New Desktop Recommendations Please

[nlstueber]

About a year ago, I was thrown into running the livestream for my church. I am not the most tech savvy person, but have managed to make some upgrades to our stream over the past year. With those updates though, the old MacBook we are using is struggling. We are looking to purchase a new Windows Desktop to replace it.

Current Setup:
-1 Sony camera connected to a (borrowed) Atem Mini. We are looking at adding a 2nd camera in the future and will be purchasing out own Atem
-USB from our Behringer X32 Soundboard straight into the computer
-Propresenter lower thirds are sent from our presenting computer via NDI (hardwired) to the computer
-we are streaming through OBS only to Facebook at 1080p 30 fps
-we are also recording the sermon portion of our service to be edited and uploaded to Youtube separately.

As I said, I'm not extremely tech savvy and don't know much of the lingo, so trying to figure out a computer that would do what we need hasn't been easy. I'd love it if anyone could give recommendations for computers that would handle what we need. Links to exact models would be much appreciate.

I'm sure I've left out other important information, so please let me know if I did and I'll add it.

 

[VoFoRoe]

i'm using an Acer laptop with Windows 11 with 2 PTZ cameras via IP and Behringer Flow8 for audio

one thing I learned the hard way: a "standard" laptop doesn't support more than 2 USB cameras

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

There are a number of us here doing House of Worship livestreaming (many being started due to pandemic lockdown, and learned as we went)

Personally, I prefer NDI Power-over-Ethernet cameras into PC, but I have expertise to do that... but I love the flexibility of 100m cable for power and video, PTZ controls, etc.

The benefit of (I'm presuming you have HDMI cameras) using a switcher is that the computer ONLY has to deal with the video decoding of a single stream (vs feeding all video feeds into OBS PC, and that PC having to simultaneously process all of them). Having all video streams in OBS PC enables certain options, at the cost of needing more 'horsepower' to perform.

I'm not a MacOS person, BUT a big issue you need to plan is to make sure Pro Presenter behaves the same on Windows as Mac, and that your ProPresenter sources are compatible

By using Facebook's Scheduled Video event, non-Facebook users can watch with consistent (same URL) every service (often negating need to upload video elsewhere, like YouTube). This works nice for elderly, etc who want to watch Facebook live stream on TV using Roku or similar, without logging into FB. Simply save the FB URL, and non FB users can watch every FB livestream from that account with no issue.... just FYI

I avoid consumer grade computers as their life expectancy is so much less a good business class computer. As such, I find business class computers to be a better value... in general (ymmv)
With that said, at the start of the pandemic, we had to buy a PC, and I wanted to make sure it had at least 5 years of life. So we ended up with a business class PC, next-business day onsite support, with an Intel Core i7-10700K, 16 MB Cache, 8C/16T; 16GB RAM; and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Super (6GB) running Win 10 Pro 64 English, French, Spanish, with an SSD for the Operating System, and a HDD for archiving Recordings
For a video stream coming in of 1080p60, livestreaming at 1080p30 and a separate Recording at about 3X bitrate of the livestream, PowerPoint for Service Bulletin, Chrome browser session for acting as Digital usher at FB /Live/Producer, plus PTZ controls, the computer is barely working (CPU or GPU) This computer could easily handle multiple camera feeds directly (no switcher) and can handle 4K streaming (should that become an option). or said another way... the 17-10700K (not overclocked) is overkill for single video feed 1080p30 HoW livestreaming.
Today, instead of 10th gen Intel Core i7, 14th gen is out... so, with these more recent CPUs, right GPU for encoding offload, you don't need an upper-system to get by. One thing to consider, is if you plan to use video snippets for marketing or other purposes. 1. do you have a video editor, and 2 do you want this streaming PC to be your video editing workstation. if so, that make impact your requirements. For something you buy today, what life expectancy is there (typical HoW would like PC to run for well over 5 years... if not 10). Will you be ok having to upgrade if/when 4K video becomes the norm?

one thing I learned the hard way: a "standard" laptop doesn't support more than 2 USB cameras

Uh... not true.... BUT.. (like is so often the case) it depends (gets technical). It is easy to support more than 2 USB Cameras... with the right cameras and right USB Chipset, etc. USB Rot hub overload is easy to do, and the trick is to avoid that. IF by 'standard' laptop, you mean a battery-optimized, low-performance U series CPU equipped consumer laptop... yea, those would be easy to overwhelm (or drive into thermal throttling). I guess it depends on what you mean by 'standard' laptop. A middle-of-the-road business class laptop, with a mid-tier or better CPU (and decent thermal design) can easily handle more than 2 USB cameras (the right cameras, some have terrible drivers, and the driver is the issue)

 

[VoFoRoe]

exactly what I meant ;)
however, the USB bus layout is usually not desrcibed in the technical specs of a computer, so you have to try it out (in my case with an ACer laptop it just wouldn't do).

