StreamLive Pro

How to live stream a Torah class: setup and sound

Live stream a Torah class: three setups by budget, why sound beats picture, camera placement, audience privacy and a simple weekly routine.

Updated November 6, 2026 · 11 min read

A weekly shiur in a beit midrash is one of the easiest things to stream badly. The room echoes, the rabbi turns to the sefer and away from the phone, someone in the third row asks a question nobody at home can hear, and the overhead lights put a flicker across the picture. None of this needs expensive equipment to fix. It needs a microphone in the right place, a camera in the right place, and a routine you repeat every week.

Three setups by budget

Start with the smallest setup that solves your actual problem. Most classes that sound bad do not need a better camera; they need a microphone closer to the speaker.

Setup 1: phone only

A modern phone shoots a perfectly good picture for a shiur. What it cannot do is hear clearly from two metres away in a room with stone floors and bookshelves. If you must start here, put the phone as close to the speaker as the frame allows, on the table rather than across the room, and do a short test recording before the class. Listen to it on headphones, not on the phone's speaker.

Setup 2: phone and a lavalier mic

This is the setup we recommend in most cases. A lavalier clipped to the speaker's shirt, about a hand's width below the chin, puts the microphone a few centimetres from the voice instead of a few metres. The room echo drops away because the voice is so much louder than the reflections. Wireless lavalier kits that plug into a phone's charging port are common, and many come with two transmitters, which helps with audience questions (see below).

Check that the kit's receiver fits your phone's port (USB-C or Lightning), and charge the transmitters before every class. A wireless lav that dies in the middle of a shiur is a common failure in this setup.

Setup 3: camera and a separate mic

A camera with a larger sensor helps in a dim room, and a computer gives you more control: a second camera, a title with the class name, a screen share of a source sheet. It is worth the extra cables when the class is long, the room is large, or the recording becomes part of a course.

Sound matters more than picture

People will watch a soft picture for an hour. They will not listen to a distant, echoing voice for ten minutes.

Room echo

A beit midrash is built from hard surfaces: stone floors, plaster walls, glass bookcases, wooden tables. You cannot treat the room acoustically for a weekly class, so the fix is distance: the closer the microphone is to the mouth, the less of the room it hears. That is why a lavalier helps more than any other single purchase.

Lavalier or table microphone

• Lavalier: the best voice, and it follows the speaker when he turns to the sefer or to the board. Its weak points are clothing rustle (keep it away from a tallit, a jacket lapel that moves, or a beard) and battery life if it is wireless.
• Table microphone: nothing to clip on, nothing to charge if it is wired. But it picks up page turns, a hand on the table, a cup put down, and the voice drops every time the speaker leans back or turns away. If you use one, put it on a folded cloth or a small stand, not directly on the table, and keep it within an arm's length of the speaker.

Questions from the audience

This is a familiar problem in a streamed shiur. The speaker hears the question; the people at home hear a murmur and then an answer to something they missed. Three ways to handle it, from cheapest to best:

1. The speaker repeats the question before answering. It costs nothing and it works, but only if he remembers every time. Agree on it before the class.
2. A second microphone for questions: the second transmitter of a two-transmitter wireless kit, handed to whoever asks. Slower, but the question is clear.
3. A microphone on the audience side, mixed with the main one. It needs a computer and someone watching levels, and it hears every cough.

Lighting a beit midrash

• Do not put the speaker in front of a window. The camera exposes for the bright window and the speaker becomes a dark shape. Turn the camera so the windows are beside it or behind it.
• Light the face from the front and a little to the side. One soft LED panel on a stand, at roughly 45 degrees from the camera, does more than any camera setting. Point it at the speaker, not at the audience.
• Flicker: if you see dark bands rolling across the picture, the camera's shutter is fighting the lights. The electricity grid in Israel runs at 50 Hz, so setting the camera to 25 or 50 frames per second, or a shutter of 1/50 or 1/100, usually removes it.
• Keep the light colour consistent. Daylight from a window and warm ceiling bulbs make the face two colours. If you add a lamp, match it to the room's main light.

Where to place the camera

• At eye level of the speaker, not looking up from the table and not down from a shelf.
• Beside the audience, not behind it. A camera behind the rows shows the backs of heads and puts the speaker small in the frame. A tripod at the side of the first row, angled in, gives a clear view of the speaker and keeps most of the audience out of the picture.
• Frame from the chest up, with the sefer or the table in the frame. The viewers want to see that he is reading from the text.

A second camera for the sefer or the whiteboard

When the class works through a text line by line, a close-up helps. A second phone on a small arm above the open sefer, or on a tripod facing the whiteboard, becomes a second camera. In a browser studio you switch between the speaker and the close-up as the class moves. For a whiteboard, use dark markers, wipe the board clean before the class, and angle the phone a little to avoid the reflection of the ceiling lights.

Where to send the stream

A weekly class can start with YouTube and Facebook at the same time, plus a link in the WhatsApp community. Sending to two networks at once does not need twice the upload from the beit midrash if the fan-out happens on a server (more on that in our multistream guide).

For the picture, a modest resolution is fine. YouTube's own encoder settings page lists 3 Mbps as the minimum video bitrate for 720p at 30 frames per second (checked 4 November 2026). Test the upload speed from the exact seat where the phone or computer will be, not from the office, and choose a resolution your connection can hold with room to spare.

