's Sundays before it was offered to anyone else, and it is designed around the things that actually go wrong on a Sunday morning.

MULTI-CAMERA, WITHOUT A CAMERA BUDGET • iPhones become wireless cameras over your own Wi-Fi. Older iPhones work too. • A preview and program switcher on the iPad, with a Take button and tally lights on every phone, so operators know the moment they are live. • Auto-switching, either on a pattern you choose or by following whoever is speaking, with a countdown on the next camera so its operator is never caught moving. • Zoom and exposure lock from the iPad, and a level on each phone for a straight horizon.

AUDIO MIXED FOR THE STREAM, NOT THE ROOM The mix that sounds right in the sanctuary rarely sounds right in headphones at home. Steeple Cast takes the raw channels from your desk and builds a separate broadcast mix. • Takes up to 32 channels from your sound board over USB. Channel names sync from Behringer X32, Midas M32 and Behringer X Air / Midas MR18 boards. • Channels named and colour-coded by type: vocals, speech, band. • Automatic EQ by channel type, vocal processing, and a look-ahead limiter that keeps the stream loud without pumping. • Group faders, saved mixes you recall in one tap, and a console view with real faders. • A remote mixer: the sound engineer can run the stream's mix from their own phone.

GO LIVE IN ONE TAP • Connect your YouTube channel once, on the web. From then on, Go Live creates that week's broadcast for you - titled from a pattern you set, with your privacy setting and thumbnail. • No stream keys to copy on a Sunday morning. • If YouTube cannot create the broadcast, Steeple Cast stops and asks before streaming anywhere else, so a private service never goes out publicly by surprise.

IT KNOWS WHEN THE WI-FI CANNOT COPE Most streaming apps show you what the encoder is producing. Steeple Cast shows you what actually reaches the network. • A plain-language warning before YouTube starts buffering. • Change the bitrate mid-service with no break for viewers - the stream keeps going. • A connection check you can run before the service starts, which measures your real upload speed.

AND THE REST OF THE SERVICE • Banners and lower thirds, full-screen images, and a branded standby screen with music before the service starts. • Play video files into the stream with their sound mixed in. • Show worship lyrics over the picture, from WorshipTools, FreeShow or ProPresenter 7. • Show the service, sound and all, on TVs around the building with Steeple Cast for Apple TV, a few seconds behind the room instead of a minute behind YouTube.

WHAT YOU NEED • An iPad running iPadOS 17 or later, as the director. • One or more iPhones as cameras. • A Wi-Fi network you control. An Ethernet adapter on the iPad makes the biggest single difference. • A YouTube channel enabled for live streaming.

PRIVACY Steeple Cast has no ads and no tracking. Video goes from your iPad to YouTube. For churches that use the Steeple Cast relay, the stream passes through our relay on its way to YouTube, and the service sound and a few stills from it are used to make podcast episodes and thumbnail choices. Crash reports help us fix problems and never include your video or sound.

Steeple Cast is made by Peace Builders.