Hello Joel,
My name is Haram. I've been eyeing all of the great discussion posts and your awesome replies for the past few months. I've decided to join the community because I needed some personalized assistance for my current church in Virginia. I am currently a volunteer for our very small media team, but because we have no "professional" media director similar to many other churches, the team has decided to appoint me to research and start to reach out to people who may be able to assist in upgrading our current video/streaming system as a whole. I hope that you can help us figure out an ideal solution.
I know that the more general information you have about our current set up, the size of the sanctuary, distance of the subject from the cameras, budget, our needs for the future, etc the better you will be able to assist us. I don't have all of the information at this moment, but I will definitely be updating this discussion post with all of those information along with pictures and videos in the future.
The reason why the church wants to go through a total update on the system is because this church streams almost every single day and they want to better the quality of the live streaming, general online experience and possibly go into post production later on in the future. So they are looking for a system to last them for the foreseeable future.
The current unofficial budget is $50,000 for the whole system. This may or may not be a bit flexible, depending on whether or not we need to add another $10,000 or so for critical and necessary components to the system. They don't necessarily want to go "all out" because they are currently planning on building another multi-purpose building as a bigger sanctuary in the future (possibly with better video and audio equipment), I believe they want something prosumer, maintainable and sustainable with volunteers for the current sanctuary.
CURRENT SETUP
Cameras
We currently have 3 cameras running in the sanctuary, most days with no operators. Most of the times the shots are static and they never move, probably because we have no volunteer operators in most situations.
Switchers
- Black Magic Design ATEM Switcher (I believe its one of the cheaper ones with no multi-view function which we desperately need. I will check and update what the specific model is later.)**
Computers
- 27inch iMac 5k 2020? (x2) i9/64gb RAM (we don't need to upgrade the computers)
One is running the stream through OBS to YouTube with no hardware encoders or anything, just the computer.
The other is currently running lyrics and other presentation softwares.
I will have to talk to the church and see what their needs are in more detail, but here are some things they want and want to be able to do from the system upgrade.
- Upgrading all three cameras and maybe adding another one for a total of 3-4 new cameras if needed to improve video quality.
- Possibly adding a drum cam.
- If possible, be able to control and operate all cameras with 1 person, (Due to the current lack of volunteers and operators which we don't think will improve at least for a little while.) maybe by using cameras in the same ecosystem, motorized mounts for camera/camcorder and motorized lenses.
- Upgrading the switcher to have multi-view capabilities for the 3-5 cameras.
- If possible, to be able to mount the center camera to the back wall, (to not have a blocked center aisle) and to be able to control all functions of that camera from a distance/the switching position.
Other Thoughts
- We were looking to see if the Sony or Black Magic Design cameras/ecosystems would work for us. We recently saw the new released BMD Studio 4k Pro as an option, but we weren't sure if it would work for our needs.
- Would purchasing 3-5 of the same camera be better? Or if most of them are the same, does it not matter if 1-2 cameras are different? (3 Main, 1 PTZ, 1 Drum Cam, etc)
These are all of the things I can think of at the moment. Like I have mentioned before, I will continue to update more information on the current setup, as well as the needs of the church. Please let me know if you have any questions or specific detail/information you need to better assist us. And would it be possible or necessary at any moment for you to come in person to do an estimate/installation/etc? Or do you mainly help answer questions online through your forum?
Thank you for your help!