Schedule the weekly live in advance

A weekly class has a fixed time, so treat it like one:

• Schedule the broadcast for the next class as soon as this one ends. A scheduled live on YouTube has a link you can send in the WhatsApp community during the week.
• Use one title format every week: series, topic, date. People search for "Gemara Bava Metzia class 14", not "live".
• Arrive 20 minutes early to set up, check the battery of the mic, and run a short camera and sound check.
• Have one person watching the comments if you want to answer questions from home.

How to schedule in StreamLive Pro is in Schedule a broadcast in advance.

After the class: recording and short clips

Some people listen later, on the way to work, so the recording is worth keeping.

• Keep the full recording as the archive, with the same title format.
• Cut short clips of one clear idea each, 30 to 90 seconds, vertical, with Hebrew captions. People in a WhatsApp group watch a one-minute clip far more readily than a one-hour link.
• Check every clip before publishing. An automatic tool picks moments by what is said; it does not know whether a sentence is a ruling quoted out of context, or a question the rabbi then rejects. A human who was in the class should approve each one.
• Check the captions. Automatic transcription handles everyday Hebrew well, but names, Aramaic phrases and abbreviations from the Gemara are where it makes mistakes. Correct them before you publish.

Privacy of the people in the room

The people who come to a shiur did not all agree to be on the internet.

• Ask before you show the audience. Announce at the start of the series that the class is streamed, and say where the camera points.
• Keep the camera on the speaker. The camera position above (beside the first row, angled in) keeps most faces out.
• Minors: do not show children or teenagers without their parents' permission. If a bar mitzvah boy asks a question, the microphone can carry his voice without the camera turning to him.
• Questions and names: if someone asks a personal question, or the class includes a prayer with names of the sick, decide in advance whether that part is cut from the recording.
• Modesty in the framing, for example whether any part of the women's section is visible, is decided by the organisers and the rabbi before the first broadcast. The camera position follows that decision; set it once and mark the tripod's place on the floor.

Days you do not stream

A streaming tool does not know your calendar: StreamLive Pro does not hold or cancel anything for you, and a scheduled live or a scheduled post goes out at the time you set it. Before any day you do not stream or publish:

• Check the list of scheduled broadcasts and scheduled posts, and make sure nothing falls on those days.
• If a class runs close to a time you must stop, end the stream with a clear margin, and stop the broadcast by hand rather than relying on a timer.
• Plan uploads of the week's clips to finish ahead of those days.

What goes wrong

• The mic battery runs out in the middle. Charge before every class and keep a wired backup in the bag.
• The phone gets a call and the stream stops or shows the call screen. Turn on Do Not Disturb and airplane mode with Wi-Fi on, if the connection allows.
• The phone overheats in a long class, especially in a sunny window or in its case. Take it out of the case and keep it out of the sun.
• The Wi-Fi in the beit midrash is weak at the speaker's table even though it was fine in the office. Test from the actual spot.
• Nobody hears the questions. Agree that the speaker repeats them.
• The stream keeps running after the class because nobody pressed stop. Make it someone's job.
• A scheduled post goes out on a day you did not want. Check the schedule once a week.

Where StreamLive Pro fits

StreamLive Pro is a web system for going live to several networks at once. For a shiur, that means: a studio in the browser with no installation, a phone as the camera or as a second camera for the sefer, a scheduled weekly broadcast, the same live on YouTube and Facebook from one upload, and YouTube and Facebook comments in one panel. When a broadcast ends, vertical Shorts are cut automatically with Hebrew captions that are right to left done properly, so punctuation and numbers land on the correct side. You keep the full recording by pressing Record; without that it is removed about two hours after the broadcast.

What it does not do: captions or translation that viewers see during the live are not available yet (they are in development), and it does not know your calendar. The 7-day trial needs no credit card and does not turn into a paid plan by itself, but it allows two lives of up to 60 minutes, so a longer shiur needs a plan. More on Torah classes and synagogues, and plans are on the pricing page.

Helpful next steps: Go live from your phone, Use a phone as a camera, The 10-second camera check, Create Shorts automatically and Hebrew captions for Shorts.

Frequently asked questions

What is the single most useful thing to buy for streaming a shiur?

A lavalier microphone clipped to the speaker. It puts the microphone a few centimetres from the voice, which removes most of the room echo. A better camera helps much less.

Can I stream a Torah class with just a phone?

Yes. The picture will be fine; the sound is the weak point. Put the phone close to the speaker, test a recording on headphones first, and add a clip-on mic when you can.

How do people at home hear questions from the audience?

The simplest way is for the speaker to repeat each question before answering. Otherwise hand a second wireless microphone to whoever asks.

Can I stream the class to YouTube and Facebook at the same time?

Yes, with a multistreaming service. With StreamLive Pro your device sends one stream and our servers send it to each network, so you do not need twice the upload.

Will the tool stop a scheduled broadcast on a day I do not stream?

No. StreamLive Pro does not know your calendar. A scheduled live or post goes out at the time you set, so check the schedule ahead of those days.

Are there live captions during the class?

Not yet in StreamLive Pro; live captions are in development. Hebrew captions are available on the recording and on the Shorts cut from it.

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