When San Jose-based Cathedral of Faith Church began its HD overhaul last year, the church looked to systems integrator Spectaveris to select video production equipment that best met its needs.
The Texas-based integrator chose Hitachi Kokusai Electric America’s SK-HD1000 multiformat digital HDTV production cameras for the project and recently installed five of the cameras as part of the church’s two-phase project to upgrade to full HD broadcast capability.
“Choosing the right camera equipment was a lengthy process,” said Spectaveris president Dean Stone. “The church already had four lenses on existing standard definition cameras that were ‘HD Ready’ and capable of handling the tighter specifications of an HD camera.
“Because they wanted to continue using them once the church transitioned to HD, we had to find 2/3in format cameras that would work well with their lenses.”
Three of new HD production cameras are positioned in the back of the sanctuary with large LCD viewfinders, while the other two are used as handheld cameras in the front of the room. Each week, Cathedral of Faith records its Saturday service at the church’s San Jose location, and then transports the video on portable external hard drives to each of its seven remote locations around the San Francisco Bay area. The church also has live HD feeds to its outdoor pavilion every Sunday morning, broadcasts its services online and offers DVDs of services to the congregation.
“Transitioning to HD has enabled us to better connect with our members,” explained Kurt Foreman, the executive pastor and director of operations at Cathedral of Faith. “Our church strives to give the congregation a memorable experience every week. High-quality video is an important part of this.”
