The delay between when a camera captures video and when the video is displayed is known as latency (aka unintentional delay). Latency happens because it takes time to pass chunks of data from one place to another, and depending on several variables it can be from a split-second to several minutes or even more. Minimizing that delay with low-latency streaming is mission-critical for certain live-streaming use cases and some of our church and ministry partners care about it more than others.
If you are just trying to livestream your church service, this usually isn't very important for you, since usually if people happen to watch your service "Live" a minute after it is actually happening, they wouldn't even know the difference.
The importance, however, comes in when you have interactive video, such as a meeting, class, or any situation where you need input from the user. Sometimes, when you have Live Chat enabled, this can be important as well.
Here at Omnia, we always strive to give you the best quality possible and we usually range from 5 - 15 seconds, and sometimes up to a 30 second latency. This means that we cover a wide range of scenarios in regards to needs for latency, but there are still a few where you may require even faster latency (as mentioned above). In these situations, we recommend using a video-conferencing service like Zoom to enable almost-instantaneous video feedback.
UPDATE:
We are working hard on coming up with some extreme low-latency solutions in the future to enable you to use Omnia for meetings, classes, etc. If you'd like more details, please send us a note in the chat so we can make sure to let you know when it's available. 😁
Latency, What is it and is it Important?
