Desktop hardware recommendation.

[sylvesp]

Could somebody please help me with some Out of the box Desktop recommendation for OBS streaming?
We will be using it at our church for streaming our services. (1 camcorder camera + 2 software/wifi phone cams | works decently well if you ask me :)

I do have experience doing this but until now I have been using my work laptop - that is a 'monster' and was able to handle it with a CPU load of less than 5%
(Intel core i7-10750H @2.60GHz, 64GB memory and NVIDIA Quadro T1000)

We need to get a desktop to be used instead of the laptop and I am not a big Hardware expert. Would prefer to buy something out of the box (or with customized options) that is not the cheapest option but also not the 'most expensive'. (E.g. a Dell(??))

I would really appreciate if anybody could help me with some pointers with what to look at.

Thanks,
P.

 

[qhobbes]

1. What's your budget? Does it need to include a monitor?
2. How long does it need to last?
3. Do you plan on streaming in 4K?

 

[sylvesp]

1. What's your budget? Does it need to include a monitor?
2. How long does it need to last?
3. Do you plan on streaming in 4K?

1) Budget is $800 - 1200, monitor not needed (have it already)
2) The longer the better, but of course I am realistic and know that hardware gets obsolete.
3) No 4k Streaming, only need HD quality. 1280x1080.

 

[AaronD]

1) Budget is $800 - 1200, monitor not needed (have it already)
2) The longer the better, but of course I am realistic and know that hardware gets obsolete.
3) No 4k Streaming, only need HD quality. 1280x1080.

In 2015, I bought a "monster" Dell laptop - Precision M6800 - custom ordered with all the bells and whistles that they offered at the time. It was expensive! Quite a bit more than your budget here. And it's still my daily driver today, and easily keeps up with 1920x1080 live video, two simultaneous instances of OBS, plus a DAW for audio.
(OBS's audio is a deep patchwork of band-aids over a long time, which results in a barely functional mess beyond a single mic and speaker capture. Much better to do all of your audio work *outside* of OBS, and just give it the final soundtrack to pass through unchanged.)

As you can see from that screenshot, I'm running Linux now, instead of the Windows 7 that it came with and then free-upgraded to 10, because Win10 finally decided to refuse to update on it. Not being up to date makes it immediately untrustworthy on the internet. So I flipped back over to Linux exclusively, and built my present rig on that. It took a bit of work to find just the right driver for this old GPU, that would work with the hardware, *and* that OBS v29 could use, but there did just happen to be exactly one official version that did that. Whew! I feel like I slipped through the eye of a needle on that one!

Anyway, I'm on the fence of whether your budget conflicts with being future proof today. It certainly would not have been enough in 2015, when I bought this laptop, but I also see the practical requirements for live media slowing down now. So the workable budget for a future proof rig is also coming down. There will always be "audiophools" and "videophools", who believe marketing more than science, and they'll drive the latest craze for stupidly-high specs, but you don't really *need* that anymore.

I built a desktop rig for my church in the middle of the Covid lockdowns, just before "chipageddon", for about $1200 worth of parts, and all free software including Linux. Still using it today, for the exact same purpose. It's always had a solid, constant, 50% load, between the 4-input capture card, a WiFi camera (phone app), NDI feed from some different software on a Windows machine, and rendering 10 different frames simultaneously (Multiview), in addition to streaming and recording 1920x1080p30 at 6Mbps. Don't have the specs handy for that one, but with that load, I'm perfectly comfortable with adding more cameras if we decide to do that. High constant load is perfectly fine; it's when it varies a lot (or you have lousy cooling like most consumer laptops) that you want to keep some headroom.

As long as you never ask it to do any more, and the security patches don't slip in a performance killer like Apple famously did for their phones, then it'll continue to perform the same way as long as the patches continue to come. It's when you ask it to do *more*, like finally switching to a resolution that *nobody* can see the individual pixels of, that you'll notice it slowing down. My dad's Commodore 64 still runs just fine, with programs from that era. And the Windows 98 machine did too - 300MHz AMD K6 in the kids' playroom - until its hard drive crashed in the early 2010's or so.

