The Flatirons Community Church video control operation
LAFAYETTE, COLO..—Flatirons Community Church has an average attendance of 17,000 people a weekend at our main campus in Lafayette. To support our continuing growth we opened a second campus earlier this year in Genesee, Colo. Both campuses operate in a visually dynamic multiscreen environment, and we rely exclusively on our For-A production switchers. We’ve found For-A’s switchers to be cost effective, feature packed and extremely reliable.
Our first experience with a For-A production switcher was in 2011 when we purchased a 1.5 M/E HVS-350HS unit for use in our main auditorium. Last year we moved the HVS-350HS to our satellite campus and purchased an HVS-390HS 2 M/E switcher for the main campus. Not only do we use our For-As for large screen main sanctuary video switching but also for video delivery to overflow spaces and for streaming from the main to the satellite campus.
Our weekend video operations are staffed exclusively by volunteers—between the two campuses we have nearly 100 volunteers. As the church’s video director, an important part of my job is training volunteers in the use and care of our video equipment. As the For-A switchers are so user-friendly, this has been a very easy task.
Though our volunteer operators handle things very professionally, there is a unique feature on the For-As that we use to advantage. This is the ability to “lock out” any input on either of the M/E buses, ensuring that no one accidentally takes a source to the wrong screen at any time.
The functionality of our For-A switchers is quite impressive. With a lot of other manufacturers’ products you’d need a larger, more expensive switcher to get the sort of functionality that we get from our units, or you would have to add additional gear to achieve the same level of performance. What our church has been able to accomplish with the use of freely assignable keys, downstream keyers and multiple digital effects video processors is simply amazing.
FEATURE-RICH SWITCHERS
One of the features that we’ve grown to appreciate is the ability to take a single video source—such as printed song lyrics— and key them over multiple outputs in different positions. For instance, we’re able to take lyrics, key them over our large screen presentation, and at the same time resize the lyrics and position them center screen.
Our video operators also really appreciate the availability of a proc amp on every input, and DVE capability on every keyer. The switchers also let them program multiple events—each with predefined setup specifications—which allows the use of a large number of keys and effects.
The customer support from For-A involving switcher setup, use, and programming has also been really outstanding. And as our switchers have consistently worked so well, we haven’t had to contact For-A’s technical support operation since they were originally installed. Our experience with using the For-A switchers in a multiscreen environment has been universally good.
Robb MacTavish is the video director at Flatirons Community Church. He may be contacted atrobb_mactavish@flatironschurch.com.
For additional information, contact For- A at 201-944-1120 or visitwww.for-a.com.
