Twice recently I have been the Zoom broadcaster of friends' weddings. The quality isn't great, but the price is right!
Tips:
1. Plan.
You need the $15/month "pro" package (one month's worth!) so you can broadcast for over 1 hour. That also gives you up to 100 Zoom participants. In my 2 cases, the bride and groom have opted for the $50 "large meeting" package upgrade for up to 500 participants (and didn't need it). Why? People who want to celebrate with you, get together to watch. So your aunt/uncle/cousins will gather around 1 screen. That's 1 participant from Zoom's perspective. Something to alternately consider is to simulcast to facebook or youtube (see below)
2. Meeting settings.
- Give the event a descriptive name. Change your screen name for that event to the event name and change your profile photo to a graphic relating to their event, so it is clear you are the main event camera. If you have multiple cameras (see below), name them descriptively.
- I suggest no pre-registration/authentication, no waiting room. Just let people come on in. You may decide, however, not to let participants join before you do.
- Mute participants upon entry. Also in your Zoom invite, request that people remain on mute!
- Set it to record the event!
- I have been using the default quality setting. The recording after the fact is pretty bad. Not what you would want for your sole wedding video. Warn the couple!
Broadcast in LANDSCAPE! Bring backup batteries for your phone and any other cameras.
3. Multiple cameras.
I think multiple cameras is a nice technique, but requires more than one person and some creativity. When I did this, I had a friend help by being the "control room" from an off-site location. The control room is the host of the meeting. Then I had 2 fixed cameras (open laptops) on 2 static locations, and my cell phone as a roving camera (note, this is 4 out of the 100 Zoom participants). The "control room" person was able to spotlight each different camera depending what was going on in that part of the event. That was a really nice touch. I suggest the roving on-site person have a bluetooth call open with the control room to discuss which camera to feature, etc. Another option is that additional people who are there in person could be appointed to be additional roving cameras. In this case you will really need the control room person to monitor and feature relevant people's camera feeds. Remember, only the featured/spotlighted camera feed will be recorded for posterity.
4. Feedback in-process.
If you have an additional person, they can monitor the chat for comments like "show this or that" or "I can't hear well". If you don't, the sole camera person can ask participants for thumbs-up feedback to make sure people can hear. Don't expect to be able to monitor the chat while you are the main event camera operator.
5. Including Zoom participants in the event.
Give the bride and groom a chance to interact with the Zoom'ers. They can speak directly to camera to greet their Zoom guests. You can let people un-mute to speak with them for a moment. It's a nice touch to let them participate. The bride and groom might like to take a moment to scroll through the participants if you hand them your phone (turn on the front facing camera for this so the bride and groom can be seen.
6. Weakness of the recorded result.
One of the major weaknesses of the Zoom recording when you watch it after the fact, is that it doesn't show you who the participants were. How do you know who showed up for your Zoom broadcast?! Encourage guests to wish you well using the chat, as if it is a guest book. The chat does get preserved with the video.
7. Controlled mute/unmute is important!
Also note is that only the spotlight camera view or the person who draws the mic to themselves by talking, is the only person who will be "saved" in the zoom recording for that moment. If grandpa talks over the officiant of the ceremony, that's the main video feed until he stops talking. As the camera person, you can try to check the participants list every so often and mute everyone (one by one!).
8. Simulcast to facebook or youtube.
One way to bypass the need for the $50 Large Meeting add-on is to simulcast your Zoom to facebook live or youtube. This is simple to do (but!...) by going into your Zoom account Settings, and Allow Live Streaming Meetings. This links to an informative article about how to make it work. Note that you can NOT activate this feature from a mobile phone, so it might be best used when you have a helper/"control room" person at a laptop who can also monitor that the feed is working.
A technique I have seen used effectively by someone else is to have a closed FB group for your event and invite people there instead of to the Zoom. This helps you bypass the 100+ participants option, but is more of a webinar mode in that they can comment in Facebook but can't interact like they could on Zoom (pros and cons!). At the appointed time, simply stream it through to Facebook Live. I have experimented with it. There is a 20-30 second lag in the video feed to Facebook. I have not tried the YouTube or other external streaming options.
9. Quality of the recorded result.
In my opinion, the recorded result is terrible quality video. This is a balance between me wanting to have enough bandwidth to stream, vs overburdening with high def. I also didn't want to exceed my Zoom cloud storage capacity with HD and then not record part of the event. There are of course ways around this and I suggest you experiment with HD broadcasting vs SD broadcasting in terms of choppiness and in terms of how big the resulting recording will be. You might want to try recording it locally vs cloud, but that makes me nervous to have it all riding on the fail-safety of one personal device.
If you are even a little bit techy, you can do this! Good luck!