 

[qhobbes]

You don't need a lot to stream in 1080p, I use to use an i7 from 2012 and it worked fine with plenty of room to spare. I know you said not a Dell (I can't recommend HP anymore after their scanners require printer ink debacle) but maybe something like this? $1,188.99 before tax with a 2 year warranty ($189). To really future proof it, you would need a graphics card with AV1 encoding. Currently those are Intel Arc, AMD RX 7000 series and NVIDIA GeForce 4050 or better. The cheapest option would be Intel Arc. The name brand ones start at $220 but there's some off brand cheaper ones. You could always add a graphics card later if it becomes necessary.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

1. beware WiFi cameras, especially if you don't have QoS, or isolated channel, etc
2. For a simple single NDI PoE PTZ camera feed, a i7-10700K (what I'm using now) with a GTX 1660 Super is overkill for 1080p streaming. And I'm locally Recording at a much higher quality/bitrate than I'm streaming [Why? content delivery networks like Facebook, YouTube, etc, HIGHLY compress the video. Pointing family a video of baptism, wedding, etc or using video snippets for marketing is not ideal. Our local recording on the other hand looks so much better. This means 2X encoding. And again, my current system is overkill, and capable of (simple) 4K video editing

Personally, I'd spend a little extra (as we did) and get a business class system for better build quality, and better support options (ex next business day onsite service). In our case, COVID supply-chain limited my options, so I needed up with an Optiplex Tower. I spent a little more, 2 years ago. But for 1080p, $1,200 should be plenty
One thing I found, was I setup PowerPoint in a Windowed Slideshow (enables quick, last minute edits). That meant a app window 1080 pixels tall, plus title bar and status bar on bottom. So we needed a monitor that was more than 1080p so I could Window capture and not re-scale (with that resulting (slight) image quality degradation).

I found that with PTZ camera, and including the service bulletin, along with live video, and monitoring stream (digital usher) meant we really needed a 2nd monitor, and that does work well.
Also, beware that in-house audio needs a different setup than livestream (typically listened to after heavy overall compression by CDN, and then often on tiny mobile speakers). One can spend a lot, need a full-time dedicated sound engineer, separate mixers, etc, or depending on gear available use Alternate (Aux) mixer outputs (and slightly adjusting settings) for livestream vs in-house. I mention this depending on plans for audio processing for livestream, and if on OBS computer (could be within OBS, or preferably a separate DAW as Aaron mentioned), beware corresponding CPU impact.

 

[AaronD]

1. beware WiFi cameras, especially if you don't have QoS, or isolated channel, etc

Yes! I almost mentioned in my original post, that that's a "throwaway" camera for us, just for extra interest. Not at all necessary. The main cameras have dedicated (wired) SDI runs into the capture card.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

To really future proof it, you would need a graphics card with AV1 encoding. Currently those are Intel Arc, AMD RX 7000 series and NVIDIA GeForce 4050 or better. The cheapest option would be Intel Arc.

One consideration is your streaming platform of choice. Even though we had both FB and YT, I advocated (and won out) to only stream to a single platform during lockdown to enhance sense of community (ie comments). With FB Scheduled Video, you get a URL that anyone can watch and made more sense with our community (even though I'm not a FB user at all).
FB tends to be slower to adapt higher-end streaming options, so for Facebook, you probably are going to be streaming in 1080p H.264 for a while. But you could be using AV1 now for YouTube. so it depends. In a desktop, I'd be inclined to spend more now on RAM, archival disk space, etc, and get GPU that enables encode/decode offload now that you need, and upgrade to AV1 card later. but it depends.
My suspicion is that we are dealing with early AV1 releases, so normal IT maturity curve to come, and standard caveats of being an early adaptor (hence my caution).

You could always add a graphics card later if it becomes necessary.

absolutely... add, or upgrade. Some APU (CPU with GPU built-in) would suffice for 1080p30 today. Then adding discrete GPU later, when needed, is a perfectly viable path

The joy of a House of Worship is the setting up a system what works with the level of technical expertise (often volunteers) available now, and reasonably expected in the future (ie when you leave).

