Level Up Your Zoom Productions with the RØDECaster Video

I didn't buy the RØDECaster Video for auto-switching. I bought it for scene management: seven custom scenes saved on the unit as A through G, previewable in real time, no macros and no third-party software.

What it replaced

It retired my RØDECaster Pro II completely. Bluetooth music for intros and outros, phantom power for a Shure SM7B, and audio routing so I can talk to presenters off the live mix. The Pro II is on the shelf.

Getting Zoom into it at real quality

• A Blackmagic DeckLink card with four SDI outputs, converted to HDMI, feeding the four RØDECaster HDMI inputs
• Zoom ISO sends each Zoom window — participant, active speaker, spotlight, screen share, gallery — to its own output at 1920x1080
• Zoom defaulted to 360p. I emailed Zoom support on a Pro account and they moved me to 720p within a day. 1080p is Enterprise-only and costs thousands a year, so I found a third-party Enterprise license reseller for a fraction of that.
• Bandwidth: I moved the home office off Spectrum's roughly 30 Mbps upload to AT&T fiber at 2 gig up and down to carry multiple 1080p streams

The scenes I pre-build

Four full-screen sources, a two-up with graphics, a three-up cropped A/B/C, a four-person shot (or three plus screen share), and picture-by-picture with presenter left and screen share right for each presenter.

Only real gripe: four HDMI inputs. I want the eight-input version.