Setting Up Zoom Production Studio (without Frustration!)

The 'Zoom Production Studio' is a fairly low cost way to add sophisticated video layouts (called "Scenes") to an online conference. I found it quite enjoyable switching between those "Scenes", and I believe it raised the production value of our recent conference significantly.
However, getting started in the basic setup of the Zoom Production Studio was fraught with road blocks, caveats and frustrations. Hopefully this video will save you hours of fumbling around the backend settings of your Zoom Webinar.
Check out this introduction May 2023 video from the Zoom Team on "the ZOOM Test Kitchen" broadcast for a more detailed look at actually using the Zoom Production Studio features:
www.youtube.co...
00:00 - Introduction - Quick Look at Zoom Production Studio
01:30 - Multiple Monitors is VERY Helpful
02:15 - Why I Wanted "Zoom Production Studio"
03:15 - Give Yourself Some Time to Setup Zoom Production Studio
03:50 - I Have Spent 5 to 10 HOURS Trying to Streamline This Process
04:22 - Some Good (or Great!), Some Bad, Some Ugly
05:40 - New Anomalies I Haven't Seen Before
06:10 - Don't Switch to Gallery or Speaker View During a Session! Here's Why...
08:00 - You Need a HUB
09:20 - What to Buy From Zoom
10:49 - *Starting From Scratch*
11:15 - Don't Create a Webinar from Normal Zoom Settings! That Will Have NO Saved Scenes! USE A HUB!
12:10 - Bookmark events.zoom.us...
13:35 - Creating Your Hub
13:58 - Creating Your First Event - Use Blank Event
15:00 - Use FULL Setup for Easily Uploading a List of Speakers or Attendees
17:22 - You MUST Choose Webinar (NOT Meeting) to Use Zoom Production Studio
17:40 - Uploading a CSV List of Speakers
18:50 - NOW I Can Setup Zoom Production Studio
19:30 - Creating Your Scenes - You Can't Change This When LIVE
20:00 - More Chapters Soon

[@AdamTow]

Some additional comments: - You can set a wallpaper as the default wallpaper when you choose a wallpaper. - When you pre-assign people and then switch to gallery view, the pre-assigned people should remain in the scenes when you return to Production Studio. It's the dynamically assigned people, as you saw, that are not retained when return from speaker or gallery view. If your sessions/webinars have a fixed set of participants that you know ahead of time, it's better to set up the scenes in advanced with the participants in the right place. - Glad you liked the fallback feature. This is something the team is proud of! - Good tip about two shared content scenes with the person looking at the right place.

[@TomQsTechTips]

Good comments! Pinned.

[@sabrinoor]

You bought the "Zoom Session" ad on but the websites header displays "Zoom Events" ? The complete licensing and naming with Zoom is a total mess. Hope they will fix it at some point. ps: Super helpful video, thank you!

[@TomQsTechTips]

Appreciate the comment @sabrinoor. I will say that Zoom is listening. One of the product managers invited me on a half hour call to discuss my experience. I'm not sure about the time frame of response though. It appears to be a fairly large ship that takes some time to change course.

[@AdamTow]

Great overview of Production Studio, both the good and the frustrating bits. There's an opportunity there for you to become an expert on PS who can inform other people on how to best get the most out of the product.

[@TomQsTechTips]

@AdamTow Thank you for the comment. I hope my love for Zoom Production Studio came through that palpable sense of frustration. It really was a joy to work with once we were LIVE!

[@matters5]

Does this answer questions like: - can I add new layouts when the event is live? - is it beneficial to add multiple 1 speaker views for each speaker, or just use one layout and change it on the fly live?

[@TomQsTechTips]

Yes it does. No you cannot add layouts LIVE. At least not currently. You COULD get by with one, but I always had two: one for the main speaker and one for active speaker.

[@AlexandraW006]

Really informative! May I have your email to share some collaboration proposals? THANK YOU!