As noted above, if you stick to 1080p streaming (which is probably fine), then a system should easily last 5+ years. longer if you provide it clean power (I use quality auto-voltage regulating battery backup UPS), and avoid most hardware issues that come from 'dirty' power.

I spent more than your budget, but also have a dedicated network PoE switch(new), behind a firewall (donated), etc. I did that for stability reasons, such that guest network, parish office computer use, etc couldn't compromise streaming computer.

 

[sylvesp]

Thanks for the feedback!
Let me add a few more details:
- This would be exclusively OBS recording/streaming PC (powerpoint etc, will run from another laptop)
- Our church is not a huge one. We are not trying to cater to any audio/videophiles. Basic streaming so that people can participate remotely. Some examples are at www.facebook.com/ebcsaybrook.
- I want to record in full HD for editing and sending it to the local TV station to be aired the next week.
- Sound comes from the mixer (no extra sound processing in OBS)
- We have a video capture card input (from a camcorder) and 2 WiFi cameras/App (iVCam seems to work for us decently well)
- As I've said, my current (work) laptop can handle it with an OBS Cpu load of less than 5% - But my laptop is a Monster (for 3D/CAD programming) and need something that stays at the church for the case that I am not present.
- Dell would work.

The question is: Would something like THIS suffice? or should I look into something more powerful? Any better ideas?

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Ugh... I've had really bad experiences with Inspiron (and Vostro). I avoid consumer models (Dell, HP, et) as I would the plague
That said, that CPU is upper-end and plenty (2 generations newer than what I'm using, which is already overkill), and the GPU would be fine (I think.. maybe?). but if you prefer Dell, I'd go Optiplex 7010 SFF or similar (Precision being complete overkill) as they will typically last many years longer (much higher value). The online price is much higher by default, but a SMB sales rep can bring it back more inline to be competitive from a value perspective with Inspiron. Or check with your employer's link for employees to purchase Dell systems (or check out TechSoup.com)
And Dell especially way over charges (a la Apple) for RAM and SSDs. so 16GB of RAM should be fine to start, add your own later if/when needed. Similar for SSD .. For me, a 256GB SSD is plenty for OS, and initial recordings. Then I added my own larger SSD and HDD for extra space (got a lot more bag for our buck).

As for audio - understand about audiophiles, BUT I'm talking much more basic. Our ears can process filter in-person in a way that doesn't work on streamed audio from awful speakers. If your broadcast audio sounds poor, folks won't watch (or will struggle to understand the words spoken). A common rule of thumb is audio is more important that video quality... if it sounds bad, people will stop watching
Ballast Media on YouTube had some good videos on the topic of audio in a HoW (house of worship) livestream a couple of years ago. There are some other HoW focused YouTube channels regarding livestream audio, but depends on your worship/liturgical style, and what works for your congregation.
Aaron may cringe at the simplicity of this, but my recollection is that for livestream audio (vs in-house), you tend to want higher audio levels, and if you can apply a little compression (to avoid distortion) even better. You can get WAY more complicated to sound really good... but simply recognizing that a slightly adjusted audio from in-house will go a long way. How one accomplishes that depends on your setup. Our old analog mixer has an Aux/Monitor output, and we used that with less than an hour or so of testing/tweaking on the hardware audio mixer primarily, by someone with much better ears than mine (use a FB test stream which prevents public viewing).

 

[AaronD]

The question is: Would something like THIS suffice? or should I look into something more powerful? Any better ideas?

If you're going to use Windows, I'd use the Pro version because, historically at least, the Home version has been practically brain-dead for much serious use. Be careful, though, that your IT guy doesn't castrate it, because the Pro version also allows him to do that. Lots of horror stories from media people about "idiot and unmoving IT guys". Media IT is NOT office IT! Some of those concepts still apply, but others hurt massively!

