Multimedia Presentation Recording & Streaming System

So what do you need?

• A Computer or Laptop
  At the heart of the system is a computer that is able to handle multiple tasks asked of it at the same time. Because of this it needs to be reasonably well equipped. However, it doesn't need to be an expensive high powered unit. All the software chosen for this project will successfully run on Windows 10/11, MacOS or Linux operating systems.  For the lowest cost, I suggest purchasing a refurbished Windows laptop with a minimum of 8GB of RAM, an SSD card as a hard drive and a good processor. One that came out two or three years ago and was supplied with Windows 10 would be ideal. I picked one of these up for £116 recently. You can maintain Windows on it, but I'd recommend installing Linux on it instead as it requires far less resource to run and will therefore be a more efficient work horse for you. A linux version that is very user friendly is Linux Mint. Mac systems stand the test of time best for performance, however for that reason tend to be more expensive.
  A presentation system ideally needs three display screens as a minimum to work well, You can use just two, but it's not easy. For this reason cheap USB to Video adapters can be purchased to allow the computer to support the extra monitors (depending upon how many it natively supports).
• A TV or Projector
  Hopefully you'll be able to use a projector or TV that is already in the space that the presentation is going to happen, but if not this is going to be the biggest single expenditure of the system.  Large screen TVs are very common now and are frequently on sale in most outlets and that coupled with a stand on casters makes the most flexible option. If you want a very large screen, consider four identical cheap smaller TVs mounted together (the smaller the bezel the better) and then use a 2x2 (or 4x4, 8x8) HDMI video wall controller (not a 1x4 splitter) so that each TV is given a fraction of the image. They start new from around £100 or ~£30 secondhand.
  Projectors are dropping out of fashion now, so good second hand ones are available for reasonable budgets. If using a projector, you'll also need a screen or clear wall to project onto. If the later, simply painting it with standard brilliant matt white paint will work well.
• Ethernet & WiFi Router
  Obviously, if you want to stream live you'll need access to the internet, and at a reasonable upload rate, which means Fibre. However, even if you only want to record to a local hard-drive and not stream live, you'll still need WiFi in the space in which you're working. This is to enable the cameras and phones/tablets to connect to the controlling computer. This network should be securely locked so that no one at your event can access it for their own purposes as you'll need to guarantee the necessary bandwidth to ensure no connection drop outs occur as your recording. For this reason, it's worth having your own dedicated router even if the venue has WiFi to avoid this.
• Cameras
  High resolution cameras are very expensive and well beyond the scope of this project, so we turn to free or low cost alternatives. Nearly everyone has a smart phone and these all contain very good high resolution cameras. These can be mounted on tripods, table clamps or small magnetic holders so that you can have a camera close to a podium or recording from a distance. You'll need an app to turn these into WiFi enabled webcams which are readily available - see below.
  Alternatively, or in conjunction to, home security cameras have become very affordable with high resolution and as long as they support the rtsp streaming protocol can also be used over a WiFi or ethernet connection. Cameras, such as the TAPO range, start from as little as £20 each and can be fixed or pan and tilt, free standing or wall mounted. These will need a phone or tablet to set up, but you can use up to eight at any one time. These cameras tend to suffer two minor draw backs in that their lenses tend to be slightly fish eyed, thus distorting the edges of the image, and have a noticeable propagation delay. Both can be compensated for by only using the inner two thirds of the captured image and delaying the sound input by the same amount of time. The later issue is also prevalent in very expensive cameras.
• USB Audio Interface
  If you're wanting to include a feed from microphones, live bands etc, you'll need a reasonably good feed from the mixing desk that is being used for the occasion. If the desk has a digital output, great, but if not it's ill advised to connect an analogue output from the desk to the standard mic input of the computer as their respective impedances don't match and the quality will be very poor (and you'll probably get mains hum injected over the top to boot). Invest in a good Analogue to USB interface instead - such as the ART USB Dual Pre. They can usually be picked up second hand online for ~£20-50. Alternatively, if you want to use a single microphone then the Shure X2U is another option. That said, the Iriun audio feed from a smart phone or tablet mounted on a lectern will render remarkable results (even if the key note speaker walks away from the podium!).
• Presentation Software
  At the heart of a multimedia presentation system is the software that is going to handle the various elements you want to display, such as videos, PowerPoint, lyrics, texts, images. There are many options available, with some “professional“ offerings costing many hundreds of pound to license, either as a one off fee with limited support, or on an ongoing subscription model. However, there are also packages built on the Open Source model which can be downloaded and used for free. In addition, these packages are constantly being developed and updated by software engineers around the world. In theory they may not be as feature rich, polished as the licensed versions and may crash occasionally, however, having used both, it is an error to assume a software package costing £300 plus, will be any less prone to “bugs.“ A quick search on the internet will reveal many options.
  For this purposes of this demonstration of what's possible, I'll be using the open source presentation software package called Quelea, which you can run on a Windows, MacOS or Linux system. Alternative options are OpenLP or OpenSong for example.
  
• Recording and Streaming Software
  Again a multiplicity of commercial programs and systems are available at multiple budgets (all high), but OBS Studio is an example of another open source software resource that can run on Windows, MacOS and Linux for both recording the presentation and also streaming live to sites, such as YouTube, FaceBook, Twitch and Twitter.
• Video Feed Handling Software
  Neither Quelea nor OBS can natively handle video streaming from networked cameras, such as TAPO smart cameras (we'll be using the rtsp protocol feed over either WiFi or an ethernet cable connection) and so you'll need to use an interfacing software package to do this. Again a very good open source package available for Windows, MacOS and Linux is VLC Media Player. In order to parse video, Quelea will also need to use the GStreamer library to handle video playback.
• Mobile Phone/Tablet Software
  To use a mobile phone or tablet as a WiFi enabled webcam to feed into your system, you'll need an app that can access your microphone and camera and make it available to the central laptop. There are many paid for solutions, but one that is free is called Iriun. You'll need to install an app on the phone/tablet and also on the computer, which again can be Windows, MacOS or Linux.
• Powerpoint
  If you want to be able to display PowerPoint presentations then, obviously, you'll need to have Powerpoint installed, right? Wrong! Yes you could pay for a license for it, either one off or via Office 365 or alternatively you could install the free open source alternative, OpenOffice that can handle Microsoft pptx presentations. That said, if you're part of a charity or non-profit organisation, such as a church, you might qualify for their full Office 365 Business suite free of charge. See MS Office 365 for Non-Profit.