 

[nlstueber]

One thing to consider, is if you plan to use video snippets for marketing or other purposes. 1. do you have a video editor, and 2 do you want this streaming PC to be your video editing workstation. if so, that make impact your requirements. For something you buy today, what life expectancy is there (typical HoW would like PC to run for well over 5 years... if not 10). Will you be ok having to upgrade if/when 4K video becomes the norm?

One of the benefits of getting a new Live computer is keeping the MacBook solely for editing/graphic design instead of it being dual purpose as it is now, so no need for any of that on the new desktop.

I did forget to mention, I've also been wanting to show the stream in our foyer during service as well. My original thought was to just run HDMI (its only about 30') from the computer to the foyer tv and send the NDI Monitor to it, but when I tried it the past, it was too much for the computer to handle.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

One of the benefits of getting a new Live computer is keeping the MacBook solely for editing/graphic design instead of it being dual purpose as it is now, so no need for any of that on the new desktop.

In that case, as I said, an i7-10700K [now 4 generations old) with a GTX 1660 Super would be more than capable/overkill. other considerations come into play
a Big consideration is that currently, Facebook accepts H.264 stream input (H.265 is a licensing mess, so never broadly adopted for free livestream services), with YouTube and others now accepting the latest AV1 codec which is MUCH more bandwidth efficient (as cost of significantly higher computational requirements to compress up front). Some of the most recent GPUs are capable of real-time AV1 encoding (first gen, bleeding edge). so you have to decide/balance
- get AV1 capable card now, even though you can't really use it. As this is for streaming, not gaming, I'd avoid AMD for now. Intel ARC might be a good value play, but nVidia card are the tried 'n true for H.264 encoding (using NVENC) for now.
- Presuming desktop (vs laptop), can upgrade PCIe add-in GPU at later date (but potential warranty/support implications IF you get a warranty that long, and if you care).

Better yet, get a desktop with a large enough Power Supply (PSU) to handle discrete GPU, but get CPU now with built-in GPU (ie, APU) which can handle H.264 encoding just fine. Then add a discrete PCIe GPU when time for 4K or AV1.​

As much as I prefer the power efficiency and security of an AMD CPU, their system s/w sucks, so for this I'd go Intel (and QSV? or whatever latest is). Which current Intel CPU would I recommend for this? sorry, actually not my area of expertise, so I'll let others chime in with detail on this (or something for you to research on your own ;^)​

Basically, if you have the budget, I'd get 14th gen Intel for longevity (lifecycle value). If a typical budget constrained HoW, I'd go for a sale on an Intel 13th gen based system
Which vendor? I'd start with who does IT support for these systems? if church has an IT support person/contract, I'd go whatever your site's current primary vendor is to simplify matters (vs having potentially unique vendor firmware/driver issue)

I did forget to mention, I've also been wanting to show the stream in our foyer during service as well. My original thought was to just run HDMI (its only about 30') from the computer to the foyer tv and send the NDI Monitor to it, but when I tried it the past, it was too much for the computer to handle.

My question for you? is there glass in the Foyer that can see into Sanctuary? or can the Foyer hear audio from Sanctuary?
I ask as the easiest may be to have Foyer watch livestream (via Facebook).. But if the Foyer can hear and/or see Sanctuary, then the lag probably isn't viable.. Recent OBS Studio versions have a Projector mode... the idea being to try and avoid too much extra rendering (and overloading PC)

I'm wondering what controls the Foyer monitor display now? is there a different PC already connected to it? if yes, what about sending NDI out from OBS to NDI software receiver (free) on PC connected to monitor? This presumes both new PC powerful enough to create NDI stream, and a well-managed, monitored, network that can handle such traffic. Otherwise, Projector mode to HDMI out with 30ft HDMI cable, should work fine. We recently had need for a 100ft HDMI cable, so we got a fiber optic directional cable from Monoprice (best quality/value/warranty combination I could find) and it worked great for a special event.

The only issue that immediately comes to mind if you went the APU (CPU) route, is whether it could handle it, and if PC has enough display output ports (for example, I use dual monitor now, though as I use a daisy-chained DisplayPort MST I only need one DP port on GPU).. but if you had 2 HDMI monitors for OBS Studio (if doing software PTZ camera controls alongside OBS Studio and Presenter s/w, I find 2nd monitor (or 1 really large monitor) basically required), and then a 3rd for the foyer...?? check your system specs...