Thanks, Kurt. And thanks Russell for the link on mic setup. I will tweak them next time and see if it makes any difference.
I feel like I have a great system and am very blessed to have supportive leaders. They told me they have no plans to ever go back to the old way - they used to have to do 3 sessions for Stake Conference, which made for a long, awful day for them and any visiting authority.
My long-term plan is to work to upgrade pieces little by little over the next couple years and work up to a HD webcast. We have the bandwidth, but just need the components. This is my list of upgrades/to dos:
1. Upgrade webcast computer. Right now the dell 740 (former clerk computer) runs at 100% cpu for the whole webcast. it's gotta be upgraded. I'm looking at rackmount solutions that I can put in our video rack to save counter space.
Something out of this site, maybe? The idea would be to get a machine that will have enough horsepower to transcode HD video at some future time.
2. Upgrade video mixer. Need something that will handle HD video inputs for my 3 cameras and computer. Would be cool to get something with chroma key so we can do nicer titling. This is going to be the most challenging as I have yet to find a reasonably priced option.
3. Upgrade cameras. I got a great deal on my Sony D70s - $300 a piece. My dream cameras are the Cisco/Tandberg Precision HD cameras. I've seen them in action and they are whisper quiet, have awesome optics, and support HDMI and HD-SDI. They're also prohibitively expensive, so I'll need to wait for prices to drop or find a screamin' deal.
Kurt (or anyone else), if you have any of these components laying around you want to send to me for "testing" - I'd be happy to have them.
Besides this, my leadership has challenged me to make the system a little more "built-in" such that it doesn't take so much effort each time to fire it up. We are close to this, but I am going to need to work with FM group to modify the closet so there is a permanent desk in there for webcasting before we can get much further.