Church systems
Plan your sanctuary camera system before anyone quotes you
Enter your room, drag the cameras where they could actually go, and see what the geometry demands: how much zoom each shot needs, how far the cable has to run, and which equipment that adds up to. Nothing is gated and nothing asks for your email to show you the answer.
Room dimensionsm
Camera positions
Who runs it
Streams to
Signal path
Plan view
Drag a camera to reposition it. Click to put it on program; arrow keys nudge, shift for a metre.
Equipment list
| Qty | Equipment | Why it is here |
|---|
What usually goes wrong
Five things that decide whether a church system works, none of which are on a spec sheet.
- A camera at the back of a long sanctuary needs more zoom than you think
- A PTZ camera sees about 60° across at 1×. Framing a face from 25 m back is a 20× shot, not a 12× one. The planner works this out for every position and tells you when a shot is simply out of range.
- Cable length kills more installs than camera choice
- Cat6 and 3G-SDI both stop being reliable past 100 m, and HDMI gives up at 15 m. Cable does not run in a straight line — it goes up, along and down, so the real run is longer than the distance across the floor. The planner routes it the way an installer would and flags what will not reach.
- One volunteer cannot operate four cameras
- More cameras is not more production value if nobody is free to run them. If a rotating volunteer runs your stream, two well-placed cameras with preset recall beats four that nobody touches.
- Your upload speed decides your stream quality, not your camera
- Test upload on a Sunday morning with the building full, not on a Tuesday afternoon. A 1080p30 stream wants roughly double its bitrate in headroom, and more again if the guest wi-fi shares the line.
- Power matters on network cameras
- Each PTZ camera draws about 13 W over PoE. Four cameras on an unbudgeted switch is how a system works in testing and drops a camera mid-service.
Want a second opinion on your plan?
Send us what the planner gave you and we will tell you what we would change — including when the answer is that you need less equipment than you think.