A couple of things that I've actually seen myself:

• Not able to do maintenance on a media-friendly schedule, so it ends up wrecking the show because that's when it ends up happening.
• Suddenly unable to log in on Sunday morning, because someone else used their own personal credentials like they're supposed to everywhere else, then left it locked like they're supposed to everywhere else when they walk away for a short time, then forgot about it and left it locked when they went home. It might work to yank the power cord or hold the power button for 4 seconds (same effect), but what else does that wreck?

And one that I only heard of, but I've seen enough from my college dorm to believe fully:

• A semi-major event ended up live streaming through a crew member's cell phone hotspot instead of the venue's perfectly good landline, because the venue's IT drew a hard line on seeing absolutely every individual device on the same network so that they could vet, monitor, and block each thing individually. For a show that already has a fully-functional self-contained rig that only needs internet and nothing else: ABSOLUTELY NOT, ARE WE GOING TO WRECK OUR PERFECTLY GOOD RIG AND REBUILD IT TO YOUR IDIOT SPECS!!!
  NOR ARE WE GOING TO LET YOU KILL US MID-SHOW FOR A FALSE POSITIVE!!!

(I wonder if that IT crew has a story about "idiot media people who don't understand basic security," or something like that?)

Anyway, I've had a much easier time when I intentionally kept the media rig away from the office IT guys entirely, and managed it directly and entirely myself. It doesn't matter that it has an x64 instruction set and uses IP packets; it's a MEDIA machine! NOT OFFICE! No different from a digital sound board as far as they're concerned. (some of which have their user interface based on Windows CE, by the way, and that type of thing tends to be kept in service for a long time!)

If the IT guys want to give me a tunnel to the internet and nowhere else, that's perfectly fine with me, and in fact I expect that anyway. The IT guy at my church is Windows-only, and he did lock down a different Windows machine that I eventually gave up using for media. Seeing that, makes me almost ecstatic to have based the streaming rig on Linux, *because he won't touch it*! Yay!

---

Anyway:

I'd also go with one of the NVIDIA graphics cards. Both of the offerings there will encode video, so I think either one is probably okay.

For storage, it's nice to have an SSD for the operating system and programs, plus something big to record on and that's all it does. You might compare the cost of having it pre-installed vs. buying one separately and plugging it in (internally) yourself. The rig that I built for church has a 1TB mechanical recording drive, and I'm about to offload a couple of years' worth onto some USB hard drives to free it back up again. It has less than a month left at our rate, if I were to just leave it alone.

---

Aaron may at the simplicity of this, but my recollection is that for livestream audio (vs in-house), you tend to want higher audio levels, and if you can apply a little compression (to avoid distortion) even better. You can get WAY more complicated to sound really good... but simply recognizing that a slightly adjusted audio from in-house will go a long way. How one accomplishes that depends on your setup. Our old analog mixer has an Aux/Monitor output, and we used that with less than an hour or so of testing/tweaking on the hardware audio mixer primarily, by someone with much better ears than mine (use a FB test stream which prevents public viewing).

Yes! Our broadcast audio (which goes more places than just the stream) is heavily compressed, and pushed right up to full-scale, using 5 dedicated mix busses and 3 matrices in our X32 digital board (out of 16 and 6, respectively), so we can have:

• Some shared processing (using the built-in FX wisely)
• A complete mix minus the explicit reverb mics, for the hearing assistance and lobby
• A different mix in general, that still follows the FoH adjustments (post-fade auxiliary)
  • By the time we go live, the only remaining adjustments are the same for both, and anything that reduces the live workload is welcome! Post-fade does that.
  • Before we go live, my focus is on setting the post-fade levels, or "offset from the house mix", so that the stream gets filled in on things that come off the stage acoustically, and may not necessarily be very strong in the house mix. I may even have some dedicated mics, just for the stream, that are not in the house at all.
    • The room sound does NOT come from the speakers! It comes from the speakers, plus the acoustic spill from stage, plus the audience/congregation, plus...... And all of that needs to be *explicitly* present in the stream.
    • Likewise, other things that the room *doesn't* respond to very well, might be blasted in the house mix (speakers) to sound "right" in the room, and I need to turn those down in the stream.

