Video Hardware

The difference between RG-6 and RG-59 coaxial cable - http://www.abccables.com/info-rg59-vs-rg6.html

A thought about gold. Do the cable companies use gold connectors? Telephone companies do for the clip in... Food for thought. How are they different? A malfunction means a service call for both companies.

This old monitor is just a little too fuzzy to use. It ended up getting replaced while trying to track down a bug in the system.

We are now set up with only 3 VCRs, one of them a failsafe hooked directly to the wide-view camera.

Notice how the pan/tilt stops are touching the permanent stop. These are the two pan-head looking screws just above the big label on the pan/tilt unit. Being in this position means the camera can turn nearly 360 degrees. Poor wiring practices along with a failure to test all axis of movement allowed the zoom lense wire to stretch and break.
 
Click on the photo to zoom-in. Notice the ripped wires on the back of the camera. These go to the $800 zoom lense.
Using a professional seems cheap.

 A mechanical Pan/Tilt is always on your desktop, unlike the computer based controls.

Cheap solution with Radio Shack™ box, rocker switch, and some terminals.

Video hardware comes in an amazing array of choices. As with all your choices, first think of personnel. Are dedicated cameramen a realistic option? Can you expect one person to run a pan/tilt and a zoom along with everything else? Secondly, think of cost. Just how much better is a 'commercial camera' than a 'security camera'? Is it worth the cost? Can it be run remotely?

An expensive zoom lens is not necessary and adds to the workload of the operator. Currently, we are using two non-zooming cameras and we have never had a complaint. Zoom would be a nice addition for the children's sermon and perhaps if we gain more capable personnel we will get one. So this choice is definitely debatable.

An IP camera uses the local network for transmitting video instead of using analog cables. The elimination of analog cables would improve video quality. The problem with these cameras is expense, complexity, and inflexible software.

The world is lousy with analog cameras of every shape, size and purpose. A lot of them have an output compatible with a video capture card. Out of this vast sea of cameras, two types seem to show promise; the home movie camera and the security camera. So how do we make the choice?

Since personnel requirements drive all of our decisions concerning webcasting, let's start there.