Hello! Love the site and have voraciously read all your guides and suggestions. Honestly, I'm overwhelmed by the amount of decision points here and the potential cost of making an incorrect decision.
I lead a congregation of about 400 members (average attendance 140-200 when in-person) and we are looking to set up live streaming for the first time so that people have the option once we reopen. We have a historic building with a rather unusual layout, and a not especially tech-savvy membership. So I'm looking for something we can basically set up and forget: no staffed cameras, no major production, just a single person sitting at our sound desk perhaps switching between a maximum of 2 cameras.
We spoke to some providers in our area and were universally recommended systems with 2 PTZs, control joysticks, multiple screens, switchers, encoders etc. - just way more complex than I thought we actually needed. So I took a step back to do some research and it is truly astounding the amount of options and the seeming complexity of this task. S I guess I am asking: if I want to be able to switch between two cameras during a service, and perhaps do an overlay with a presenter and their slides or whatever, and do all this without people sitting at cameras, what do we have to get?
Why not staffed cameras? Because we don't have the volunteers for it and I can't honestly imagine us getting them. Also, I do not know where we would put such cameras: the space is basically a big wooden box (62'x62') and anywhere I can imagine placing a camera would either disrupt a sightline or a walkway. I read your criticisms of PTZ setups, and am convinced by what you say - but also our historic building doesn't really have places where I can imagine setting up regular cameras, so I feel a bit stuck there.
And the amount of things we could conceivably put on our little sound table... It's all too much! We have a small AV desk with limited space, currently occupied by our lighting and sound boards and the laptop we use to project slides and video etc. I do not know where things like joysticks and switchers etc. would go - this is another reason I want to keep things as simple as possible.
We do have one benefit, which is that we have money - we can probably spend $20k on this if we need to. But I don't want to spend money on an unnecessarily complex system which has thousands of features we will never use. Our sound is pretty good (I think!). Our lighting is OK (it's a new-ish system and the auditorium has no windows, but the backdrop is a light brown wood which is tough to work with honestly). It's the camera and streaming stuff we need help with. Bottom line is I want an extremely user-friendly system which will enable people to watch our services online, with good quality image and sound, within a hosted Zoom room, but without all the bells and whistles of a full-blown TV studio production.
Many thanks for this site and for any assistance you can provide!
