Start with the audience, not the gear
Before you buy anything, write down who will watch, on what devices, from where, and how many people you expect. A town hall for two hundred employees and a public concert for a very large audience need very different plans.
The four decisions
Source: the cameras and microphones that capture the event. Even a single good camera with clean audio beats several cameras with poor sound, because viewers forgive a plain picture sooner than bad audio.
Encoder: the hardware or software that turns your video into a stream. Software encoders on a capable computer are enough for many events. Hardware encoders add reliability for large or important broadcasts.
Connection: your upload path. Wired internet is the baseline. For critical events, plan a second path such as bonded cellular, so a single failure does not end the broadcast.
Delivery: the network that carries your stream to viewers. A content delivery network keeps playback fast when viewers are far from you or numerous.
Plan for failure
- Write who does what if the stream drops
- Rehearse the full chain at the venue before the event
- Prepare a holding slate you can show during a short outage
- Record every broadcast so a replay is ready afterward
