The new live stream production system at Congregation Shir Hadish includes BirdDog fixed and PTZ (pan-tilt-zoom) cameras, a BirdDog PTZ Keyboard camera controller and a Behringer X32 audio mixer.
Joshua Bernstein is the chief tech volunteer for Congregation Shir Hadish, a small congregation in Los Gatos, Calif. Bernstein had no experience in AV production, and had to figure out how to live stream services himself. During the pandemic, he quickly realized the live stream quality was not good, but he didn’t know what was needed to improve it. Then he found the BirdDog ecosystem of products.
“It’s amazing the difference in quality that you get by putting a few cameras in and re-doing the sound system in being able to create a really engaging experience,” he says.
In this interview, Joshua Bernstein describes the journey of researching and installing a live stream production system for this Bay Area house of worship operated entirely by technical volunteers.
Bernstein and his volunteers did all the work. “If you can pull and crimp Cat6, you can install these cameras. It’s so easy,” he adds
As he got more comfortable with the NDI ecosystem over time, he added more to his system and grew into it. Bernstein believes workflows from other manufacturers require much more expertise and even an integrator to figure it out for you. What he found with the BirdDog system is a community of people to help along the way.
“As you dig into BirdDog a little bit more, you realize the community that has sprung up around them. The significance of the community is incredibly valuable,” he concludes. “No other vendor is offering that.”