I've attached the scene that gets pushed into it when it first turns on. Our main sound guy has his own that he loads, which is fine, but it's still based on this, and the broadcast part is practically unchanged.
To read it, take the .txt extension off the end, leaving the .scn (forum rules), and load it into the free official remote control app that also works just fine by itself, even if you don't have an X32 at all:

Behringer | Not Found

www.behringer.com

Expand Software on the right side of that page, and pick the version of X32 Edit for your system.

 

[sylvesp]

Oh no! we are getting way off topic - I do appreciate all the feedback though! Good for me to read through it and learn.
We are just a 'little fish', not a big media production enterprise :) I am doing all this by myself, and learned everything along the way using 'old' camcorders, cell phones, mixers and free software :)

Let me please post the question again:
1) I am a software engineer, so that I mostly know what I am doing, including hardware setups - except that I am not up to date with what is nowadays on the market.
2) We are a small church, not video production company. Just need a 'decent' live stream for the members who cannot attend in person.
(some examples at: www.facebook.com/ebcsaybrook)
3) I am open to all the suggestions and things I can learn from

The Question:
Cold somebody please recommend an "out of the box" desktop that could decently handle our live stream with the following requirements:
Input:

• 1 input from a Video Capture card (connected to a little camcorder - Cannon Vixia hfr 80)
• 2 Wifi cameras connected through iVcam (https://www.e2esoft.com/ivcam/) connected to 2 Galaxy Cell phones! :D (not 2 bad for what we need it)
• Sound coming from the Group1 output of a Yamaha MG206c mixer

Output (Full HD, 24fps)

• Facebook Stream
• Recording

Budged:

• I don't want to go for the cheapest solution, but also have to consider the fact that we have a small church.
• Monitor not needed (we already have it)
• My initial research is telling me that $800-$1200 could get me something that will work with the above requirements - but again, this is the part that I am asking advice about. If this not enough, I'd like to know it :)
• Any Dell/Lenovo/Some other??? configuration somebody could recommend for me?

Thanks for your help again. Greatly appreciated.
P.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

What capture card, specifically? a USB 3.0 or better HDMI capture adapter?
And do you plan to send PowerPoint (or similar) to OBS Studio PC for including in livestream? projecting slide show via projector or on large screen TV then capturing with camera won't look good.

Only sort of off-topic... I learned the livestream/OBS environment because I had to 3+ years ago. and it was just me for a while. So I get it. We are pointing out some cautions about next steps. And, "a 'decent' live stream for the members who cannot attend in person" absolutely REQUIRES paying attention to the audio. There is a decent chance your efforts will be in vain, if you ignore the audio. seriously.

And that mixer has similar AUX channel options as our Presonus AR12 USB, so with little effort you can adjust the livestream audio level to be better than using same levels as used for in-Sanctuary. I heard elsewhere, in the K.I.S.S approach with equipment like you and I have, is to adjust the mixer for the livestream, then turn down the output volume for Main/in-house output. I'm suspecting the mixer's built-in compression is applied up-front, and can't be selectively applied to only livestream audio. If that's the case, then running audio compression on the OBS PC is an option. OBS has a built-in one, but its not up to Aaron's expectations... not sure whether good enough or if better free option? With a little attention to levels, you might be able to be 'good enough' without audio compression.

Now, as to your specific PC specs request.
qhobbes is a master, and got an older PC to work. I tried a circa 2015 i7 gaming laptop with nVidia GPU, with a fresh OS install on a SSD, etc and it couldn't handle playing 4K pre-recorded video (during lockdown) and intermix with live video. Now, I bet I could get that system to work now... but it was too close to resource edge with what we were tryign to accomplish. And our focus was on content, not becoming experts in OBS Studio optimization while under time constraints. I used my work engineering workstation laptop (same model Aaron mentioned) until our new PC arrived. We spent more overall on HoW livestreaming, but that included the NDI PTZ camera, some construction to put OBS Studio PC in miniscule closet where mixer is (and can be locked), running 50ft active USB (for keyboard & mouse) and 50ft fiber optic Display Port cable to run DP MST (dual monitor) up to pipe organ/choir loft with a wall-mounted dual monitor stand that can drop down out of sight when not in use. etc. (oh yea, and a 200ft Ethernet cable to go from office to sound closet/OBS PC)

