First Christian Church
Several years ago, the leaders of First Christian Church in Huntington Beach, CA, were faced with a challenge. Attendance had picked up substantially, and it had become difficult to fit everyone inside one venue at one time. It was time for overflow, and the church leaders wanted a nontraditional approach, something different than a room with a live feed. However, First Christian Church’s 100-year-old buildings didn’t allow for modern churchgoers to experience church in a nontraditional way.
In an effort to provide more space and a variety of programming, the decision was made to offer multiple simultaneous services in different venues on campus by way of video. The idea seemed to attract more people, but with out-of-date facilities, SD and terrible parking, the only solution seemed to be a campuswide redevelopment.
With limited venue experience, the church leaders knew it was essential that a consistent theme and message be delivered, while maintaining their own identity and variety of programming in the newly constructed venues. With these criteria, First Christian Church put their faith in the design build team of Mankin Media Systems from Nashville, TN. Mankin worked closely with Shane Skaggs, video director at First Christian Church, to maximize dollars and equipment while keeping the consistency required.
A decision was made to build one central master control suite that would be the bridge to and from all of the church’s venues. While on the same property, the venues would be in different buildings and have simultaneous programming. The master control would be side-by-side control rooms that could switch shows in any venue at any given time. At the hub of the control room is a Ross Video Vision multidefinition production switcher, while other major components included Harris Platinum routing, with built-in dual Centrio multiviewers; Apple Xsan; JVC HD ENG cameras; and Spyder from Vista Systems.
To be consistent with its message and theme, First Christian Church wanted to capture the sermon and thematic elements from its main auditorium as a package. Delivering that package in HD to venues with different programming would be more of a challenge; but to accomplish the time shift in HD, it chose a Ross Video SoftMetal video server, which has the ability to capture and play back on-cue in various venues simultaneously.
To overcome the distance between First Christian Church’s buildings, fiber was chosen as the backbone of the infrastructure, with Harris and Blackmagic Design used for conversion and connectivity.
First Christian Church went live with two venues this past July 2009, with plans of all five being completed in 2010.
- New studio technology — nonbroadcast
Submitted by Ross VideoDesign teamFirst Christian Church: Shane Skaggs, video dir.
Mankin Media Systems: Ben MankinTechnology at workAJA: Conversion
Apple: Final Cut Server, workstations, Xsan
Barco: Projection
Blackmagic Design: Fiber conversion, ingest, DA/AD conversion
Fujinon: HD lenses
Harris: Routing, timing, multiviewers, character generator
Image Video: Tally routing
JVC: HD cameras
Kulabyte: Web delivery, H.264 conversion
Matrox: Ingest
Panasonic: Plasmas
Renewed Vision: ProPresenter, character generator
Ross Video: Vision multidefinition switcher, SoftMetal video server, openGear
RTS: Com, IP com
Sanyo: Projection
Telestream: H.264 conversion
Vista Systems: Spyder, display canvassing
Yamaha: Audio monitoring
© 2009 Penton Media, Inc.
