How is your Kingdom Hall camera connected to Zoom?

[BrianAV]

Hello April! Yes, we do still use OBS and I would recommend it. A couple of things to understand:

 

OBS will become the webcam interface for Zoom. It won't have any affect on audio. So once you get your sources setup in OBS and click the virtual camera button, OBS Virtual Camera will be listed as one of the webcam options in Zoom. Whatever is being displayed in the OBS program window is what Zoom sees.

 

I like to put ours in Studio Mode but this is optional. (I come from a video production background).

 

I had mentioned the benefit of this setup being a quick and smooth transition but the other benefit is that you can control what Zoom sees independent of what is displayed on the Kingdom Hall monitors. For example: During the Watchtower, an image can be displayed on the monitors for a couple of paragraphs. For in-person, that's not a problem, it's atmospheric. But on Zoom, the image is taking center stage when it's only talked about for a short time. So the image can be left on the screen in-person but can be switched back to the camera on Zoom unless/until it's directly referred to.

 

Jason's new setup is ideal. Having a capture card and an SDI cable to connect your camera is a very stable setup. Also, using PoE to power the camera is a great option if you don't have a power source in the ceiling. (But you will need a network switch that supports PoE or an in-line injector)

 

The other benefit of running the camera SDI is there is almost no latency. So you won't have lip sync issues. Any time you send video through a network, there will be a slight delay. This isn't a problem for a security type system, but when you're trying to present an image with matching audio and one of those is delayed, even by fractions of a second, it doesn't look right.

 

OBS is a great option but with one big disclaimer: It is a free and open source software. Sometimes updates will affect your setup. These can usually be solved with relative ease and a little tinkering but I would caution not to do updates just before a meeting. Always give yourself plenty of time 😅

 

The specifics of your setup will depend on your equipment. ChatGPT can be a great source to help with your specific setup but we're always happy to help too 😃