You have NOT mentioned what else might be running on the OBS Studio PC? and you haven't mentioned things like overlays, etc. I mention as some of those can be CPU demanding. I do recommend 'watermarking' your video. I took our logo and created small Image Source in the bottom right corner of the video. This is super low resource impact. And the other stuff we have running is also minimal. on a i7-10700K, our CPU level is under 20% with single incoming 1080p60 NDI video source.

So, would that Inspiron work? absolutely. I'm just recommending NOT getting a cheap consumer model, if longevity and reliabilty is of value/concern. Personally, I stick to Tier 1 OEMs (for me, has been HP and Dell) and I'd stick with whatever you have access to the better discount from (employer, techsoup, whatever). And I, even for family, get business class computers. For 1080p24, most any mid-tier (i5) or Ryzen equivalent and up desktop CPU would suffice. Just don't get lowest end CPUs. And a laptop would work, but you have to be careful about low power (like U model) CPUs and thermal throttling (varies my model and specific config).. which is why if you can go desktop route, that is usually best. Any specific make/model I would recommend would be based on the price/value end-result I could get, and that may not apply to you.

My $0.02
- Your budget is fine
- an i7-13700 will be complete overkill (but have a longer usable life). Personally, I'd avoid any Intel 12th gen and earlier CPUs (even though they'd meet your requirements just fine for now, as my 10th gen i7 is for us)
- 16GB RAM is fine for now. Though an upgrade to more at some point is likely (especially if you want to video edit on same PC, or upgrade to 4K video at some point well down the road)
- I also prefer Windows Pro vs Home, for a number of reasons. but depends on non OBS Studio usage scenarios as to whether the cost of the Pro licenses is worth it for you
- I saved money by getting our Optiplex 7080 MT with a 1TB HDD. I then installed a 256SSD and moved OS onto that, using the 1TB HDD as archive (and have since added another 4TB archive HDD). 1. I know how, and have the tools, to do that with modern UEFI and other disk partition fun. Doing so (getting only HDD from OEM, then adding SSD) saved a over US$100 but has support implications. ymmv
- Someone else would have to comment if getting an Intel or AMD Ryzen APU (CPU/GPU combination) would likely handle 1080p24 just fine with H.264 encode offload. I suspect the answer is yes. If yes, then you could skip discrete GPU for now, and upgrade to an AV1 encode offload capable GPU in a few years (work out bleeding edge kinks, and wait for FB to accept AV1 stream input)
- For reference and being forward thinking, DaVinci Resolve recommends 8GB VRAM for real-time 4K video editing, so that excludes lower-end GPUs
- no as to a specific model - like I said, let us know which vendor you can get best discount with, and we can go from there.
- and decide the level of hardware warranty and support you want/need? I went with 3yr next business day Premium (US based) support. If something broke Sun AM before service, even the fastest same day service wouldn't likely be in time, so I didn't see point in paying premium for that. Would 1 yr H/W warranty and an AVR UPS probably be plenty? yes, but extra years wasn't that much extra.

We are also not a large parish, constrained budget, etc... I did a specific fundraising project for livestream tech and related. And the livestream is now a major marketing tool as folks tend to not church shop in-person initially, but start by watching a livestream.

My suggestion for next steps
- answer (for yourself) warranty/support questions above
- If you are ok with adding discreet GPU later,

• research on your own or see if someone can confirm the Intel UHD 770 could handle the video encoding offload.
• Beware you may also want GPU to handle incoming video decode, though with something like the i7-13700 probably not an issue.
• better value is likely to make due without AV1 capable GPU for now, and upgrade later.
• On the other hand, If for warranty/support purposes, you prefer to get GPU now, know that most discrete GPUs (even 1 or 2 generations old, or my 3 generation old GTX 1660 Super) will be overkill for 1080p24.
• Future proofing would dictate a AV1 encode capable GPU now...and prices have come down from craziness of last year. but bleeding edge, as I said.
• It gets trickier if you want a 4K and AV1 encode capable GPU today, and target the lower end of your budget

- let us know your preferred vendor.. .then we can get more specific regarding a particular model/config

 

[sylvesp]

What capture card, specifically? a USB 3.0 or better HDMI capture adapter?

