[Melanie Foote]

I completely agree that this is extremely complex and that a professional would be ideal. I should have given you a little background – I am a public defender who trains other public defenders. With low budgets and high workloads, we are moving to a web-based format for much of our training. We need to keep our people educated so they can defend their clients at a high level, but also need to reduce cost.

To do this we are:
1. producing web-based learning in tutorial style via the web (this is why I”m building a media room for recording web-based learning).
2. recording and providing high-quality copies of our live training so people who attend can also benefit from the education (this is why I want to bring in several feeds so online viewers can actually hear questions from the audience, read the PPT when they are word-heavy, and see the speaker to improve interest/attention of the online viewer).
3. Once a year we have a live conference of important topics – we have multiple sessions at the same time, so I want to be able to produce high quality videos (in a format similar to #2) so people can reference back to other topics if they missed a session and need it for a client.

I would love to hire a professional, but simply can’t afford to do it. The best thing we have right now is me: a lawyer who got a BA in media a million and a half years ago, and still remembers how to use editing software.

Your help and advice is appreciated. Thank you for your patience.

[Melanie Foote]

This is very helpful. I have been looking through the site and came up with this:

Black Magic Cameras (x2 or 3):
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicmicrostudiocamera4k

Black Magic switcher:
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/atemtelevisionstudio

Black Magic storage device:
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicmultidock

What am I missing in that build? I was going to use a conventional monitor to view what I am doing through my computer. I think that I may be missing a piece.

Your help is amazing.

thank you.

[Melanie Foote]

I agree that I need to be able to better describe what I need, but I’m struggling at a starting place. We will purchase new cameras because the ones we have are old and all of our videos are looking very poor. The cameras that look decent don’t have an audio-in, so they’re hard for shoots outside our building. We will also purchase a storage device and a mixer. We have tripods. We have mics.

What I can tell you is the end result of where we want to be. We want to set up a small studio where one person will be on the camera and one person will be behind the camera/computer. The person behind the camera will do real-time edits. The end product will be used for online tutorials/videos. We do not live-stream often because our internet is terrible. We will also hopefully be able to take this setup with us for conferences. As for conference, our downfall has always been audio because our camera’s do not have audio-in.

I apologize for being vague. I am not in tech by trade, as you can tell. All input/advice is appreciated.