At some point during the services the last couple of weeks, we have lost the connection between us and YouTube for long enough that YouTube ended the livestream. When we have reestablished the connection, YouTube’s software doesn’t really know what to do with it (since it isn’t a scheduled stream at that point), and so it starts a new stream with the title information from a random one of our previously recorded streams. This is annoying, because it isn’t obvious to viewers what has happened or where they can go to watch the renewed stream, and it requires a good bit of time to re-edit the descriptions and links so the various parts of the service are properly connected for later viewers.
These disconnections could be a fault in our streaming hardware at the church, in our streaming software are the church, with our internet service provider, with YouTube, or in some combination thereof, or even in something else we haven’t thought of.
The tech team is researching the problem, trying different settings, and exploring whether we need to upgrade our equipment. So far we haven’t found any definite solutions.
So what does this mean for you? It kind of depends on how you access the stream of the service. As far as we can determine, it looks like this:
  • If you are watching on YouTube when this happens you would have to go to our channel (or your subscriptions if you are subscribed to our channel) to find the new live video.
  • If you are watching on our website’s watch-live page, and you stay on the page long enough, it appears that the new stream just starts up like the previous one (albeit with a different title and date), and you’re good to go.
  • If you watch the video after the regular service time, say later on Sunday or on some later day, you will end up needing to watch two separate videos (that we are linking in the post-service editing) to see the whole service.
None of that is terrible in the grand scheme of things, of course, but it is inconvenient for you and annoying to say the least for the pastor and the tech team.
We want to provide a smooth, engaging worship experience to our church family who are participating online, and this glitch is getting in the way of that. We are working hard to figure out a fix.
If you have had an interruption while participating in worship online, we’d love to hear from you about your experience. Just leave a reply in the comment section below or email us at tech.wizards@catoctin.org. Tell us where you were watching (our watch-live page or on YouTube Live) and what happened. It might help us figure out how to address the problem.
In the meantime, we appreciate your patience and your prayers for our technology outreach and worship.