Foor Now it is a silly **REALLY** cheap capture card, but this would be next on the list to upgrade.

And do you plan to send PowerPoint (or similar) to OBS Studio PC for including in livestream? projecting slide show via projector or on large screen TV then capturing with camera won't look good.

The Power Point and projection is runing on a dedicated (OLD) laptop that is doing nothing else than PowerPoint and YouTube videos
I mix it into OBS by having a Remote Desktop/TightVNC window connected from the OBS PC to that laptop and capturing the content of this window.
Actually this is a pretty neat setup with outstanding outcome. (you can see it on any of our recordings on www.facebook.com/ebcsaybrook

You have NOT mentioned what else might be running on the OBS Studio PC? and you haven't mentioned things like overlays, etc. I mention as some of those can be CPU demanding. I do recommend 'watermarking' your video. I took our logo and created small Image Source in the bottom right corner of the video. This is super low resource impact. And the other stuff we have running is also minimal. on a i7-10700K, our CPU level is under 20% with single incoming 1080p60 NDI video source.

Other than OBS and the Overlaying described above nothing else would be running on this pc.
I did the logo already and added it to the bottom right corner.

s know your preferred vendor.. .then we can get more specific regarding a particular model/config

We have no preferred vendor and no discounts with any of them either :(

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Couple of observations
- If I gather that you are presenting content (I'm presuming music) during service, and livestreaming that... BEWARE copyright content (most/everything on YouTube) and livestreaming (regardless if for church/non-profit). If you are already doing livestreaming stuff that is sourced from YouTube and haven't had an issue, either you have done the right things in terms of content and licensing, or you simply got lucky the automated bots haven't shutdown your channel (do NOT count on that continuing to happen).
[I just went and skimmed your livestreamed video from Aug 13th... was that you with the external HDD? anyway, if the YouTube content you mention is ONLY video imagery, and static at that, then I see how you wouldn't have a problem. anyway, just a caution as I've seen it really mess up other HoW who made mistaken assumptions]

- Regarding PowerPoint (or similar source content)

Glad it is working for you, but you will most likely get much higher quality if you stream the video output content from the old laptop to the OBS computer (vs remote desktop and window capture) but I'm only assuming/guessing. And looking at your Aug 13 video, I see it does look ok.​

And honestly, as you have network connectivity already between stations, I'd be inclined to simplify matters (at some point) and run PowerPoint on OBS PC. Then route PowerPoint's video output to the display/projector (numerous different ways to accomplish this.. which approach I'd recommend would depend on distance involved, cabling options, display device(s), and a few other considerations)​

Unless Pastor or other presenter control their own PPT slide show? from your Aug 13th video, I'm suspecting its someone off camera controlling PPT, right? Is that you or someone on that old laptop directly?​

For us, a single person controlling OBS and PPT makes more sense due to the coordination between scenes, camera shot, PPT content. etc. But our PPT slideshow is ONLY online, with no display in Sanctuary, so somewhat different use case. I does take some time/training, and someone who can handle 'multiple balls in the air at same time', but the end result is cleaner... any, I'll say no more on this unless requested​

​

For PC - wow, bummer on no employee or association discounts available... then my cheapness would point me to some deal websites (my personal favorites are slickdeals.net primarily, also keeping an eye on techbargains.com and dealnews.com. There are bound to be others. I hate the proprietary motherboards, power supplies, etc that Dell uses on some of its systems, especially the Alienware and XPS Desktop.... but if you rarely change hardware, maybe you can overlook that. I mention those 2 models due to frequent (significant) discounting. The XPS Desktop qhobbes recommended is what my son uses for gaming. solid machine and better built than Inspiron

I'd be inclined to go back to the warranty/support question. Do you want local vendor (not Best Buy geek squad... though if that is the best you have available....) support? There is value (sometimes) in doing business locally (you have decent size towns within 30-40 miles). but it depends​

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

From a quick check the Intel UHD 770 does have an encode/decode offload option.
see https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/alder-lake-quicksync-fast-enough-for-1440p-60fps.158053/

 

[qhobbes]

If you don't want the extended warranty, go with this. You can save the recordings to the HDD and keep Windows and programs on the SSD. If you want Windows Pro, it's $99 upgrade in the Windows Store.

 

[AaronD]

Couple of observations
- If I gather that you are presenting content (I'm presuming music) during service, and livestreaming that... BEWARE copyright content (most/everything on YouTube) and livestreaming (regardless if for church/non-profit). If you are already doing livestreaming stuff that is sourced from YouTube and haven't had an issue, either you have done the right things in terms of content and licensing, or you simply got lucky the automated bots haven't shutdown your channel (do NOT count on that continuing to happen).

I absolutely second that! Being allowed/licensed to do something in the building, means *absolutely nothing* for broadcast!

U.S. Federal Law allows a "Religious Service" (which is itself a legal term in this context, that practically describes a 1950's country chapel, and not the majority of what exists today) to perform music without permission. No distinction between live or recorded; it's all "performance". And no distinction between religious or secular or anything else. (so if someone wanted to blast an original AC/DC song during your Praise and Worship time, *you* might (probably should) have a problem with that, but the Feds don't) Outside the service, like prelude and postlude (yes, that's annoying, but also how the law is commonly interpreted), you need a Public Performance License to play anything at all, live or recorded.

Also to show lyrics, you need a different license, even within the service. CCLI now provides most of those Print Licenses, as they're called, and the reason the law doesn't include that is because it didn't have to. The license to show lyrics was already baked into the cost of physical hymnals.

NONE of that covers streaming! On that front, you're legally the same as a commercial TV station. EVERYTHING must be licensed there, or given express written permission that you can prove. CCLI and others also offer a license to cover that, but it's NOT the same as what almost everyone has to show lyrics in the building.

I put our license numbers in the description of every stream, along with any incidental permission that we might have for a kids' backing track or something like that. Also note that every license includes a list of *allowed* content that it covers. The popular lists are amazingly big, but they still don't cover *everything*. If you do something that's not on that list, the license means nothing, and you need special permission for that one.

This stuff is annoying, and it does hurt to have to mute the kids because the Kids' Director doesn't understand this yet (we're getting a lot better now), but it does keep you on the air at all.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

I can't recommend HP anymore after their scanners require printer ink debacle

I completely understand and don't disagree.
On the other hand, I've had cyber security briefings on China and that makes Lenovo (and similar vendors) suspect from my perspective. And if it wasn't for my role, and that I worked for one of Dell's Global named accounts (ie large enterprise), I'd have never gotten Dell to fix their own major screw up with some personal orders. I literally escalated to Dell VP level.
I personally prefer the engineering of the recent HP Fury/Studio system to Dell's mobile Precision models. but it depends.
All of the Tier 1 PC vendors have had major ethical lapses, especially on consumer models. Part of why I stick to business class PCs for most part
so, least worst option ;^)

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

(so if someone wanted to blast an original AC/DC song during your Praise and Worship time, *you* might (probably should) have a problem with that, but the Feds don't)

For waking congregation up after time change, I'm inclined towards Trans Siberian Orchestra vs AC/DC's Hells Bells...
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap is definitely farther than I'd go at church (not livestreaming any of those, obviously, for licensing reasons).

But its our Music Director's call (and he is our Organist) ... instead he simply opens it up a little bit on the pipe organ ;^) organ pipes and speaker system more than capable of shaking entire Sanctuary (& adjoining office area, which is decent sized building). During Pentecost we have to lower the Pipe Organ mic level to avoid distortion when he creates the sound of wind on the organ.. fun stuff... anyway, I digress and time to go make dinner